well, I had a very ‘funny’ or not, situation with one guy just a few minutes ago..
He ask me for 15 Gold if I want to go into his group and he will do everything alone… well… the rest you can see on the pic.. My question is: is it allowed or not? :/
Because basicly he may do alot of Gold, as he gets 15 Gold per player, 4 players = 60 Gold..
Question. Did you, maybe, not read his lfg post when you joined? People are allowed to sell and if you arent interested maybe you shouldnt of joined the group.
regardless of whether people feel this fight is better now or not, it is a fact that this was an unintended change. I know there are many out there who want a challenge (me included) but this boss shouldn’t have been that fight. Instead, anet should just make another unforgiving boss somewhere else (maybe dry top dungeon?).
This fight with a uncoordinated pug group is a nightmare.
I don’t actually think it was unintended. They even put the change into the patch notes. They don’t do that for unintended changes.
The scaling fix was intented. The over the top base damage is probably unintended. Its a bit too much damage at the lower levels which results in absurd damage at higher levels. I dont mind it so much from Mai, but the cannon phase is a joke.
Pretty sure there will be more maps as the season goes on. And hopefully one of them will have a new dungeon. It would be a massive wasted opportunity if they didnt add one.
Because you are using ruby orbs. And the videos you are watching are probably pre crit damage nerf. Its a little harder to get 7k dagger autos now.
Buffs you need to consider. Banner of discipline, banner of strength, might, vuln, fury and maybe frost spirit and spotter. Also in arah for example you would need undead + force sigils to get a 15% damage boost.
I would just ignore him if I were you. He just decided to talk down to you even though nothing you have said is wrong. You are free to voice your opinions and frustrations with pugs. I dont see the point in belittling someone for doing that. But then some people really do have no etiquette.
Its a good list. All classes have a few traits suffering from these problems. Necro seems to have more and they also lack any build changing traits like persisting flames, fresh air and phalanx. So yeah its pretty disappointing overall.
However I disagree with a few things. I feel signet mastery is a very good trait. But like you said its the signets which are the problem not the trait. Most other classes get two seperate traits to do what necro signet mastery does. So we are quite lucky in that regard.
Also Path of corruption i feel is probably one of our best grandmasters, but yes we dont have a great selection to compare with. Its pvp based but its a strong and a pretty build changing trait. Everything else i have a similar opinion as the OP with.
Fractals, especially high level ones, were supposed to be difficult.
I’d gladly see them buffing Mai even more along with all the other laughably easy bosses.
And make the reward appropriate.
Get better. Don’t whine.
Its the wrong sort of difficult. Once you know the fight its pretty safe as long as you dont make mistakes. Which is good risk. Although i never agree with artificial difficulty in the form of damage buffs. Mai Trin was also a decent balanced encounter. It didnt need to be buffed so excessively.
The real problem comes with the barrage phases. Theres no skill there. But its almost guaranteed death for eles. I had no trouble with barrages before the patch. Now i pretty much die everytime because if one stray aoe hits me its a 1 shot. I dont mind Mai herself being more punishing (its not harder its just more punishing). But the barrages are too much due to their random nature. Unless anet wants us to exploit/cheese them with the portal trick every single time.
Yeah condi builds definately arent as bad in really low dps pugs. But otherwise theres no reason to take them.
My wow experience is very limited but from what i remember when i played is that i got told i should go destruction magic (direct damage) on warlock instead of curses (DoTs) because it was better dps. Dont know if thats changed now, it was a long time ago. There wasnt really any fights where you had to back off as far as i can remember, although i didnt experience that much raiding so i guess i dont have much credibility in that regard. I still played DoT though because i was casual and the dps wasnt too far behind, i was able to keep up in the regular dungeons fine. Plus fights lasted longer in that game.
