Guild Wars 2

In PvE certain dungeons are much harder with a condition damage focused build. (specifically, ascalonian catacombs exp paths 1 and 3 due to the burrows, CoE due to alpha cleansing conditions, the ice fractal with the elemental “object” boss, and the dredge fractal where your condition damage isn’t amplified by the debuff). These instances are harder either because your condition damage doesn’t hurt objects, or the enemies/bosses cleanse them constantly.

The other problem, like others have said, is that condition damage builds have little to no synergy with one another. On top of that, there aren’t any conditions that really support one another. However, there is a condition that supports direct damage (vulnerability) and direct damage stacks with more direct damage without any problems.

Condition damage takes a huge blow when you’re down leveled. At lower levels flat stats (power, vitality, and toughness) “scale down” the best while “supportive stats” (precision, healing power, condition damage, critical damage) tend to scale down for crap.

as of now, conditions are weak in PvE (just like how summons are weak in PvE) because they are currently balanced for PvP. Anet will eventually make PvE only balance passes to make them work in PvE more effectively.

RedSpectrum.1975:

Stormcrow.7513:

If it is sellable it will be 1000 gold. You will have to do teq 100000 times to get a .001 chance of getting it. Save your gold!

Gamblers Fallacy, you could do Tequatl 10000000000 times, doesnt mean your chance is getting any better, the drop rate is individual…..

yes and no, yeah your chances of getting it don’t increase, but it is very unlikely that you wouldn’t get it after a while.

IE: if you flip a coin your chance of not getting tails once in a row is 50%, twice in a row is 25%, three times in a row is 12.5%, ect. however your chance of getting either tails or heads individually is always 50%.

so yeah, his chances of getting it don’t improve, but it is statistically unlikely he won’t after that many tries.

If COE path 2 is the one with the earth spikes, you basically need to form a circle around alpha and hope he doesn’t decide to constantly spike you.

Jagged horrors are only really good if you’re specc’d into being a minion master and have the death nova trait, as that makes every horror spawned a free 1.25k damage AOE+poison field (excluding their auto attack damage and the bleeding they cause).

I agree with the others though, the jagged horror trait should be swapped with a higher tier trait. IMO it should be moved up to the grand master minor and either have it’s cooldown reduced and make it proc off of allies going down/dieing as well.

Power scales better at lower levels than any other stat. conditions and precision scale like crap into the lower levels, so you want flat power.

dagger+warhorn/axe+focus would be your fastest killing set for leveling.

If you’re running the +50% crit chance in DS, the assassin’s stats aren’t worth using.

Minions aren’t really worth supporting with AOE regeneration. You can basically maintain regeneration on them with mark of blood alone, ignoring any support the rest of your party gives you.

In PvP your blood fiend’s passive auto attack heal is more valuable to you than your minions getting AOE regeneration.

I want a weapon that summons jagged horrors or wraiths and mostly deals with direct damage. I made a suggestion thread for a great sword or sword+sword to do that, but can’t find the thread(s) anymore. I can at least toss out some ideas.

auto attack- cleave swing-> cleave swing that hits a bit harder-> cleave swing with innate life siphoning (stacks with traited siphoning)

second skill- blink to the enemy causing blind and weakness

third skill- dhuum’s grasp- raise your sword into the air, causing ice to explode below you, damaging and chilling your foes. (gives life force for each enemy hit).

fourth skill-stab your sword into the ground, causing a jagged horror to explode out of the ground at the targeted location. Inflicts cripple on enemies in the AOE.

fifth skill- blood of the master- apply heavy bleeding to yourself, heal allies around you (including yourself) and give them regeneration while damaging your enemies.

alternatively-
replace skill 4 with:
spirit of regret- summon a wraith that generates life force each time it damages a foe. (dies after x amount of time alive).
note that if skill 4 is replaced with the wraith summon, dhuum’s grasp doesn’t generate life force.

a buff that large to tainted shackles would give unneeded power to condition specs.

