Guild Wars 2

sorrow.2364:

spoj.9672:

Really? I see 105k+ damage when i auto attack a rabbit with no might or anything…

That was an hyperbole.

I know.

Blaine Tog.8304:

Dredlord.8076:

Blaine Tog.8304:

I was speaking specifically about his reference to the population distribution between professions. It seems to be taken as a given in these discussions that there are substantially fewer Necros around than most everyone else but no one has been able to produce hard data to prove it.

nice back pedal

Not a backpedal. As you can see, my question was directed towards Kravick. I asked him the same question (to provide data about population distribution) in a previous thread and he neglected to do so. This was me following up.

Dredlord.8076:

how bout you play the game and see for yourself

see how many thieves eles and mesmers you run into before you see 1 necro in wvw or ?pvp

Anecdotal evidence is notoriously inaccurate. In addition to being a small sample size, it’s subject to observer bias like whoa. It’s also non-falsifiable, meaning you or I can say whatever we like and there’s no way of proving us wrong.

That said, I ran into a lot of Necros last night. Way more Necros than mesmers. You can believe me of not, but it’s the truth.

The vast majority of players seem to run into very few necro’s. Its not factual evidence but its pretty obvious necro isnt a very popular class compared to mesmers, guardians and so on.

sorrow.2364:

Did your enemies wear a full armor?
I mean, I haven’t seen those numbers even on ambient creatures…

Really? I see 105k+ damage when i auto attack a rabbit with no might or anything…

Its more irritating having to constantly swap between guardian staff and scepter + offhand than just swapping 1 offhand for another offhand. Screws up inventory order or w/e. Or with warrior swapping warhorn back to offhand mace, double click makes you equip it in mainhand. :<

The mesmer is the only class i rarely swap weapons out. Warrior, guard and necro im constantly changing for different situations (Necro not so much but more than the mesmer). You should be doing it with every class, its a sign of a more experienced player. The same goes for swapping utilities.

TheMightyAltroll.3485:

My human female Necromancer.

https://dviw3bl0enbyw.cloudfront.net/uploads/forum_attachment/file/70963/Valeia_the_Wicked.jpg

Pretty… err…. shapely, imo.

What armour is this?

You can get it from CM, TA and Arah. Also you can buy it from the trading post.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Khilbron%27s_armor

Just look for some condition damage rares until you can afford it. Order of whispers armour is rabid lvl 80 rare gear.

Im going for kraitkin. But the plan is to get frostfang and then the howler eventually.

Azraeel.1238:

spoj.9672:

The best runes for a beserker build are scholar runes. But if you dont have the cash just go for ruby orbs.

How can you maintain health > 90% ? Ruby Orbs give you more crit damage, precision, and sustained damage in heavy damage environments such as WvW and dungeons.

Dungeons you should be above 90%hp for quite a while when your whole group is stacking melee and dodging effectively. Trash will prob stop you from getting the bonus but its more for bosses. You have enough precision already and scholar runes give a nice boost in power and the loss of crit damage isnt that much. Its what warriors use if they want absolute max dps, the problem is they are expensive. Necro’s have better ways than warriors to avoid losing hp. I havent been able to try them out myself due to expense but power is pretty good stat to boost your overall dps.

Iceflame.5024:

I’m curious to see what changes are going to address our CC vulnerability. They said they don’t plan on giving us any more stability which seems to be quite sad but on the other hand overall stunbreaker changes have been mentioned to be planned. I wonder how this is going to turn out.

Maybe a trait which increases toughness or reduces life force lost while in DS and being stunned, knocked down or w/e. That would be the only semi solution to it. Even then its not perfect.

The best runes for a beserker build are scholar runes. But if you dont have the cash just go for ruby orbs.

Iures.2894:

spoj.9672:

Iures.2894:

spoj.9672:

Broadicea.8294:

Bread.7516:

3 war 1 guard 1 mes. p3 destroyer dies even before shield flickers

Do you even need the guardian for CoE? I feel like that could be speedrun just like CoF with 4W/1M..

It can be done, but the golem gets quite high protection uptime on that setup. Which slows it down a bit. Which is why my group still takes a guardian or we take a necro to compliment the mesmer boon stripping.