Weird, Affliction warlock (In multi target 2-3 max and solo substained damage) and demonology (Had the best aoe burst dps ) were king back in the day in pve (can’t say much about mist of pandaria, left it for gw2 pvp hoping they will add death match like wow). Destruction, not so much, it was in fact one of the worse spec in the game for a really really long time until blizzard finally revamped completly destruction in mist of pandaria.
Anyway, back on topic, I would like to thank you for contributing to necromancer community, your guide helped me a lot! People like you are what we needed! Also, the part where there is absolutly 0 mention of signet of vampirisme or w/e that crap is called in heal part was shady toward anet, and I love you more for thatXD
Dunno. Maybe they were wrong. Although when we did a raid the other warlocks were using destruction and beating my dps by quite a lot. Could of been simply a gear issue though. This was back during Cataclysm. I was a noob and i only played for one summer. Account got hacked when i decided to check it out again and i told blizz to lock the account because of their poor email security.
It was 70k with 4 players on kholer (looking back their may have been an fgs). Sorry about my fuzzy memory. And yeah in arah we got 140k on the bloodstone with fgs (wasnt even a high dps composition).
But my point still stands 13-15k dps is very easy to do in an organised group for ele and thief. The other classes will be capped at about 12k or less. But sustained dps like that is irrelevant because you can burst everything. Even when you cant fully burst, you can still semi burst at various intervals (some fractal bosses).
Speak for yourself. I’ve been throwing out stacks of dragonite ever since World Bosses became a set schedule every 15 minutes.
I have around 10k stashed and maybe 15k bloodstone, but both are pure trash still. Now in Dry Top even stacks of Emp Fragments are appearing.
Not everyone spends their time in open world. I dont feel boss events only giving 5 dragonite are worth the time. And with my limited schedule i spend all my time doing dungeons and fractals. Different players have shortages of different things. However dragonite being restricted to scheduled events is a huge problem for players like me as we cant just do them at any time. These chests have given extra of both so it gives everyone a decent extra way to get the mats they need which is a pretty big step forward.
Still stand by the fact that all mats should be obtainable in fractals though. Ascended gear is for fractals so you should be able to get dragonite there. :P
Dagger build will get higher dps in a semi decent group. It also means you dont have to worry about resource management on DS. You have more flexibily on the dagger build. But DS will do more damage in groups which dont share any buffs IF you can maintain DS. However if you want to use a DS build I wouldnt use the one on nemesis’s channel.
Yeah condi builds definately arent as bad in really low dps pugs. But otherwise theres no reason to take them.
My wow experience is very limited but from what i remember when i played is that i got told i should go destruction magic (direct damage) on warlock instead of curses (DoTs) because it was better dps. Dont know if thats changed now, it was a long time ago. There wasnt really any fights where you had to back off as far as i can remember, although i didnt experience that much raiding so i guess i dont have much credibility in that regard. I still played DoT though because i was casual and the dps wasnt too far behind, i was able to keep up in the regular dungeons fine. Plus fights lasted longer in that game.
Nah we observed over 140k dps when using fgs. We may have had one icebow going off for the 70k (dont remember exactly) and the ferocity scaling in low level dungeons would account for the over the top damage. The calculater shows dps in realtime so it constantly fluctuates. 70k was the peak on that no fgs kill as far as i can remember. I think 40k was about the lowest. 10k per player when downscaled to lvl 35 is pretty good. Although these numbers are meaningless as they depend on boss armour and that varies. Same goes for theoretical calculations. The standard is calculated from 2600 armour, many lvl 80 bosses have more armour than this.
15k dps per player is the high end without burst and requires maximising buffs but is very possible in organised groups. But the reality is fights never last very long and you can almost always use burst so those ridiculously high icebow and fgs bursts are pretty sustainable in terms of fight times. The only exception would be on some fractal bosses where its more about endurance than max dps. Although you can burst to speed up phases (fgs arch diviner for first 2 phases).
