Guild Wars 2

nearlight.3064:

Silverkey and zapv, you are correct that might stacking holds the build together offensively, but I still don’t think that the build holds itself together very well outside of 1v1s for the reasons that I have mentioned. Cele necro can’t 1v2 at all and doesn’t end up doing much in team fights. The ways to remedy this are by taking other skills and trait lines that often move your build away enough that other amulets work pretty than celestial with it.

Unblockable aoe interrupts, boon corruption, plague, locust swarm, plague signet, signet of vampirism, doom and tainted shackles are certainly not nothing in teamfights. Also, winning 1vs2s isn’t gonna happen against anyone good and cele necro can stall them plenty long enough. It is currently the best build necros can offer and it mitigates our weaknesses better than anything else. Also, curses, spite, and soul reaping are still our best traitlines in pvp, so dropping them isn’t really worth it imo.

Anything bunkier than cele and you no longer fill a role other classes can’t do better. Glassier and you’ll be fodder under focus fire even more so than cele nec while still being outclassed at burst by thieves and mesmers. Cele necro hits a middle ground of offensive pressure, sustain and utility that isn’t matched by any other builds I’ve seen (outside of cele ele, which is an even matchup).

Obtena.7952:

zapv.8051:

SupahSpankeh.8452:

Not many skills do much when interrupted.

There’s a time and place for every skill, especially this one. I like to tag thieves/mes with it when I think they’re gonna stealth.

Getting interrupted is many times enough of a punishment in and of itself especially against players who will chain damage afterwards.

Also, the time and place for a 2 skill on a weaponset should be pretty much off cooldown. I look at life siphon as something you don’t want to be casting that often, which is contrary to how it should be.

A skill getting interrupted is NOT a motivation to make a skill better though … because that’s the POINT of interruption.

I disagree completely, if this skill was harder to interrupt I might consider using it as part of my rotation instead of once every 2 minutes when the perfect scenario presents itself. Currently, I’m almost always better off using the dagger auto, or something else. The 2 skill on a weapon should be something with ample use that excels in multiple situations and that certainly isn’t the case with this skill which offers bad dps and mediocre easily counterable hps. If you disagree, or can’t see that a skill with a 4 second total cast time that heals for ~900 health per second and does ~w700 damage per second with cele is bad then winning this argument will be beyond me.

Constantin.5608:

Its a huge green button on the left side of your screen. You can’t miss it. And if you’re not messing around with your build or taking a pee you have no excuse not to press it. I think the bonus for clicking Change Status is a brilliant idea !

Also I really hope they make the score screen at the end last longer. I just got over a million total damage in a match but messed up taking a screen shot and now I’m sad :

I have a perfect excuse, I don’t want the match to start for another x seconds. It lets me get mentally prepared, mess around and discuss strategy. Even if they did this I still wouldn’t click the button, I like my minute of wait time.

Cele is the best amulet on necro currently, scales best with signets which are our best utilities currently. Works best with might stacking, gives the best defensive stats for very generic scenarios, and staff+curses and boon corruption makes the condi damage worthwhile.

Nearlight noted that clerics dagger auto and cele dagger auto spam do similar damage. That may be true, but cele will get more out of the might because it has higher base crit chance and ferocity. At the same time your losing out on condi damage. You will be a little tankier no doubt, but the damage levels aren’t even close. Soldiers would have the same problem, as would knights, crusaders etc. More offensive options like carrion might get around the same or even more damage, but won’t be as tanky. That’s why cele works, it is generic and always good instead of being decent in specific scenarios, or against specific specs.

Lily.1935:

zapv.8051:

Lily.1935:

zapv.8051:

Gimme a condition based sword, a cc based hammer, and a bow. I’d be happy.

we actually have a tone of CC weapons. Including Scepter, dagger MH/OH, warhorn, Staff, Axe, greatsword, death shroud, reaper’s shroud.

CC is love, cc is life. Anyway, yeah you aren’t wrong I just really love cc, specifically of the hard variety. As for support, I thought a shortbow+elixir combo would fill that role (Magehunter archtype).

For support I was thinking Shield and Torch. But that’s me. Shortbow eh? Kinda of an odd choice for a necro. Though I don’t disagree.

That’s why I like it so much, kind okittenward and different.

Lily.1935:

zapv.8051:

Gimme a condition based sword, a cc based hammer, and a bow. I’d be happy.

we actually have a tone of CC weapons. Including Scepter, dagger MH/OH, warhorn, Staff, Axe, greatsword, death shroud, reaper’s shroud.

