Guild Wars 2

Actually, I’d rather go 30 in Soul Reaping instead of Curses. Lich Form boosts precision so your crit chance is going to be high enough anyway, so you’re better off going for crit damage instead.

As an added bonus, if you take Deahtly Perception your DS suddenly becomes amazing as well and our joke build suddenly became viable :P

Oh, and take wells. Spam them, enter Lich form and watch everything foolish enough to stand in them get absolutely destroyed. They benefit from your increased stats, so they hit ridiculously hard.

Basically, if you spam your wells on a group of enemies and then enter Lich Form, no-one is going to walk out in one piece, and if someone does crawl out of your wells, you can always finish them off with Deathly Claws. (Talking about finishing things, take Chill of Death. Hits as hard as Deathly Claws in Lich Form)

Since long range on wells makes Lich Bombing with them easier, I’d go for 30/10/0/0/30 if you want to maximize Lich Form damage, though I personally run 20/10/10/0/30 for Greater Marks.

What can I say, I like AoE, and it’s not like I need the extra 20% anyway with the amount of damage I do even without Lich Form

tom.7468:

I like it the way it is i actually think it would be a little bit OP if you got healed when you entered DS. and remember its not a guardian its a necro their not meant to be able to heal like a guardian.

Well, we are supposed to be an attrition profession, which we aren’t really at the moment.

Still, I don’t think making DS heal us is the right way to go – wouldn’t it be easier to just remove the “you can’t be healed while in DS” part anyway? Even if DS itself didn’t heal us, it would be nice if it didn’t block other sources of healing like regeneration. That, or maybe they could make the life steals from Blood Magic be like.. actually noticeable? All it would take is a slight buff to the amount they steal and suddenly life steal builds would be perfectly fine.

How much do those things heal these days anyway, like 30 health/attack? That’s around 1/1000 of our health, which isn’t exactly helpful when an average attack deals something like 2-3k damage and a good burst can be close to 20k. It needs to be several times what it currently is to make any difference.

Sounds good, but then again I’m not sure making us even more reliant on life force is a good idea.

I’d rather see us given some mobility or our life siphons buffed instead – those things could just as well be non existent as it stands, and we’re already in trouble when caught with no life force, in the beginning of a PvP match for instance.

Necromancers have hardly any stability and poor sustain combined with the worst mobility in the game and you’re complaining about a 10 second spike? Seriously, you should never get caught by that combo in the first place. The moment you see the wall, dodge away and problem solved.

Scaling could put minion builds into an even worse shape, so I’d go with no. I like the fact you can go as tanky as you like without losing any minion damage, and I’d hate to see that change.

Lily.1935:

Hexer’s vigor? I don’t see what that skill has to do with anything. It was pretty terrible. Unless you are saying there is fire in the art. If that’s the case, I don’t see any fire.

I’m talking about the skill animation – it’s been a while since I last saw it, but unless I remember wrong it basically looks like bright green flames cover the necromancer. I tried looking for a quick clip but couldn’t find any so I’ll have to check it in game, but it’s one of the flashier necro animations in gw1.

EDIT: It doesn’t let me log in – apparently it can’t find my account (Perhaps because I haven’t logged in for ages..? Either that, or there’s a typo somewhere), so I can’t get a screenshot for you, but anyway, it had sorta fiery look to it.

With all this “It’s viable! No it isn’t! Yes it is!” talk going on, wouldn’t it be easier to just post some gameplay?

Lily, aren’t you forgetting the whole evil fire thingy? Like.. green flames? Or flames from some fiery abys? Burning demons?

It’s not what we’re used to when it comes to necromancers, but with Dhuumfire added we already have fire, so why not? Besides, ever looked at the skill “Hexer’s Vigor” from gw1?

I admit, there are plenty of other interesting things to choose from, but I like the sound of “melee cleave weapon” and “mainhand torch” in the same sentence.. Use your imagination and tell me that doesn’t have potential!

EDIT: Ninja’d with the whole “fire works too!” argument

You’re not supposed to just let them choose to walk out of those wells, you immobilize them first, and possibly fear as well if you’re feeling particularly mean.