Honestly, Minions don’t need any big buffs, just small ones to innate traits.

for example:
reanimator- now procs off of minion deaths, cooldown reduced to 20 seconds.
protection of the horde- now combined into flesh of the master.
new master minor trait- gift of the dead- when a minion dies, it heals allies around them. (a very small amount, like 150-300 HP at level 80).

Since the scepter is the weapon you’ll use 85% of the time as a condition mancer, I’d definitely make that ascended item first.

If you’re running wells you should be using dagger+warhorn/staff, with either power/precision/critical damage, power/precision/toughness, or power/toughness/vitality (basically power builds). Condition damage is worthless on a well necromancer as none of your utilities deal condition damage.

You should try to keep your armor within 5 levels of your character’s level. In overworld PvE it isn’t that important, but it certainly makes the process a lot quicker.

a very small adjustment, not very important to me as I don’t PvP with my necro all that much, and the AOE bleed damage isn’t all that important since mobs die so quickly anyways.

I’m hoping the next patch is a balance patch, and they make death nova’s direct damage proc when you kill a minion via putrid explosion/taste of death/necrotic transversal. I’ve been told that it was made otherwise for “balance reasons” but I don’t think bone minions would be too strong that way.

What he said. Digital deluxe gives it to you automatically. It’s a good temp elite, and useful when you don’t like your other elites.

Bhawb.7408:

And Fetid Consumption is God mode against many sustained damage builds. 4 Rune of vampirism + 2 melandru, fetid consumption, dagger off-hand, full minion bar (including Blood Fiend), and you’re looking at massive condi removal, and massive HP regen.

sorry, I meant to say taste of death. However fetid consumption is Amazing in itself.

Bhawb.7408:

Haters be hatin up in this thread.

Minions are fine for dungeons, so long as you bring them into the right dungeon. Some dungeons have really anti-minion mechanics, some are just fine. Its all down to the dungeon itself. If your minions are always dying and you’re not in one of the supercrazymassAoE dungeons you’re not a good MM.

This is certainly true for CoE, There is simply no place for minions against any of the bosses there. Also certain fractals (like the Dredge fractal final boss) have AOEs that increase in number based on number of allies.

Bhawb.7408:

striker.3704:

In all honesty, the only things holding minions back are:
1. Death nova is bugged in that, when a minion is killed by an active skill (putrid explosion, fetid consumption), it doesn’t trigger the direct damage burst.
2. Minion AI is still a little wonky (bone minions hesitate for a moment) but behaves a lot better than how they did on release.
3. Reanimator IMO should also proc off of minions dieing.

One thing’s for sure, Minions can’t be controlled directly and I don’t think they ever should. That’s the ranger’s class mechanic.

1. Not a bug, its 100% intended.
3. I just think they need to completely rework Reanimator’s mechanics. Summoning Jagged Horrors is cool, but one every 30s on death just isn’t good in many situations.

It’s intended? If you could, can you give me a source on that? I think it’s odd they would do that. . .

Plexxing.2978:

I do not recommend putting 30 into blood line to get the minions to take your conditions. I’ve found that this causes them to die very fast. As for MM being a face roll build, I am beaten often by good players. I faced a ranger the other day in wvw who I couldn’t beat. He appeared to be a signet build who could tank and put out lots of conditions. He would lock me in place with chill/cripple/bind and throw conditions and aoe while his pet worked on me. He ignored my minions so I was getting as full dps on him as you can expect to get on a ranger. I reset my bar to have consume conditions and well of power to remove the ball and chains but, once they were on cd, I was once again eating his full dps and taking on a lot of conditions. I run a 20/0/30/20/0 build with 30% minion dmg. Can anyone tell me what I could’ve done to beat him?

If you’re facing a DPS player you always want to lock them down with your minions. And as a MM you have a good combination of skills you can use.

If you’re running axe+focus try to chill+cripple them right off the bat. This limits their mobility by quite a bit. You should also try to make them waste a dodge or two by casting a not-so-important long cast animation (axe 2 or 3).