Keep 13-15k dps ? Maybe for 3-5 seconds, no more…wat 15k dps…
If a 4 man group can do 70k dps in a downscaled dungeon (observed with third party dps calculator). I think 15k per player in a lvl 80 dungeon is quite reasonable. :P
The stack limit is the least of condition builds problems in PvE. The main problem is the lack of synergy and build up time for damage.
I tried conditions recently just to see how it worked with my current group. It was horrible. Everything died before i could even epidemic trash mobs. And bosses barely lasted long enough to get a good amount of damage aswell.
Pretty much everyone who was a forum regular was saying it was intented. I actually sided with the casuals for that because it was obviously unintended. You did make it seem like you thought it was intended, at least from what i can remember. Meh its ancient history now. :P
Let me just clarify the reason why i didnt include condition or hybrid builds. Its simply because if i added them many people will use them in group content and take them into dungeons even if i say they arent suited for that content. People are lazy and dont like to switch builds for different stuff. I dont want to encourage this as it already happens enough. The guide is more focused on how to get the most out of the utilities and weapons. The utility aspects of them are independant of gear so dont just assume im saying always play the meta. You can ignore the build section and use your own and simply take the tips with utility usage etc. Most of the guide is written to be relevant to anyone even if you dont play one of the recommended builds.
That said. There is no place where hybrid is remotely good and worth posting about. Condition builds however do work for open world solo, dungeon solos and three headed wurm husks. If you use them for open world bosses or many dungeon groups you are going to 100% leech thanks to your capped damage.
Im fine with writing up a quick condition build section if thats what people really want. But im certain many people will just use it in places they shouldnt just because they feel necro should be a condi class or because they are too lazy to switch to a more appropriate build when the situation arises.
I hope that clears that up and makes you understand why I chose to exclude some things.
The barrage face is the thing that really needs toning down. Before some of the aoes would only tick for 2k+ so you could survive if you messed up slightly. Now if you so much as get hit by your little toe its an instant down (atleast on ele). Really kittening annoying and i never had much of a problem with barrage phases before, but now its 1 mistake and you’re dead. The timegated barrage phases were annoying enough even when they were easy. Its another reason to not play fractals. I dont really need relics anymore so im not sure why i bother when the rewards are so kitten.
And omg that Aerin fight was beyond frustrating. Pick up the crystal to jump to him, drop it and dps a bit. Oh look he moved! Pick up another crystal and jump to him again. Oh look he moved again! Pick up another crystal….
The fun in that fight was completely taken away for me by the tedious crystal picking and jumping.
What would you rather have? A punching bag that stands there while you exchange blows? I think we’ve had enough of that over the last decade or so of MMOs…
They could take a page out of their own book and design bosses as well as they did for fractals. Aerin would actually be fine if there wasnt a sky crystal to get up to him imo. Although still rather faceroll easy. Teleporting annoying bosses arent more challenging they are just more annoying.
Essentially what we can conclude is that energy sigils are not op. However putting them on classes/builds which already have an abundance of active damage avoidance is op. So its certainly not energy sigils which should be changed.
And omg that Aerin fight was beyond frustrating. Pick up the crystal to jump to him, drop it and dps a bit. Oh look he moved! Pick up another crystal and jump to him again. Oh look he moved again! Pick up another crystal….
Ahem, you can run up to him. You only need the red crystal to break his shield. The other jumps are possible without crystals or just use a ranged weapon.
Thats probably true. Only played it once. And i fell off a few times so I had to use the air crystal to get back up. Which was annoying.
And to pressing 5 to drop the crystals. Thats just irritating, seeing as every other bundle in the game is dropped by weapon swap. Would love to see more consistancy. But the thing is you shouldnt even have to drop and pick up things in the middle of a fight. Its annoying.
I guess im probably being overly negative. I liked the aspect crystals in cliffs when they first came around. I dont mind them for getting around quickly. And it seems they used them again because they were popular. I dont like that they are essential to get around in a proper permanent map. The problem is its too much and its boring now which is why it annoys me soo much. It should of remained exlclusive to cliffs. :/
Hm, I see about the hybrid problem.