Deathly perception is a godly trait and DS is now so strong it’s not even funny. With the new and improved Life Blast you can now spam max damage Life Blasts with 100% crit chance. Doom fear lasts 1.5 seconds, which is enough to convince me to grab the + fear duration trait. Not to mention the silly amount of AoE you now have with the increased crit chance for Life Transfer and the addition of Deathly Shackles.

Sustain was also buffed with the increased Life Force generation (just try not to facetank with it unless you absolutely have to), though I’m not sure about PVT gear. I should probably test it, but my gut instinct says you want more damage – you’ll survive longer than before, but you’ll still go down eventually, which means you want to be able to kill before you’re killed. Maybe mix it with Knight’s or something? Depends on what you’re trying to do, of course.

TL;DR version: I don’t know about you, but I’m a powermancer and I was buffed. And nope, we’re not dead.

pierwola.9602:

With 1/3 sec CD you will be able to gain Fury,Retaliation,Stability or cleans condi without losing weakening shroud.

Fine, you have a point there, though I don’t really find it that important.

It’s obvious, increase marks size to 240

That sound better, though you might probably want to mention that in those notes of yours. As sad as it sound, the thread below does have a point so we better not assume anything too obvious
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/necromancer/Greater-marks-1/first#post2299666

pierwola.9602:

I don’t see the point to put mark(CD) when im out of combat

Then avoid dodging when you don’t have to? You’ll keep your cooldowns and become a better player in the process by learning not to waste your dodges – it’s a bad habit I’m trying to learn out of. Playing a thief spoiled me..

There are more important things to be fixed (Namely Reanimator and Protection of the Horde; if those two stopped working the only reason anyone would notice is the lack of dying screams from the Jagged Horrors)

pierwola.9602:

We losing LF because of dmg, so in most of the case you won’t even feel the bonus

Still, you are suggesting a huge buff right after DS received a huge buff. I’d rather wait and see than buff it again and risk getting it nerfed again.

Back in closed beta before everyone got their hands on the game Death Shroud was ridiculously powerful, but it was nerfed to the ground and the whole profession went with it. This is the first time we’ve really been buffed since, so let’s hope Anet doesn’t make the same mistake by buffing us too quickly.

EDIT:

after last patch (Near to Death nerf) Shrouded removal is less effective

Let’s be honest, hardly anyone used Near to Death before. Now that it’s a master trait on the other hand it might see a lot more use, so I’d consider that a buff even if the trait’s actual effects were slightly reduced.

As for Shrouded Removal, it could use a buff to be honest. Maybe just increasing the amount of conditions removed would be enough though, as I’d rather not encourage sitting in DS too long. Being able to do so brought our downfall last time, and it’s bad play anyway. Let’s not make traits that reward wasting Life Force

Well, I’m always happy to cut a few guardians open, and I’d love to demonstrate what my newly found insane aoe abilities can do, so count me in. I’ve also managed to solve most of my technical difficulties when it comes to video editing, so that should no longer be a problem either.

It’s been over two weeks since I figured out how to cheat my editor into doing what I want but I still feel all warm and fuzzy inside when I think about it

Talking about Dhuumfire, I decided to give a hybrid builds a try while testing the new traits and ended up taking both Dhuumfire and Deathly Perception, and it turns out DS1 can still hit rather hard while making it easier to trigger Dhuumfire on a build with low crit chance.

Basically, I took a Carion build with about 20% crit chance into hot joins and it worked surprisingly well. Of course, a build working in Hot joins doesn’t really mean much, but something like that might be worth a closer look.

I know this is sorta off topic, but is shroud stomping considered an exploit?

I mean, you obviously aren’t supposed to be able to do that since you can’t start stomping while in DS and entering DS interrupts a stomp. I have no idea why that is the case considering every form of invulnerability I can think of allows stomping and you’re not invulnerable while in DS, but still, you’re not supposed to be able to shroud stomp, so doesn’t that make it sort of an exploit to do so?

Why add cast time on weakening shroud? It’s not especially OP anyway, so I don’t see the point really.

With Staff Mastery do you mean to do any changes to Greater Marks? If that trait stays the same, nothing changes and every build that uses staff will still take it. On the other hand, if you remove the unblockable from Greater marks and just move it to Staff Mastery you’ll basically give staff a huge nerf. The problem with Greater Marks is the fact it’s a must have as it is, and if you nerf it you end up nerfing nearly every build out there.