Have your mesmer run sword main hand. Two or three clones and maybe a phantasmal disenchanter, staggered to have different boon strip times, is plenty to keep the golem’s buffs off.

Yeah i have and its never full boon down time. The sword auto attack is unreliable, null field and phantasmal disenchanter work really well but they dont provide perma boon stripping due to cooldowns. But then i never changed my trait in domination to remove boons on shatter. So Im probably wrong, only thought about that trait recently when i was looking at a pvp shatter build.

Hmm. . . when I fight him his boons usually stay up a split second at most, except when illusions start dying. Not sure what we’re doing differently. . .

I always have a problem of illusions dieing so i tend to shatter quite regularly. When i try and use sword to remove boons it ends up removing the regen then the retal then the protection. Means i have to get through 3 auto attack chains unless i have a null field or disenchanter. But after reading what someone said about leaving disenchanters up, that might be my problem. I had no idea they keep removing boons because after they first do it the boons come back and it takes an age for them to do it again, so ive just been shattering. Ah well you learn something new everyday.

Bweaty.9187:

Didn’t you see they fixed 1/3rd downed life for necros… As long as it’s a new necro, so simply re-roll and level/gear your toon again.

Yes thats fair….

Iures.2894:

spoj.9672:

Broadicea.8294:

Bread.7516:

3 war 1 guard 1 mes. p3 destroyer dies even before shield flickers

Do you even need the guardian for CoE? I feel like that could be speedrun just like CoF with 4W/1M..

It can be done, but the golem gets quite high protection uptime on that setup. Which slows it down a bit. Which is why my group still takes a guardian or we take a necro to compliment the mesmer boon stripping.

Have your mesmer run sword main hand. Two or three clones and maybe a phantasmal disenchanter, staggered to have different boon strip times, is plenty to keep the golem’s buffs off.

Yeah i have and its never full boon down time. The sword auto attack is unreliable, null field and phantasmal disenchanter work really well but they dont provide perma boon stripping due to cooldowns. But then i never changed my trait in domination to remove boons on shatter. So Im probably wrong, only thought about that trait recently when i was looking at a pvp shatter build.

Didnt know you could exploit it. But yeah dont think we would ever try to cheat it, not the sort of players to actively try and exploit paths.

Broadicea.8294:

Bread.7516:

3 war 1 guard 1 mes. p3 destroyer dies even before shield flickers

Do you even need the guardian for CoE? I feel like that could be speedrun just like CoF with 4W/1M..

It can be done, but the golem gets quite high protection uptime on that setup. Which slows it down a bit. Which is why my group still takes a guardian or we take a necro to compliment the mesmer boon stripping.

Bread.7516:

3 war 1 guard 1 mes. p3 destroyer dies even before shield flickers

Is that with timewarp? Cause my group never has timewarp up in time for that fight so I save it for final alpha.

While your leveling you will find you cant get enough precision to crit. So you should just stack power stat gear. Dont worry about your traits too much. Id recommend going for spite or soul reaping while you level. Minions stay at the zone level so they will always be effective. But wells and power builds make killing things very easy. Basically dont worry about traits and stats and all that too much. Just try out what you want to try out and learn how to play the class. Using DS is probably the best thing to start practising with early on. Along with dodging. And have fun. :>

Dark path should guarantee a teleport when it hits a target. Theres no risk of exploitation seeing as the target had to of got there without exploiting themselves. But I do think projectile speed should be increased very slightly. Not too bothered though.

Lopez.7369:

I have a feeling they’ll attach it to a pet or something along those lines because they said the overall intent is to get less played builds to a viable state. I’m just not very optimistic about it. I hope I’m proven wrong.

Spectral skills/builds are less used than minions afaik.

Most likely right click targeting. So you use right click to rotate camera but somehow click on a target aswell. Happens to me all the time, very annoying.

HiSaZuL.2843:

Lol… soul reaping tree is a niche which holds appeal mostly for pvp or terror builds. In both cases there are better ways to gear crit damage. You essential saying you are dumping 30 trait points to get some crit damage and with those 30 trait points you don’t get a single trait that benefits from doing crits. Grats.
Also… After i read the whole hp is terrible because you can’t heal as fast…. I wont even bother anymore. I think i can find more sane arguments from a kid who threw a dead squirrel at another kid and comes up with a logical reasoning behind the action.
And I’m still amused at people throwing this isn’t a holy trinity mmo. Weeee weee Whoo whoo.
And yet… we have tanks. And we have healbots and we have dps bombs. Confused much? Not actually sure what this holy trinity means? Like I said this conversation is seriously not going anywhere.