Once they’ve wasted their dodges enter death shroud, fear them, exit immediately, and then have your flesh golem barrel over them with his charge. With the enemy knocked down you then have your bone minion immobilize him, and then have your shadow fiend blink onto them. Since the immobilize and haunt are instant cast, you should use focus 4+axe 2 on your target during this time for extra damage.

By this time, after holding them down for so long, your bone minions should be on top of the player to pop, which leads to free poison+weakness+6k damage total. The fight should now be in your favor due to the pounding you gave him, and it simply becomes a matter of maintaining cripple+chill to kill him. (thankfully the flesh golem and bone fiend apply cripple passively).

MM is very front loaded in PvP. You need to play very aggressively with it and use your survivability as a weapon. Please note that this combination is specifically talking about a signets ranger, and the skill order and activation priority depends entirely on what you’re fighting. (for example, you need to make an enemy waste a stun break or invulnerability before you should use your flesh golem’s charge due to the long cast animation.)

I disagree with the above statements. Minions die pretty quickly and don’t “tank” for you. Most boss attacks are indiscriminate when it comes to targets. The only time when a minion can noticeably tank for you as far as I’ve seen in my 800 MM necro hours, is the lupicus fight as he’ll sometimes target minions with his abilities (which is great because it takes a lot of pressure off your party).

With that in mind I find tanky gear is best paired up with minions. My personal preference is soldiers, but if you want to still deal extra damage I guess knights is good too. You can run zerker gear, but If you’re going to use zerker gear you might as well run a death shroud build.

You should try to keep in mind that full zerker parties only work for a party of very good players. Any pug group of full zerker (outside of CoF) will get stomped on and wiped pretty easily. Having that survivability is really useful for these situations.

spoj.9672:

Also other classes will be applying low damage short duration bleeds through traits which will constantly prevent the necro from apply 25 stacks of decent damaging bleeds.

Actually, it’s been proven time and again that condition stacks with higher damage take priority over lower damage condition stacks. (either way someone losses out on DPS though)

Pain inverter can’t be used in PvP, so that theory is out the door.

The only Mitigation we have to an enemies burst is either:
1. use spectral armor with DS active
2.drop a well of shadows (if they’re in melee range)
3. fear them (entering death shroud and doom are both instant cast)

You have to look at conditions in the values they give in damage, and then the amount of time they run. Once that elapsed time has run and you started your “damage rotation” over, then you’ve achieve your maximum DPS.

Conditions are actually fairly solid DPS. Sure they don’t seem like they deal much, but look at it this way:
if you auto attack with the scepter for example and deal, oh lets say 700 direct damage and 1.5k bleeding, that’s 2.2k damage 2/3 attacks. That’s more than most necromancer’s will get in direct damage outside of death shroud. Not to mention with scepter+dagger/staff you get more AOE damage than any other necromancer build.

Also, I’m tired of everyone comparing people to zerker warriors. Warriors were designed to be the highest possible DPS, especially with zerker gear.

definitely would like to see them combine a lot of the turret traits (turret self repair, turret increased health) and add some new ones (over drive engine: when a turret is over charged, It’s rate of fire is increased by a further 50%).

Kyratic.7038:

Maybe its worth noting that with elixer x the transformations leave you without heals. ie Its suicide if your low.

That isn’t engineer specific though, any class with a transformation skill runs into that. (necros, eles, warriors, guardian tomes, ect)

minions are in a “strong” spot in many ways.
1. The flesh golem (when traited) has a higher health than is possible by any player in the game.
2. Bone minions have extremely high self synergy (combo finish with themselves [death nova], large AOE, unblockable, ect)
3. The shadow fiend has the third fastest life force generation out of our utilities.
4.Blood fiend is quite possibly one of the best heals in the game due to passively healing more than 4.5k every 20 seconds and being available for a burst heal.
5. Minions now get agony resistance
6.When siphoned by lupicus, even if all your minions get siphoned at once, lupicus recovers less health than if he siphons one player.
7. Jagged horrors are under appreciated. A free bleed on each hit, and walking death nova bombs? yes please!