Instant minion summons sounds like trouble to me considering they currently have such huge cast times. Sure, it’s not like they’ll start attacking right away anyway, but I’d still prefer just reducing the cast times rather than removing them.

Mark of Evasion: Why? I don’t see the point, unless you want to avoid taking aggro.

50% decreased life force consumption is too much. I mean, Vital Persistence is 25% and that’s a major. Maybe 25% could be made a Grand Master minor trait or something, but 50% for 5 points is definitely OP.

Finally, leave my new best friend Deahtly Perception alone. Seriously, don’t touch it!

No, the forums need more of these threads. Just spam away!

I did some hot joins today, and I definitely was OP. Then again, I’ve always been :P

Seriously speaking, a thief whining about 1v1 balance in WvW? WvW was never supposed to be balanced, the game isn’t balanced around 1v1 and thieves are beasts in WvW. If he couldn’t kill you, it’s because you were the better player.

Anyway, I must say I like the changes as I now have way more AoE (+50% crit chance in DS and a new aoe skill as well? Yes please – I even traited life blast for piercing. The beautiful numbers.. ) and my wells recharge faster, but in the end the fact remains we still have long cooldowns and cast times and hardly any mobility. We’re nothing gamebreaking.

clyde broken.3107:

van some one tell me all the changes in the new patch

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/info/news/Game-Update-Notes-June-25th-2013/first#post2280967

You’re welcome

CNwhitenight.3620:

Hello, I saw one of your post on forum saying you have a nec school. I am a new player and have a 15 nec right now. Could you please give me some advise on NEC? I dont know what kind of build I really want to go, I dont like PvP much, I would prefer to be wanted in PVE and possible WvW.

Thank you very much

Best Wishes

You might want to send him a message in case he doesn’t notice your post, but in the meanwhile, are you EU or NA player?

I volunteered a while ago to help AlTroll in his quest to educate our fellow masters of Death, Decay and DOOM, and while I’m technically speaking listed as a NA student (Not sure what happened there..), I’m actually an EU necromancer and happy to share my wisdom with lesser users of the dark arts.

Also, don’t worry too much about regions since I can always give advice or make a video tutorial or something if need be, it’s just easier if I can demonstrate things ingame, and that only works for EU players. It’s a bit silly, but nothing we can’t deal with, so feel free to message me if you want to know something and I’ll see what I can do.

I admit, I only read the last couple of posts, so I apologize if some of this has been discussed already, but I’m not going to let not knowing what I’m talking about stop me

Toughness not only increases the amount of hits you can take before you die, but also makes your heals stronger in that the health they return also benefits from toughness, which essentially makes it more useful the longer the fight drags on while vitality only gives you an advantage in the beginning. Then again, toughness does nothing to protect you from conditions, which makes it a less attractive choice if condition removal is a problem. Still, necromancers have plenty of conditions removal, so if this was all there is to it I’d probably go for toughness. Unfortunately it’s necromancers we are talking about, which means we also have DS to worry about.

Vitality also increases your life force pool and since life force gain is percentage based it basically increases the amount of life force gained. On the other hand toughness doesn’t magically vanish when you enter DS, so it too must be taken into account. I suppose we could calculate DSEHP of some sort, but then there’s also the fact Life Force keeps degenerating automatically while in DS AND the fact few people use LF as effectively as it could be. Besides, eating hits using DS should only be used in an emergency to begin with.

Long story short, this gets rather complicated, so I’d really just go with whichever is easier to come by. If you’re going for a non glass cannon hybrid build, Carion is the way to go, while Rabid works better when you want pure condition damage and on-crit effects.

Metamega.9025:

So I’m pretty squishy, I gotta stay in the back usually in zerg vs zerg fights, which leaves me with the bow or p/p. I know i got a pretty good blast finisher but I mean, its not game changing. I can take down stragglers too but I mean, don’t take long for a 5 man team to chase a straggler down either. Nothing special to the thief or the stealth. WvW is all about capturing keeps, castles, towers, and camps. Thieves have nothing special about doing that, maybe soloing camps, any class can do that though, they have leashes on them.