Last question: if I’m not confident enough with zerker builds, should I jump straight in Scholar runes or I should stick with Ruby Orbs until I practiced?
Scholar runes are still very good even when you cant maintain the 6th bonus. Ruby orbs are completely terrible since the ferocity change. They are fine for super cheap alternatives i guess. But if you plan to eventually use scholar then you may aswell get them as soon as possible for the increased damage.
Another decent rune set you can use is ranger runes. The 6th bonus works on minions and mini pets, so its very easy to get the bonus permanently just by carrying a mini pet with you (just checked, it still works).
I would personally recommend going straight for berserker/assassins. You will learn the hard way but you will learn a lot faster and wont pick up any bad face tanking habits.
Ive suggested things before and often agree with many others suggestions ive seen people make. Id like to see vuln on crit as the 5pt minor in spite to replace siphoned power. Might on crit would also be nice from a more selfish perspective.
Id also like to see a ferocity version of empower allies and spotter. All boons on Deathshroud entrance should be group boons instead of selfish. New utilities such as orders which give group life steal, conditons on hit/crit or damage boosts. And more combo finishers on weapons.
And if and when we get a new weapon i hope its an aoe cleave weapon like the greatsword.
I like jumping puzzles. I dont like this map. Having aspects in a combat heavy map doesnt make sense (cant drop them as easily as you can drop regular bundles). I also dont like being forced to use excessive jumping just to get around. So i feel really sorry for the people who hate jumping puzzles no matter what. I can stomach it but it does irritate me that its forced on us. The jumping for coins is fun though.
And omg that Aerin fight was beyond frustrating. Pick up the crystal to jump to him, drop it and dps a bit. Oh look he moved! Pick up another crystal and jump to him again. Oh look he moved again! Pick up another crystal….
The fun in that fight was completely taken away for me by the tedious crystal picking and jumping.
Axe with axe training deals the same damage as staff. So i would stick with the axe for the life force regen. Basically staff has a weapon damage of 1100 and axe has 1000. When you have axe training it becomes 1000*1.1 = 1100. So its the same.
I didnt include hybrid builds because they dont work. To put it simply we dont have a hybrid weapon. Life blast, axe, dagger all benefit from pure damage. Scepter benefits from dedicated condi. When you go hybrid you lose too much effectiveness in both to justify the option of having two sources of damage. Basically if you are in rampager, your life blasts / dagger do terrible dps and your scepter condi damage is also quite bad. We would need a different type of rampager stat for hybrid builds to work on the necro.
The only classes that i feel work with rampager/hybrid is sword warrior and nade engi. Because they have decent direct and condition damage on the same weapons.
Go for the dive achievement. You will literally pull your hair out.
I dont mind jumping in maps. But when its soo much and its the only method of getting around its annoying as hell. Plus i dont like the crystals, they were fun in cliffs but not here. You cant press weapon swap to drop them which is how you drop bundles. Its really awkward and annoying especially when you need them to get to the guy you are fighting (hi aerin).
So thats why Izzy asked for new stat combinations a few months ago.
God, what have we done …
You can see that it was a popularity contest for the uninformed masses. Its a shame really. We could of got a new improved rampager stat if people had been a bit more intelligent.
Good guide for power builds, but no condition builds. I know they are generally not the best, but with a well formed dungeon group a single condition user can be a kittenet.
Oh well hopefully some day Anet will make condition users more viable.
I was actually going to include a condition build. But i decided against it because the only place it is viable is when soloing content. And i believe theres enough players who run condition builds despite it not being good for groups, I dont want to further encourage it. In a decent group enemies will die too fast for a condition build to reach close to their max damage. You would have to be in a really low dps group for a condition build to be decent.