In all honesty, the only things holding minions back are:
1. Death nova is bugged in that, when a minion is killed by an active skill (putrid explosion, fetid consumption), it doesn’t trigger the direct damage burst.
2. Minion AI is still a little wonky (bone minions hesitate for a moment) but behaves a lot better than how they did on release.
3. Reanimator IMO should also proc off of minions dieing.

One thing’s for sure, Minions can’t be controlled directly and I don’t think they ever should. That’s the ranger’s class mechanic.

As of right now all necro builds are in some form viable, however some are better than others.

in order I’d say it goes:
conditions build>direct damage (death shroud) build>minion master> wells support*

*please note that this is the GENERAL over view of those build types. I.E. most condition builds are better than most of the other types of necromancer builds. Outliers do exist, but are far and in-between since most of the few variations are hardly that different.

Death nova doesn’t deal it’s bonus 1.2k~ damage when the minion is killed by a skill activation (such as putrid explosion, fetid consumption, necrotic transversal) despite the trait description specifying it works with said skills. However, the poison field is functioning as it should.

I really want the clock work tonic, but all I see people do on maguuma is farm the champions. we’ve failed every event past day 1 because of this.

I need 7 more achievements, but I can’t get access to the dungeon because I need 5 more victories in 5 different areas to get access to the dungeon.

I also can’t rely on dailies to get it for that same reason, I would need 7 victories over 7 days to get access. (unless I get lucky and the next 7 are “kill X enemies of this type during the event”)

A weapon that summons jagged horrors would be cool. I think the Axe is supposed to be our “MM synergy” weapon, but we’ll see what Anet decides to do.

One things for sure, if we do get a weapon that summons minions, it would need to be designed in a way that another spec would want to use it.

It’s not easy since there isn’t anything we can use to block her 1shot AOEs, but she can certainly be beaten by a necro. I did it on my necro.

Probably never on the first point, that’s why death nova now deals 1.5k damage to enemies around the minion when they die.

On the second point, who knows.

HiSaZuL.2843:

striker.3704:

MM is NOT a DPS build. PVT is strictly the best for a MM build IMO. Minions do not scale off of any of your stats at all, so if you build for damage your stats are wasted, where as if your utilities did scale with your damage stats (like well of suffering) then it would be a different story.

With this in mind, you want to build survivability. Since healing power is completely wasted on a minion master (in your case the only thing scaling off of healing power and mattering would be dagger 2) PVT gear gives you the most possible with 2 of the 3 survivability stats on it.

If you wanna build a DPS setup you shouldn’t spec minions at all. Not to say minions don’t deal quite a lot of damage on their own, but there simply isn’t any reason to spec into stats that your utilities don’t benefit from.

That is not correct.
Example…
I run ocasinally fractals 26/28 just for the hell of it. I would not go there with soldiers gear simply because its equivalent to dragging things out when you do not need to do so. In dungeons you either dodge or you die. Pvt gear won’t save you. In pvp its a different story for spvp especially but for pve just no.
Why do you need survivability in pve? There are no thiefs that can backstab you for 15k in your pvt gear.
And like I said an actual MM not some hybrid generates some of the highest personal healing around. As long as your minions are alive you need to take either massive damage or loose minions.
Yes I do mean something like with my MM I could go to subject 7 with frailty/exastion/fire/hamstrung and come out with 100% hp while face tanking everything and never bothering with adds.

Also on top of not being that good for MM in general outside spvp. Its best for DS builds that can circumvent lack of crit chance. Tank builds… of any kind(tho as far as I’m concerned necro tanking is a sad joke).

Fractals are a special exception since it’s % based damage, but the necromancer has no access to damage mitigation outside of DS which scales off of health. There are a number of fights in PvE where, yes, you do need survivability like lupicus (constantly pegging you with his 6k auto attack nuke. Your dodge can’t regenerate fast enough) or alpha in COE path 1 (instant earth spike AOE). Your party isn’t always going to be the 3 warriors and a mesmer to burn them before they can blink or 4 guardians spamming aoe blocks, so realistically you should be able to keep yourself up.