Erm ok. Soul reaping tree is the must have trait line for power builds in pve. The stability is useful in dungeons like arah, the boosted dmg when lifeforce is above 50% is very good. The 5 second DS cooldown is good if your flashing DS aswell (can get perma fury without help from teammates with this and 15 pts in curses). Theres plenty of traits for flashing DS and lots of them are good in power builds. The piercing lifeblast with vuln stacking is good. The spectral cooldown reduction is good. The locust swarm is also good, procs loads of crits on a crit build and generates really good lifeforce. Not to mention full beserker with 30 in soul reaping gives over 110% crit damage. The spite line is the power line with awful choice of traits (mainly the minors).

Please explain whats wrong with my logic about lifeforce healing? There is no benefit to not being able to heal yourself after you’ve failed to absorb a hit with DS. You dont need extra DS hp to absorb a massive hit. Sure it instant removes all your lifeforce but in a power build you gain it all back in a few hits. You dont need vitality, its a wasted stat, we can already absorb enough hits with our base hp. And as gabi said, agony is percentage based so your just gimping yourself further by not being able to out heal a single agony tick on high level fractals….

My guild runs 4 war and 1 mes or 3 war, 1 necro and 1 mes in coe. Seems faster than taking a guard. Boon stripping is good enough on the golem. The 3 war, 1 necro, 1 mes runs we did a few days ago were the fastest runs weve ever done, or atleast they felt the fastest. Although we havent tried with a beserker guard yet, havent got the gear yet as i mostly use mine for fractals.

If your speed running you want a beserker wells build (30/x/x/0/30). 10 points can either go in Death magic for greater marks or you could avoid a staff altogether like i do and put 10 in curses for some extra precision and lifeforce generation (or chilling darkness for when you take well of darkness). You want to run with well of suffering and well of corruption at all times as they do good aoe damage, they can also crit aswell. 3rd slot is optional, i run spectral walk for a stunbreak and lifeforce generation + swiftness for skipping parts. Occasionally i swap it for well of power or darkness or blood is power for extra might/damage. Spectral wall is also useful when your going to LOS a group of mobs, you can position it so they all walk through as they group up, stacking 10 stacks of vuln instantly before they reach your group (basically the necro’s equivalent of the warriors “on my mark”).

Your weapons should be dagger + warhorn/focus and then the offhand is up to you. I personally go dagger + warhorn and axe + focus with a sigil of energy on the focus. Staff can also be used, provides some support for the group and is your only real ranged option.

I hate seeing people mention life force generation as healing. Its not. You cant use your lifeforce to heal your actual hp bar. Once you come out of DS your still on low hp and having a large hp pool means you cant heal it back up quickly. Its pointless to go for vitality until we can actually use our DS to heal our hp back up.

HiSaZuL.2843:

spoj.9672:

Andele.1306:

PvE – Soldier all the way (well i do have 2 ascended items that aint, but thats for lore reasons, i wish you could transmute them) since we have pretty bad power scailing overall, but nice base damage, also being able to facetank boss attacks and siphon up with dagger and staff 2, as for condi (hybrid actually) id say Rampager with Rabid amulets
PvP – Carrion with Rampager gem
PvP – 1v1 Rabid with Soldier/Carrion/Shammy gem

Soldier on any class in pve is just facepalm. The max defense you should ever go is knights gear. You are actually making dungeons harder by hindering your groups dps so much.

A baseless and in necromancer case more then any other false statement. Necros have plenty of access to damage abilities that do not scale with anything(cough minions cough). Same goes towards healing that doesn’t scale with anything.
I highly suggest you actually try things before making assumptions on your own.

spoj.9672:

Afya.5842:

Nice maths
I’m making power build for pve dungeon especially fractal and I’m a bit lost what to get. What EHP should necro aim for but not excessive?

I’m think of getting

Soldier | berserker accessories
or
Berserker | cavalier accessories

Don’t want that too tanky.