So this leaves me with roaming wvw thieves. Yah, I’m pretty solid here, “BUT IT DOES ABSOLUTELY NOTHING BENEFICIAL TO MY SERVER AND IT DOES NOTHING TO MY OPPONENT BUT MAKE HIM RESPAWN”.

Actually, based on my experience the only time you really should be dying in a zerg v zerg is when the enemy has too many arrowcarts or multiple players with aoe and cc going after you.

All the aoe is aimed at your zerg, so the trick is to get away from your allies. So long as you have a dagger offhand you can always steal while near your enemies, which combined with clever positioning makes you really difficult to kill. Take sword if you want cleave and dagger if you want to spike down single targets and enjoy!

Where a thief really shines, however, is taking down enemy siege. For instance, there was a time when our server had lost SM and our mighty zerg decided to take it back. We blasted a few holes in the walls and rushed in, but the enemy pushed us back with arrow carts. The siege dragged on, so I sneaked in and took down every single arrow cart on the walls, by myself. After that our zerg managed to push through and I proceeded to repeat the process within the inner walls, but the WvW match ended before we could push through.

If one thief that knows what he’s doing can turn the tide of an entire siege, just imagine what a small group of them could do. Taking down siege took a while solo since once the enemy realized what I was doing they make my life difficult, but two or three thieves could clear out siege rather quickly.

Frosty and Frosty Law Firm.4981:

…and kill them again with the help of a necromancer.

You called?

The term “Inquest” is little more than a glorified label for a bunch of dimwits incapable of original aerial travel solutions and basic energy manipulation. Instead they use stolen designs, or as in the case of those new lightning devices of theirs, shockingly bad ones.

Then again, the council isn’t any better. Everyone knows bookahs are there solely for the purpose of doing our heavy lifting, so if equipping one with antri gravity rays suits me that’s exactly what I’m going to do. Building golems and summoning minions takes time, sending a bookah does not. As an added bonus, there is no risk of losing valuable components.

It is our intellect that makes us superior, not some fancy toys inquest is tossing out for the lesser races. Still, minions do need feeding, so maybe I’ll pay our red-wearing friends a visit after all.

I wish I could’ve joined you, but I was in Scotland at the time. Still, I found a sheep skull so I suppose it was worth it

So, what did I miss?

Not uploaded yet, but the first of our second MM games (so 1/5 of them) will be up here: http://youtu.be/sv3LfvVMa_8
I was planning to do the other four as well, but ran out of time. Enjoy!

EDIT: Upload done, and I’m going now. Cya!

Well, it didn’t go as well as it could have, partially because we were missing some of our best players and partially because it was definitely too late for me (I forgot to start recording, twice), but we didn’t lose too badly, so I suppose the point was sorta made. If five MMs work to some degree, a more sensible team composition with one or two should be viable so long as we aren’t talking about too high end tournaments.

I am a genius! I’ve finally figured out how to do transitions (Don’t look at me like that, I mean ones involving some 4 or so layers of video) without some of the clips magically going missing. That means I’m now capable of producing things like the screenshot above!

I did the first game of the MM games we had after the power games, and since I only had two POVs to work on, I had to do things properly instead of going lazy mode and just doing the 4-screen split. It took me a bit (Read: a lot. I think it was the 4th attempt that finally worked..) longer, but as a side effect I made my great discovery. I doubt I’ll have time to do fancy editing on the rest of those games since I want them out before I go on my trip to Scotland, which basically means tomorrow morning, but I’m pretty happy about myself anyway.

I’ve finally bashed my head through the brick wall, so I can finally do all those amazing things I had in mind when I said I’d do our editing. Besides, we do have fancy editing in one of the five games now.. :P

Anyone else?

Also, it’d be good if we were there some 20 minutes in advance so we have time to find in-game recruits if need be.

A thief complaining about necromancer mobility? :P

All Power Build games we had ages ago:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p9sVKup0uqU

Yup, tomorrow. I actually spoke with them way earlier, but I wanted to make sure I could be there before advertising it too much. I’m leaving for a one and a half weeks long trip abroad on Wednesday so that was more or less the latest possible time for me

Also, I’m finally uploading some of our earlier games, I’ll hopefully get at least two videos out before I have to leave. They aren’t as well edited as I was hoping for, but better than nothing I suppose.