Another point is that you should never be face tanking over your minions. They’re disposable pieces of meat who not only won’t bother to walk out of AOEs, but they also deal 1.5k damage when they die and leave a poison AOE that’s perfect for spreading weakness.

In WvWvW getting greater marks and running ground targetable wells would probably be more useful than minions.

Condition necromancer is a good build for ANY ground thanks to epidemic. The only thing you would need to “worry” about in fractals is dodging the skills that apply agony, which has nothing to do with the build anyway as NONE of the necromancer builds have a way to completely negate it.

As for your second question, that’s something you should just find out on your own. The fear necromancer is just a variant of a condition build, to the extent of using the same type of armor, so just try it yourself and see what happens.

MM is NOT a DPS build. PVT is strictly the best for a MM build IMO. Minions do not scale off of any of your stats at all, so if you build for damage your stats are wasted, where as if your utilities did scale with your damage stats (like well of suffering) then it would be a different story.

With this in mind, you want to build survivability. Since healing power is completely wasted on a minion master (in your case the only thing scaling off of healing power and mattering would be dagger 2) PVT gear gives you the most possible with 2 of the 3 survivability stats on it.

If you wanna build a DPS setup you shouldn’t spec minions at all. Not to say minions don’t deal quite a lot of damage on their own, but there simply isn’t any reason to spec into stats that your utilities don’t benefit from.

first set, 10/10. A very clean look that still has an apparent necromancer vibe to it.
second set, 5/10. I personally detest COF armor on necromancers, but the leggings, gloves, and warhorn seem to fit well enough.

HitmanX.6489:

Now you guys are being completely inconsiderate to tPvP.. you know.. the players who actually have “skill” with their classes. From a high end pvp standpoint & many other top tier players will agree that necro’s in their current state are now over the top. Their insane condi pressure & general condi spam is detrimental to team fights especially when used in conjunction with epidemic. Now a deathshroud / spectral armor combo is absolutely ridiculous. See for yourself :

http://www.twitch.tv/helsethgw2/b/434824077

Inconsiderate to TPvP? Why would an ele continue to spam all of their cooldown spike onto a necro obviously in his most defensive state?

By you “logic” warriors, eles, thiefs, basically every class is EVEN MORE over powered because they can go invulnerable and take no damage and if you spam all your cooldowns on their invulnerable state, you have done nothing.

un-freaking-believable.

ronpierce.2760:

This is the best I can offer:
5 point changed to “Spreading Corruption: Increases the area effect of weapon abilities.” (So greater marks goes away, unblockable goes to 20% staff cd reduction. Dagger 5 and Scepter ground target aoes get a little bonus to radius, but not as much as staff marks).

15 pt. “Deadly Strength” keep it the same, but lower it since it’d be more useful to most builds.

25 pt. “Reanimator: Increases Toughness by 25 per active minion. When a minion dies, summon a Jagged Horror in its place.” Doesn’t summon Jagged Horrors for dead Jagged Horrors (This works here since both Grand Masters are minion based, it at least makes a little more sense).

BAM that tree looks a lot kitten cooler.

This guy knows what’s up. However if the staff cooldown reduction also gets the unblockable effect I think it might be best if moved up to being a master trait, as that would be WAY too good of an adept trait.

It isn’t a bug because other classes and other necro builds can do a LOT more damage than 4k in a single hit, especially crit based builds. The bone minions are one of the largest sources of damage for a minion master, so I can’t see why they would remove that synergy.

Test it in the mists and on any yellow enemy.Do the skill with the trait on, use the skill 5-6 times (gives you an average) then find the same enemy at the same level, and use the skill 5-6 times on them without it.

Bhawb.7408:

They are more viable, it just doesn’t work with triggered sacrifices. Realistically, I think it would have been OP, Putrid Explosion already can hit from 2.5k-3k, this hits for 1k-1.5k. Putrid Explosion could hit for 3.5k-4.5k each. I think we can agree a 9k damage explosion, on a 16 second CD, regardless of your stats.