If you want to increase your dps you need to aim for around 50% crit chance, you wont be able to do that with soldier gear. Plus necro’s have plenty of base hp. Dont need any more vitality. Go knights with beserker accessories and weapons if you’re set on a bit of survivability, but id still recommend going full beserker in pve.

And yet again way off and completely wrong. 50% crit chance is all great… if you have anything that benefits from crits. Procs/traits etc. If you don’t then high crit chance with 0 crit damage means absolutely nothing when on the other hand your base damage is higher. Sounds like you read a thief/warrior guide where classes have a truck load of crit dependencies.
Also ratio is put there for convenience sake instead of thinking in terms of hp+armor-damage reduction from armor etc you are given 1 single number to compare and in all 3 cases same formula to get it is used. If you can’t grasp that… god… I feel bad for you and suggest you should really go to school. Or find some common sense(not likely).

Im sorry but barely any build will have 0 crit damage. And even with 0 crit damage crits do considerably more than non crits. My necro was my only option in dungeons for a while so i maximised my dps so i wasnt completely useless. Ive experimented alot with trait and stat combo’s. Any beserker or knights necro is going to have some points in soul reaping which gives a really big boost in crit damage.

Minions are useless and unreliable in pve (die to boss aoe’s and just dont attack). Healing is useless in dungeon running because your not going to kill a boss by healing it to death. You should just be managing your own survivability which requires very little in the way of traits and stats. Unless your playing the anchor role where you can help a bit. But this isnt a holy trinity mmo stop talking like it is.

ps. Find it funny how you directly insult me and dont get your post deleted. Whereas i just act a little egotistical and i get a warning and a deleted post..

Its not exploiting lmao. This is a completely different game to wow, you cant compare them. Please explain what is being exploited by killing things fast and efficiently.

Btw im all for soldiers in wvw and pvp. Just not pve.

A key flaw with soldiers is that your heal is going to be nothing compared to your hp. You really dont want that.

Andele.1306:

spoj.9672:

I do have a knights set and it doesnt feel much lower damage than my beserker set. Theres also the issue of soldiers not synergising with groups at all. Atleast with a knights build, fury and might from warriors will actually effect you in a big way. Even in full soldiers you can get 1 shot by certain boss aoe’s so its stupid to go for tankyness if you want to be serious about dungeons. Get good dps and get your friends to do it aswell. Will make your dungeon runs so much easier and quick once you get the hang of it.

No you cant, no boss hit in game does over 30k damage on direct hit with a ability and the few instadowns in game are designed so that even a colorblind person with fixed cam can avoid them.
Also as i linked before the difference in effective hp is 15k, while damage difference is petty 5k (8k if zerker/knight optimized).
Also Zerker has less synergy with groups, its selfish damage buffing, helping others via heals, rez and actually being able to control the boss is helping, dps whoring is for exploiters/strife fanboys.

You dont need hp if you learn to dodge. Ive had countless pugs with bad dps, making dungeons so much harder than full zerker groups. Even when they get downed a bit the overall dungeon is easier. Tanky people dont contribute anything to the group other than being the last alive and then claiming “well you guys all failed because you died and im still alive”. Funny how that person cant actually kill anything on their own cause there damage is so bad its like slapping an ogre with a fish. There is nothing more selfish than just tanking and not doing any damage. Tanking is for mmo’s like wow. Dps actually helps the group because you burn mobs down before they cause the entire group problems. Why cant people like you accept that it is the meta in dungeon running instead of being stubborn.

Your comment about exploiting/strife fanboys shows how little you know about the subject. Strife doesnt exploit, his videos leave out a lot of methods some groups use which are exploiting. LOSing is a legit strategy. DPS is the best way to clear dungeons

sorrow.2364:

I’ve got full Soldier set and I feel the damage is nowhere enough.

Sure, the survivability is pretty high, but the damage output I have is pretty much way lower than, let’s say, the one I have with Knight Amulet in PvP (which is quite similiar to Emerald/Knight jewel in PvE).

Has anyone here full Emerald set that can give us a video showing the damage output? Or some combat log?