So, the opponents I spoke of earlier would like to get crushed on Tuesday 8.00 pm CEST. Can anyone make it then?

I see that happening quite often in Lich Form, once their health gets low enough they are just instantly downed after the final hit lands.

Here’s a quick screenshot. For the record, I just picked a random clip and the target happens to be a bunker ranger. That’s why the numbers are so low. The important part is the fact the trait hits about as high as Lich Form Deathly Claws, which means about 5k on a squishy target. Basically, if the trait triggers, the victim is dead.

It also works to some degree without Lich Form, though it’s nowhere near the guaranteed kill it is with it, even if both you and your target are glass cannons.

Based on my limited experience as a WvW thief (too much sPvP, just reached 80 on my thief a couple of days ago), your survivability in zerg v zerg depends a lot on the amount of arrow carts used. Assuming you aren’t taking too much AoE you can safely abuse stealth and go right through the enemy zerg and start killing squishies from behind. Just put 30 in Shadow Arts for regen and you’ll survive so long as you’re careful and only come out of stealth when it’s safe to do so.

On the other hand, arrow carts make your life miserable. If you find yourself losing more health than you’re regenerating and constant cripples make it difficult to land a Cloak and Dagger, just get out of there and use short bow, or better yet sneak to the arrow carts and take them down instead.

Basically, my advice is to leave your zerg and your common sense behind to rush right into the enemy zerg/keep/whatever it is you’re fighting. It’s safer, and probably more useful as well. Let’s just say I took down quite a few arrow carts during a SM siege yesterday..

I think I’ve seen a video with someone using them and they seemed to work nicely.

That depends on what kind of build are you thinking about. Would you prefer using a condition build or a power build?

If you’re not sure yet the safest bet would probably be staff as it’s used in most builds with only a handful of exceptions like Nemesis’ hybrid build., though it’s rarely the main weapon due to long cooldowns on marks.

Dasenthal.6520:

First, Toning down doesn’t mean the same thing as getting rid of Shadow Refuge.
Second, why should we be the ones to suffer? Shadow Refuge is the only skill I as a thief have to just poof and not die to a zerg. (I realize that I could also use shadowstep, but it just isn’t nearly as effective) Plus it might be a little on the easy side of the game, but I think we deserve a little bit of easy in our lives too.

That’s exactly I suggested it only be toned down instead of removed. I probably could have worded it better, but I wanted to point out why it is a problem in its current state so I decided to do the whole “if it exists vs if it doesn’t” comparison

The fact we can use it to just go poof and vanish is slightly imbalanced IMO, especially with the mobility we have. All you really need to survive a zerg anyway is a dagger off hand – get inside the zerg and C&D until you can safely run away.

The point is, with all the mobility and short duration stealths we have a good thief still has the tools to survive even without the refuge. The biggest reason people are complaining about thieves atm seems to be the ability to stealth and run so easily, so odds are stealth in general will be nerfed instead if we are allowed to keep our guaranteed get away button.

I’m not really sure what should be done about refuge, but perhaps lowering the stealth duration would do the trick?

I think Shadow Refuge could use some toning down, since usually the biggest complaint seems to be the fact thieves can stealth and run away when the fight isn’t going in their favor. While I agree that a good player would just aoe the refuge, it’s also true a clever thief will first make sure the enemy can’t reach the refuge fast enough, for example by using a Shadowstep or couple of infiltrator’s arrows first.

Without the refuge we’d be slightly more vulnerable when trying to get away (Smoke field comboing gives away your location and we have no other sources of long duration stealth), but it still wouldn’t hurt us too badly as we could use those couple of seconds we usually get to get behind something. You know, we’d actually have to sneak to be sneaky.

Thoughts?

Is this EU or NA? Whatever the case, make sure to record your games because this sounds epic!

Zacchary.6183:

Cannot…. process…. comp…. complim…. complai…. ERROR 502 BAD GATEWAY

^This.

..It turns out our victim team’s mesmer will be missing, so we’ll have to move our fight with them to the next week. Still, we missed last week, so I think we’ll just do our usual thing instead.

TL;TD: No organized victims, but we’ll take random ones instead.