CC is love, cc is life. Anyway, yeah you aren’t wrong I just really love cc, specifically of the hard variety. As for support, I thought a shortbow+elixir combo would fill that role (Magehunter archtype).

Gimme a condition based sword, a cc based hammer, and a bow. I’d be happy.

You can totally spam burn, anytime you want burn on someone just find a guard or ele (really easy to do imo). Eat all their burns, and run through their fire fields then send it to someone.

Twilight is done and everything.

Probably wouldn’t happen till next elite spec, but yeah it would be cool. They could add it to scepter on the current weapons.

Whoever can land the most transfers wins most of the time regardless of build type. Minions are a possible exception to this, but in an open field 1vs1 off point you can always kite minions.

SupahSpankeh.8452:

Not many skills do much when interrupted.

There’s a time and place for every skill, especially this one. I like to tag thieves/mes with it when I think they’re gonna stealth.

Getting interrupted is many times enough of a punishment in and of itself especially against players who will chain damage afterwards.

Also, the time and place for a 2 skill on a weaponset should be pretty much off cooldown. I look at life siphon as something you don’t want to be casting that often, which is contrary to how it should be.

SupahSpankeh.8452:

Life siphon is 360 degrees, resumes after evade, shifts 1v1 5khp in your favour, 8k if you have SoV on your target. It also tracks through stealth.

Dunno what else you want from a skill.

Doesn’t shift a 1vs1 5k hp in your favor when it gets interrupted and your opponent unloads their burst on you. It has a 4 second total cast time, the damage and healing aren’t nearly as good when you consider this. A lot can be done to you in that time and I would much rather have a 3/4 to 1 second cast that healed for a lot less but hit harder per second with a lower cd. It certainly isn’t an else statement where I want flat buffs, which seems to be what you assume.

I would much rather the opposite happen and have dagger 2 become melee range. Life siphon is the main weakness of dagger mainhand, and their isn’t a real reason base necro shouldn’t have a melee weapon. Of course this would mean a complete rework of one skill, but that’s okay, channels suck anyway.

Chobits.2430:

Anet already said your beta bank and toons will persist thru all the BWEs. At this time, there is not going to be a reset. That may change between now and the next BWE, but as of right now, there is no reset. I seriously doubt they will change it now since the way BWEs operate has already been officially announced. I planned ahead of time and had everything ready to go in the bank. Maybe people should have paid attention to what ANet told them and done some planning and preparation.

Can’t really plan to have a legendary finished by a certain time, but I get your point. Really unfortunate for me, and I won’t be mad if they don’t do anything about it because they have been transparent. Despite that, I’m thinking it wouldn’t be that hard to reset accounts where all the beta characters where deleted though, and it would please at least a few people.

Axelwarrior.9084:

I wouldn’t even consider blind to be something we specialize in. All we have is pretty much well of darkness.
And weakness isn’t really popular. When was the last time you thought “Hey, we should bring someone to apply weakness?”. At best you’ll be using that consumable in high level fractals.

The “unique” support we bring is condi manipulation and boon removal (I’d say weakness too, I don’t think any other class does it better). Those aren’t useful, so we’re not useful either. That’s my point.

I want weakness very often, but maybe that is just me. As I said though, even at condi manipulation and boon removal we aren’t as good as other classes. We don’t have nearly as much aoe condi removal as other classes, and our boon removal is matched by mesmers who bring other better utility. I personally think we are outmatched everywhere except self might stacking and vuln stacking.

Wintermute.5408:

It’s not that necros are weak – it’s everybody else who are too strong. We have one-man-army classes who can damage, tank, heal, buff and shoot dragons while blindfolded and singing hedgehog song. Of course necros aren’t wanted in such scenario, but that doesn’t mean they should be buffed to the same level.

People here anticipate reaper. We actually have new playstiles to look forward to. We want to try new weapons, skills and traits.

Now look at eles forum. Really, look at it. It’s not that tempest is bad, it’s just that core ele is so OP it simply can’t be improved in any way. So people kitten about new spec and probably will avoid it. That’s not exactly good sign for a class.

While I get your point, saying that we aren’t weak, everyone else is just strong is the same exact thing as saying we are weak. When every other class can solo dungeon paths we can’t, it’s cause we need buffs. There is no effective difference. I definitely agree that eles can be spoiled little kittens though.

Endlos.4852:

The game’s PVE content should not be designed such that it is most-efficiently cleared with all participants wearing the exact same, purely offensive stat combination.

As opposed to what? Something that requires a perfect party comp like in other games? Maybe we will see something close to that with the supposed challenging content, but it would go completely against anet’s philosophy for general content. Currently you can do the overwhelming majority of content naked so that any build will work, this is very much intended. The reason berserker is best is because you take the most risk by having no armor, and aoe buffs effect direct damage better than condi.