I may change my mind and write up a section for a condition build in the future though.
To make it viable they would have to remove conditions from auto attacks and put them on burst skills. So the idea is you burst the conditions and then you are safe to do other things while you wait for condition burst to come back. At the moment optimal condition damage comes from spamming auto attacks mostly so if you stop you lose damage. The whole idea of DoT damage is to sustain damage even when you cant attack which doesnt happen with the current way skills are in gw2.
Even with the stack limit fixed. Conditions would still be bad for group content. Theres really no point in changing it since it wont solve anything overall.
And Necro would be quite viable if boon/condition control played a larger role in PvE. I don’t see an issue with the class’ design there, just with the AI design. As evident by the issue not being present in PvP.
No it wouldnt. Mesmer has better boon control. Even with boon heavy mobs the burst boon corrupt is not as good as sustained boon removal on mesmer. PvP is not about sustained dps and control which is why necros high cooldown boon corrupt is fine in PvP.
Necro still lacks active defence anyway. Were getting off topic.
Its not a wholly different issue. The devs dont want to fully split the gametypes. All classes except necro are actually pretty balanced in PvE. PvE is much easier to balance than PvP. And many class tweaks made for one gametype rarely have too much effect on the other because the gametypes are so different. If AI becomes more challenging then it will emphasize the need for more active defence on Necro anyway. So it is actually the same issue at heart.
Let me put something in perspective. Guardian and mesmer can solo lupi without energy sigils because they had perma vigor + blocks and invulns. Its slightly riskier now because its not perma vigor anymore. Necro requires double energy sigil to solo lupi and even then its tight (recommend endurance food + energy sigils for beginners). If it becomes just vigor and not even perma vigor then you essential kill the viability of a class on lupi + many other bosses.
I know this is a pve perspective but i very much doubt that if they were going to change energy sigils that they would split them so differently. So no, im not in favour of this idea because it will destroy necro’s active defence in pve. Its already bad enough. I dont want to be forced to go sentinels/clerics necros just to survive. Also if you make it vigor then you can be countered by weakness (actually quite common in pve). Energy sigils bypass weakness. So yes it effects other classes a lot. But it hurts necro too much. Compensation is needed first.
exactly…or you can go for 2 points in death magic for 10% extra might duration, not sure if thats already in the guide
The 100 precision and bleed on crit trait is much better than 10% duration. You can take any curse adept trait you like if you feel focused rituals is pointless for you. I only put it in as that because people who play the DS build are usually people who arent comfortable being completely melee. And reapers precision is really weak.
Just a note, since that looks like a hell of a read, is it any different than spoj’s guide that’s stickied up at the top of our forums? It looks like it might be more in depth?
Its a more in depth guide for necro in general. And covers more about general utility usage and non build specific stuff etc. My guide stickied on this forum is pretty much just focused on the dagger build.
I kind of need to update the stickied one anyway (nothing major has changed just needs some cleaning up and changes to optimum gear choices). Ill do that later this week i think.
It’s not ZERK’s fault for realizing necro brings nothing useful to the table. They do decent dps and have moderate survivability and can provide a bit of blind and weakness— but there are other classes that are better at all of that.
Ranger, on the other hand, has unique bonuses like spotter and frost spirit. That makes them good.
Take a look also at what’s happening to Mesmer. Time warp is seen as less important, and guardians have enough reflects and other types of support. The only unique thing a Mesmer can do is portal. So for the most part, that’s the only reason to bring a Mesmer. I main a mes, so it sucks to realize that, but that’s just the way it is. I play ele and warrior in most dungeons instead.
Necro actually has okay vuln and weakness stacking. The problem is that the engineer has better vuln stacking and weakness is usually viewed as non-important.
A buff to weakness might help necro out a bit, as would quite a few other changes, but that’s neither here nor there.
Weakness was already buffed and it can be obtained by consumables. So no it wont help necro out a bit.