EDIT: Seems like we won’t be doing tournies today, but I’ll be online anyway so feel free to message me if you need me to kill some guardians for you

The time seems to suit everyone who has noticed it, so the slaughter will begin on Monday at around 7.30pm CEST (I’m hoping I did the math right here..)

Since the thread seems rather quiet, we might need some in game recruits. With that in mind, we should probably start a bit earlier, like 7.00 or 7.10 so that we have time to find those missing players

The thing about warrior invulnerabilities is that they still leave the warrior very vulnerable. Shield Stance? My necro will just switch to staff and hit right through his block. Endure pain? On a condition build I’d just ignore it, on a power build I’d cripple the warrior and wait for it to end. Trying to get away? With the amount of condition removal they have, my necromancer has no trouble keeping them snared and with no teleports etc they just can’t get away. Besides, it’s not like they have that great mobility to begin with.

Elementalists are in a good spot in that they have plenty of invulnerabilities, charge type skills (I’m looking at you, RTL), blocks, reflects, healing and even a teleport. Unlike warriors, I’ve seen a decent amount of S/D eles that seemed to work just fine. Maybe they could use a buff or D/D eles a nerf, but compared to warriors or even necromancers they are perfectly fine.

I mean, just look at the defensive options necromancers get and tell me S/D eles are having a hard time. If two decent players attack a lone necromancer there is absolutely nothing the necromancer can do to avoid dying while an ele has the luxury of choosing between multiple cantrips or they could just let their traits use one for them or they could simply use their superior mobility to get away.

I’m sorry to say this, but with all those tools at your disposal and having seen so many elementalists doing just fine with S/D it really does seem like a L2P issue.

Also, have you even looked at necromancer traits? Or anyone’s traits, for that matter? Everyone has traits they have to take for a certain kind of build. For instance, a necromancer with a staff has to take Greater Marks, just like an elementalist with a Staff has to take Blasting Wand. Perhaps it is more extreme when it comes to eles, and perhaps that should be changed, but do you really thing Anet should be focusing on that while entire professions (cough warriors cough) are simply unviable?

I don’t see the problem.

They have to make money somehow, and IMO this is one of the better ways of doing so. They are great when organizing player made tournaments, but other than that they aren’t really needed. On top of that they don’t really cost that much to begin with, so when compared to everything else they’ve put in the gem store I have no complaints.

How would Monday sound for the MM vs premade thingy? Either that or next week’s Thursday would suit our victims the best

It’s easy enough to take a full screenshot and just photoshop the combat log part. How would that change anything?

Oh well, it happens. So long as I have someone’s footage I can always come up with something.

Just in case, have you checked the recycle bin? Unless you’ve disabled or emptied it the files could still be there.

I think I’ll have to give up trying to do fancy editing and just do the basic multi POV split for now since I’m already several weeks behind here. The main reason I’m having this much difficulties is that I’ve pushed my editing way further than what I’m used to, and apparently none of the programs I’ve tried so far can actually handle something like the image below. I’m going to figure this out eventually, but I can’t just take your footage and sit on it indefinitely.

Let’s just say I tried doing the games one game at a time in hopes that would be easier for the program, and this was the result of some six hours of editing on our first power only game. Or would have been, except like 1/4 of the clips were missing once it rendered..

Actually, having asked our opponents Friday or Saturday doesn’t work for them, so we’ll do that some time next week, not really sure on the exact date yet. Still, we could give those Terror builds a try this week.

Oh well, it happens.

I had a forum debate earlier about minion viability and ended up having a couple of duels I really should have recorded. Let’s just say we concluded minions do indeed work in 1v1 situations after I crushed my opponents like 15 times in row :P

How about Friday or Saturday? (For MM vs premade thingy + the terror builds Nemesis was talking about last time assuming we don’t run out of time)

As a side note, after spending the last two days banging my head against a brick wall, I can now conclude that it is not possible to edit together clips with different formats or resolutions using Light Works. As a temporary solution I think I’ll just download Sony Vegas trial to get the older videos out, since I hear it’s supposed to be good.

It pains me to see that trial though – it’d be so easy to just remove those trial limits even with my programming skills. It’s really testing my no-piracy policy..

^I hope you recorded that, because it sounds hilarious