I do have a knights set and it doesnt feel much lower damage than my beserker set. Theres also the issue of soldiers not synergising with groups at all. Atleast with a knights build, fury and might from warriors will actually effect you in a big way. Even in full soldiers you can get 1 shot by certain boss aoe’s so its stupid to go for tankyness if you want to be serious about dungeons. Get good dps and get your friends to do it aswell. Will make your dungeon runs so much easier and quick once you get the hang of it.

Well i had a massive post explaining why knights is better than soldiers but it got deleted by a mod because apparently i was being inflammatory. Cannot be arsed to repost the points. His maths is wrong as dredlord said. Even with RNG based crits you still out damage soldiers by a huge margin in game. Running knights is very similar to running beserker, except your crits dont get quite so big and ur base attacks are slightly lower (300 power is nothing). There is no way 300 power is better than 40% crit chance otherwise you’d see all the optimum speed run groups running soldier anchor guardian which would be hilarious and stupid.

Afya.5842:

Nice maths
I’m making power build for pve dungeon especially fractal and I’m a bit lost what to get. What EHP should necro aim for but not excessive?

I’m think of getting

Soldier | berserker accessories
or
Berserker | cavalier accessories

Don’t want that too tanky.

If you want to increase your dps you need to aim for around 50% crit chance, you wont be able to do that with soldier gear. Plus necro’s have plenty of base hp. Dont need any more vitality. Go knights with beserker accessories and weapons if you’re set on a bit of survivability, but id still recommend going full beserker in pve.

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

Soldiers: 1003 Power, 698 Tough/Vit
Knight: 698 Power, 943 Tough, 757 Precision

For the ratio of damage increase:

Soldiers:

(916 + 1003)/916 = 2.09
4% Crit Chance
Adjusted Ratio: 2.09 x (1.5 × .04 + 0.96) = 2.13

Knights:

(916 + 698)/916 = 1.76
40% crit chance
Adjusted Ratio: 1.76 x (1.5 × 0.4 + 0.6) = 2.11

Which basically means that there is about a 1% difference between the two in damage.

Yeah that makes sense if you completely ignore stat bonuses from trait lines and other sources…. But you cant do that. You lose a very small amount of power when running knights and crits add a lot of dps.

Anyway cant follow your math properly because you’ve added random numbers which i dont know what they correspond to. Whats the 0.6 and and 0.96 correspond to? It seems like you’ve made a typo and in both calculations you should be using 0.96 (Im making this assumption because i dont know where you’ve gotten 0.96 and 0.6 from and cant think what else would change calculation wise other than power and crit chance so that 0.6 should be a 0.96 whatever it is?), in which case knights would yield an end ratio of 2.75 which is massive compared to soldiers.

Also what the hell does that ratio even mean, seems like you’re just making up a ratio which has no place in the game. You should calculate effective dps or average damage on a specific skill like dagger auto attack, not some strange ratio which doesnt mean anything. Plus your knights stat distribution is wrong. Power and precision should have the same value.

You dont need maths to see that knights does considerably more damage than soldiers, you can do it just by watching the numbers come up on your screen lol.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Critical_hit#Table

Useful table to see how big a difference crits make. The numbers dont seem that different but thats because they dont need to be to make a huge difference ingame. 1% damage increase is actually quite a lot.

Kal Spiro.9745:

Based on the quazi-lore of Guild Wars, earth will float in the presence of water and a strong magical field. The phenomanon explains every instance of random floating rocks throughout the world, possibly including the ones the Asura specifically put there.

It is entirely possible that all the different species of Rider have developed a way to take advantage of this truth to allow themselves to levitate.

“I can do guild wars science, me!”

Can you tell us how you do it so fast? My guild did it in a couple of mins first time just because we were using high dps builds and I knew the mechanics after pugging it beforehand. But im assuming you’re doing something other than using high dps team comp. I would interested to come along to see your method but im an eu player.

Yeah they were definately there on launch. I remember going up to them when i first visited Lion’s Arch. I also quite the game and came back around the end of december and they were there then aswell. Dont remember if there was a chiefain or if he just had a different dialog back then though.

I will thank them when the HP fix is finally implemented and working. I do appreciate the sudden increase in attention from Jon Peters though. It is refreshing to actually get some acknowledgement of our bugs once in a while.