If you don’t like this, why not just go play wow or something. They have forced roles, which seems to be what you want. People have been making your complaint for a long time now, and it has been explained many many times why anets decision is both justified and within their design of the game.

Oh god, I made twilight to test on my necro and decide if I want it. Kind of need to reduplicate my bank to do this. IDK about my chars progress, but can totally understand people wanting to keep their progress. Maybe just make the bank reduplicate if you have no beta chars.

Axelwarrior.9084:

IMO, the problem isn’t as much with Necromancer, as it is with the way PvE is designed. Pretty much all the support we bring is unnecessary or useless in dungeons.

Robert doesn’t want to just give Necros a bunch of blast finishers and make them a conventional support. And I agree with that decision. What they need to do is make our strengths more relevant in PvE.

This isn’t true though. The support we bring is blind, weakness, boon corruption, and condi removal/transfer. The only one of those that isn’t used much is boon corruption. All the others are used regularly, but necros aren’t good enough at that and dps to justify bringing them. Other classes do necros utility just as well while still bringing damage.

Khristophoros.7194:

zapv.8051:

It might also be nice if they made it 10 stacks instead of five. Then your teammates could also get something out of it.

They can because it has a 1s ICD between siphons. It’s really unlikely for one person to take all of the siphons when allies are beating on the target.

I disagree, I’ve gotten all 5 plenty of times before, and average at least 3 unless the person blows a few cds. Also, I’m well aware of the icd.

Bhawb.7408:

It would also be way too strong with 10 stacks. Its just an adept trait, if it had 10 it’d be insane.

I’d be ok with a higher cd if it meant my teammates got more use out of it, though your probably right the current iteration would be op. I don’t like that the main power of this trait is the 3 might and 2 boon corrupts, and not the actual trait.

Robert Gee.9246:

flow.6043:

Since they are trying to prevent a wasted signet proc, perhaps they could also have this limiter apply to some of our transfer skills?
It happens rather often that I trigger Plague Sending with Putrid Mark, in which case Putrid Mark transfers first and Plague Signet does nothing. So maybe have the trait check for additional 3 conditions after the transfer?

This would be a nice check but due to the order of operations it’s not something that’s easy to do. The condition transfer for Putrid Mark triggers on the same hit that activates Plague Sending so from the trait’s perspective you still have the conditions (since the transfer is still happening). We could delay the activation of the trait to wait for the transfer, but that would negatively affect how responsive the trait was in other situations.

It would be nice if plague sending triggered on a specific skill use. Maybe even just the next auto attack when you have 3+ condis. That would give it more counterplay, and eliminate most of these problems.

Honestly, if they upped the volume I think this would make more sense for locust swarm. Very low kind of humming sound. Wail of doom should definitely be reverted though.

It might also be nice if they made it 10 stacks instead of five. Then your teammates could also get something out of it.

Man this is a tough decision. Also, the best way to preview is straight through the account. You can preview unlocked dyes.

Honestly, I’m pretty sure it is intentional. Slow similarly increases leap range, and it makes sense mathematically.

LOL electro blue isn’t very necroy though now is it. Honestly, these are the hardest decisions to make in this game.

Honestly, they wouldn’t need a new map. Just put it on foefire. The flag carrier would have to have all their utilities locked, and new 1-5 skills on the flag. No movement speed buffs, portal, etc. Otherwise I would worry thieves would just dominate.

Similarly, king of the hill could be played pretty easily on most of the maps (I’m thinking more free for all then team based). Basically, points for being in the hill, and points for kills in the hill with the hill moving around every X seconds. Wouldn’t be out of place on khylo or courtyard. They probably won’t do this though because of the population.

If I had the power to record and play at 1440p I would, unfortunately that isn’t the case. As others have said they will either release the other two specializations then do it. They might also do the beta over labor day weekend and not release the other two till after that.

Literally any dye? As in any single one? Well, have that to look forward too. My two favorite dyes are enameled crimson and shadow abyss. All the enamaled dyes look really cool, so as long as you pick a color that fits your toon it should work out.

edit: now I figured it out. Your probably just gonna have to look through them all in your hero tab to preview the colors and choose from there.

Anet devs stated they don’t want to increase the level cap ever. Anet devs have also said legendaries will always be the best stat item. They have also said that asceneded equipment is the best statistical gear there will ever be.

You do not throw or consume any of the elixirs from those skills, thus why they don’t remove conditions.