I would like to see it work with the other two sacrifices though.

Also, Bone and Shadow Fiend both give 10% LF on death too, pretty nice.

No it wouldn’t be OP because MM is pretty kittenty. As of right now Bone minions are only a SLIGHT step up from jagged horrors with their 2.2-2.3k damage as opposed to 1.1-1.4k from jagged horrors that die.

Death nova direct damage (added this patch) does not get applied when a minion is killed by either putrid explosion, fetid consumption, or necrotic transversal. Only when they die from other means.

Afya.5842:

Dhuumfire……….

idc, that name sounds so dumb. I don’t think a god’s name would appear on a class’ skill, because not all race in gw2 believe in the gods. Especially that’s a fallen god.

All of the gods actually exist in the game. All the races know the human gods exist, however, they don’t all acknowledge them as being the masters of the world. (hell, you interact with [spoiler] a reaper of grenth in story mode[/spoiler]

For example: The charr mention how melandru morphed the land before them. That doesn’t mean they worship her though.

On top of all of this, there’s a sword named after dhuum.

Bright.9160:

striker.3704:

Me and my guildies did this dungeon path earlier today, we tried:
1. having 2-3 guardians using wall of reflection and sanctuary (spiders ignored both)
2. hitting the boss from a range (aggroed the entire room as soon as we made contact with the boss)
3.Killing all the spiders (killed about 6 entire rooms full before deciding that they simply spawned endlessly)

None of which worked. The only way we could complete it is by having everyone circle strafe the boss while using some form of maintainable speed boost. If you do this, even if it’s only a 15% boost, you can out run the spiders’ attacks and focus on the boss.

Whoru? 2-3 guardians and you couldn’t pull this off?

• Stand in melee range
• Chain wall of reflection
• Stand inside the wall
• Profit

Yeah we did stand inside it, the projectiles still hit us.

Me and my guildies did this dungeon path earlier today, we tried:
1. having 2-3 guardians using wall of reflection and sanctuary (spiders ignored both)
2. hitting the boss from a range (aggroed the entire room as soon as we made contact with the boss)
3.Killing all the spiders (killed about 6 entire rooms full before deciding that they simply spawned endlessly)

None of which worked. The only way we could complete it is by having everyone circle strafe the boss while using some form of maintainable speed boost. If you do this, even if it’s only a 15% boost, you can out run the spiders’ attacks and focus on the boss.

I completely disagree. The necro doesn’t need raw mobility, he just needs more ways to “lock horns”.

I like the idea of unique skills based on your weapon, though of course it will be based on your mainhand.
axe: summon a minion (either orrian wraith or shadow fiend) that applies vulnerability on hit as well as the new condition.
scepter: a black cloud envelopes the enemy applying poison, bleeding, and the new condition.
staff: create a mark that applies the new condition and deals direct damage.
dagger: an inverted life transfer which expends life force to deal a lot of channeled damage as well as the new condition.

I think the new condition should be a cover condition that punishes the enemy for removing it. This game is severely lacking in any sort of cover condition outside of bleeding.

I’m hoping for minion aggro to be fixed so they actually attack when you do rather than when they decide to.

this is by far and away the best content Anet has added yet. it’s fun, varied, and follows all of the best video game creation rules. I look forward to the rest of the levels!

I honestly think pointing out that you need to bring 2 specific utilities in tournament mode in itself shows how limited the class is and how much needs to be addressed. This is compounded by the fact that the necromancer is defined by the utilities he brings more-so than any class. Don’t even get me started on how the compounds the isue with minions as Anet said (some time in the beta weekends) that they had to design minions to suck without traits due to how powerful they were otherwise.

In GW1 tPvP I saw all sorts of different necromancer builds from blood necromancers, to melee support necromancers, to SS and beyond. To say that the class is “fine” when you need to bring this specific build is laughable at best to me.