Andele.1306:

PvE – Soldier all the way (well i do have 2 ascended items that aint, but thats for lore reasons, i wish you could transmute them) since we have pretty bad power scailing overall, but nice base damage, also being able to facetank boss attacks and siphon up with dagger and staff 2, as for condi (hybrid actually) id say Rampager with Rabid amulets
PvP – Carrion with Rampager gem
PvP – 1v1 Rabid with Soldier/Carrion/Shammy gem

Soldier on any class in pve is just facepalm. The max defense you should ever go is knights gear. You are actually making dungeons harder by hindering your groups dps so much.

One of the male sylvari in the grove greeted me with a female voice when i spoke to him.

ninja edit!

For some reason i thought it was 40g, just checked and edited my post.

Morvian.3270:

The Crossing isn’t the Scythe skin. That’s a lantern on a long piece of bone. I forget the name of the Scythe skin atm, but I want to say it’s only available during Halloween and can’t currently be obtained.

Final Rest is what the OP was referring to. It’s currently on the TP for about 5-6 gold. Not terribly expensive. I use it on my Necro and absolutely love the look.

The halloween scythe skin can be bought on the trading post for 100g. I only mentioned the crossing because its probably the best looking necro themed staff skin in the game.

Beserker is the most efficent use of stats in pve. Power zerker necro’s dont hinder group speed clears that much in the way of dps. Any other stat combo is just making a weak class even weaker. Unless ofc you are talking about casual slow 1-2 hour dungeon clears with condition specs, where a bit of defense will obviously be needed.

How can they nerf it? If its nerfed any further, the new aoe will be cleave. Which puts us at an even bigger disadvantage to the classes that actually have cleave.

Interesting lol.

I believe you are referring to Final Rest. Its a rare exotic drop from behemoth meta event in queensdale. Theres also a proper scythe skin on the trading post and a staff called The Crossing. All very necro themed, you can preview them all if you search for them on the trading post.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Final_Rest

Its easy with any class. You can just take the hits on a lvl 6 upscaled class no problem. Only have to be careful not to get knocked or caught in a trap when he detonates them. Completed it on a lvl 6 ele, lvl 12 mesmer and lvl 36 thief in starter gear after i discovered how easy it was.

That explains why while i was doing NULL the other day sometimes i was getting ressed for over 1k per tick and then id down again and it would be back to 300.

yski.7642:

I sorta had a forum debate about viability of minions at Guru, and we decided to settle the matter with a few friendly duels, and after I crushed multiple times first my original opponent (as a thief, an engineer and a necromancer ) and then his bunker ranger friend we concluded that minions do indeed work in 1v1 situations. However, my opponents argued that it wouldn’t work in a group situation, and since I’m not a mesmer there can’t be five of me for them to fight.

So, would you people like to prove our superiority to those who doubt the might of our undead hordes? I don’t think they are too much above our level and it would be nice to fight a slightly more organized group after all those PUGs.

Im up for doing this aslong as its in the evening. Cant make today though.

Pendragon.8735:

spoj.9672:

Quite a few players have necro alts, they just dont use them. Which is pretty much how its going to be for me soon.

What worries me is that when Anet looks at internal numbers they see these alts and think Necros are doing fine just because they were once created.

I think Colin once referenced something like this, that because class creation was pretty evenly split (this was a few months ago) it seemed to indicate balance was going good.

But how many are still playing them, even 80 Necro’s sitting untouched that were re rolled. How many are running dungeons with them, high level PVP, WVW – I rarely see any there.

The place I see Necros most, is casually strolling around the outside world PVE. The easiest carefree content in the game. Where someone that probably never reads this forum, nor cares about competition or balance, just like the aesthetic of running around with an army of little ugly critters. And sure, the Necro works for that, but you can’t be using numbers boosted by those type of players to say a profession is fine everywhere else, and in fact, in the places where it truly matters. In casual PVE it doesn’t matter if one prof is slightly better, at farming, at finishing an event, no one is competing for those things.

Exactly. I only use my necro for guild missions because i have map completion on her and I switch to her on jade maw for fractal rewards occasionally. But i dont dare take her in 20+ anymore, much more useful and quick runs when i take my guardian. Because im just so annoyed at how useless my main is ive re-rolled a second mesmer with a similar look to my necro. So i can actually have a decent and useful main and one that actually looks good (Hate my asuran mesmer, animations are crap).