Krysard.1364:

meow one twenty.4376:

I mentioned this in another thread but here it is:

-Keep flashing ability
-F1 enter Shroud
-F2 exit Shroud

Everyone wins.

I dunno why I have not thought about it, this is an awesome fix :p

This would be fine. I’m against making it on weapon swap as someone suggested because I think necros should be able to swap weapons in DS. Also, as a word of warning to the OP, never take the 20 responses in a single thread as a good view of what the community thinks, this topic has been brought up many many times. The general conclusion has pretty much always been, that it is a l2p issue, not a skill issue. If they want to fix it meows suggestion is probably the best for all parties.

Clearly a lot of people want this very much. Definitely, worth implementing and it wouldn’t be that hard as they already have team deathmatch and a decent map for it. Also, completely worth the risk, new game modes draw people in. Balancing isn’t a problem either, simply keep balancing for 5vs5s like anet wants. Then don’t worry about balancing 2vs2s the same way you don’t balance wvw or pve.

+the power set of infinity

The skill would be way better with a lower cast time, and the same dps. The only trait that is potentially overpowered is reaper’s might.

Well, thieves aren’t really 1v1ers, and it is hard to win as a thief in the first engagement. Here are a few tips:
1) If the necro has full LF wait for him to enter DS then disengage or create space and watch it degen. Waiting for them to leave to reengage, or burst. Generally speaking blowing your burst on DS in a 1vs1 is a bad idea unless it’s gonna push them out of DS like at the start of a match.

2) Learn the staff animations, you want to watch out for putrid mark and reaper’s mark, and get good at blinding, interrupting, or dodging them.

3) All the heals have big cast times and you should interrupt them with headshot or steal (If your using sword, the stealth attack from behind).

4) Watch for marks on the ground, smart necros will use marks to figure out when they are going to get backstabbed. If they do this, simply dodge through the mark and wait a second, the person you are fighting will probably rando dodge and then you can land your backstab, or whatever.

5) Try to get them to blow their cds. For instance, if your fighting a well necro, you can let them land dark pact and then watch as they blow both wells. Then you shadowstep or withdraw out and they just lost 2 utilities for 30 seconds. Similarly, if they use spectral armor you can just stealth or disengage for 6 seconds and they just lost a 50 second cd utility.

6) If they are running axe or scepter, learn to dodge the channel on axe 2 (dodge through them) and scepter 3. Then they will be starved of LF even more.

nekretaal.6485:

I think some of the posters in this thread need to take off the training wheels and start playing without vital persistence.

It’s doable.

50% degen speed and 15% cd reduction on shroud skills is too good to pass up. It means I can camp shroud a little longer when a thief or mes stealths. It means I’m gonna get doom pretty much every time I go into shroud, and tainted shackles every other time almost. It also means I don’t get punished nearly as much for using my profession mechanic, and that’s why it is understandable that people want the degen rate baseline.

Just cause you can go without it doesn’t mean you should or that you want to.

It won’t counter condi builds anymore than necros or shout guards do currently.

They should just make it grant swiftness on entering shroud instead of the 25% movement speed effect. That would be way more useful. Currently, it isn’t worth it over soul marks or unyielding blast ever.

Zenith.7301:

Brokensunday.4098:

Zenith.7301:

Vydahr.4285:

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

Vydahr.4285:

Also, another thing separating axe and scepter is that it takes time for a scepter attack to hit. Axe just hits, regardless of distance

What Scepter are you talking about? Necro scepter has no projectiles or travel time on any of its skills.

… I…. Apparently it’s been a reeeeeally long time since I used scepter. So, basically, then, axe is just so bad at its job that a condi weapon is better at it

Axe is better on a power spec. Scepter is better on a condi spec.

Axe is super terrible. Scepter is just mediocre relative to other classes’ condi weapons.

Either way, all weapons besides the reaper greatsword need buffing/retooling.

try using scepter on apower spec you will find that it deals more dmaage + condi than axe

No, you don’t. Check the coefficients in the wiki. Scepter has o.350/0.5 on all its skills except for feast of corruption, which has a 1.0 coefficient. All of them lower than those on the axe, as well as the base damage numbers.

It’s not a glowing endorsement on axe, but using scepter on a power build is a terrible idea.

It’s much closer than you think, scepter auto delivers more coefficient per second. Also, ghastly claws is super easy to avoid and it is probably easier to land feast of corruption which also has a multiplier on it. Unholy feast is better than grasping dead in power builds by a fair margin and axe has more lf gen if you can land ghastly claws. In terms of strictly dps though, it is pretty close.

I agree, the healing from dark bolts should work in shroud. Similarly, leaping through a dark field shouldn’t give blind because it is most relevant to necro with 5 dark fields and a low cd leap that applies blind. It needs to be replaced with an aura or even just a large leeching hit (500 or more leeched). The poison bolts are fine, but the leap could work a little better as you currently have to walk through your opponent to get it to apply the weakness. The chill field is epicly useful and I really hope they turn one of the wells or nightfall into another chill field.

The people that are suggesting you get to pick are really funny. That would make most conditions builds useless because damage would always get removed first. Last in first out would give ample play and counterplay to both sides, and would be the best option imo. Anything where you could prioritize damaging conditions would be broken.

ronpierce.2760:

I mailed Gee about that. I really wish VP degeneration rate was baseline. It alone makes build diversity really hard. The rest of the tree is give or take no big deal, still good but not mandatory, but VP in pvp is so hard to not run.

Cool hopefully we will get a response. I honestly don’t think they will work too much on the current traits and weapons till at least after HOT is released, but we can hope.

As Rym said, transferring conditions on auto would be incredibly broken. We already can faceroll every other condition class, so not really necessary. As for the cast time though, that would be great, and has been suggested many many times. They wouldn’t even need to increase the dps, and it would still be great. I’d also like unholy martyr to make tainted shackles transfer conditions from allies to you and from you to targets. It would then be way more interesting then the passive lf gen condition pull it is now.

TheLastNobody.8319:

zapv.8051:

This actually illustrates the problem with soul reaping for me. Basically, every single build needs vital persistance, and last gasp along with wanting soul marks. For reaper that means you’re automatically locked into 2 trait lines, and since most might generation is in spite you probably want that too. It would be nice if the reaper line provided enough damage, life generation or might to not take spite or soul reaping, but they are pretty much both required.

Agreed, it would be nice if theb2% life force defen was made baseline, or we were given unique utilities in shroud that drained life force and Vital persistence just reduced the cost of using them.

Yeah, if the degen part of vital persistance where baseline, it would make a lot of sense. I’m hoping that some of this is alleviated somewhat with LF gen being added to the GS, but scepter/dagger still has bad LF regen and staff does without soul marks.

This actually illustrates the problem with soul reaping for me. Basically, every single build needs vital persistance, and last gasp along with wanting soul marks. For reaper that means you’re automatically locked into 2 trait lines, and since most might generation is in spite you probably want that too. It would be nice if the reaper line provided enough damage, life generation or might to not take spite or soul reaping, but they are pretty much both required.

Problem with focus is that it is a bursty offhand, but lacks reliability because of the huge travel and cast times on the skills. Focus 4 needs to move faster and give literally anything but regen (seriously, reaper’s don’t heal people from my understanding). Focus 5 just needs a cast time reduction or to have the cast removed completely and to get rid of chill of death.

Necro with finishers

Shala.8352:

Totaly agree with all of this. But the main problem i already said thousand times is not the fact we dont have enough condi cleanser on demand, is the fact that condi can be applied too much in this game, plus the fact condi should never burst. Its a support damage, every build that has condi damage as the main source of damage should be checked, cuz its wrong.

People always say this, but clearly that isn’t true. Conditions are a main way of getting dps, and with the changes to burns it’s pretty clear they want you to be able to burst condi. They’ve never said it was a support type of damage, so it is probably rational to stop thinking of it as such.

On to the topic:

Burn damage might be a little and I mean a little bit high right now, but the main problem is d/d cele eles burn. Maybe burn guard is a little strong, but not terrible and everything else is fine. Yes, some classes might not be able to deal with conditions well enough. Fix that, don’t make conditions useless and secondary as many suggest.

The problem with dagger as a dps weapon is that the only good dps skill is the auto, and outside of that focus 4, tainted shackles and warhorn 5 are the only weapon skill dps increases on the whole necro class. The reason dagger dps is bad is because of life siphon and dark pact not the auto. Those skills, specifically life siphon, need to be worth using.

Blood Curse: increase bleed duration to 7 seconds
Rending Curse: change to torment for 5 seconds
Putrid Curse: Increase poison duration to 7 seconds
Grasping Dead: Make it 2-3 stacks of torment and cripple for 7 seconds
Feast of Corruption: Applies a 4 second bleed and gains 3% lf per condition on the foe.

I would also change dagger offhand 5 enfeebling blood to give 4% lf per target hit. Then swap the scepter trait with terror, make terror deal 50% more damage, and make the scepter trait a 20% duration increase on all condis while wielding scepter as well as 150 conditions damage. I like the idea of it being an aoe buff as well, maybe 20% condition duration to all allies.