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GW2 Necro Minion Bomber Build

Diremongoose said:
In which case, contrast that against this build:
http://gw2skills.net/editor/en/?fQAQRBLRdG2IjWze7mpGDfiQqQ0ge8 eVroHHjYJD;TwAA2CnowxgjAHrPOck sKY4xugZFA

Which uses 4 Eagle runes and knight amulet to provide more bonus crit damage and power, while trading the soul reaping benefits for 4k life.
Click to expand...

Not a bad thought. The major problem here though is that you've crippled your Condition Damage down to 328, which has the bleeds ticking for 56 per stack. Personally, I'm uncomfortable with it below 80, which is where it was before. I like it around 100, but with the parameters that Modden has, 80 was where I could get it. When it's down this low, you start getting into the area where you're going one-dimensional, but now towards the burst/power route. I'm a real strong believer in being able to win via Conditions or Power depending on the fight.

My other issue, and this is just my opinion, is that I refuse to even consider a Necro without Life Blast decked out with both the Might buff and Piercing. It's just too valuable, especially in PvP. But then, I'm the same way with Mark of Evasion, the 10 point trait in Blood Magic.
 
Fair enough, I'm not going to pretend I've played the Necro enough to know the value judgements for Death Shroud and it's trait effects. I am more than happy to have one specific focus though, be it damage/crits or conditions. I'd much rather be specialised than do two things sub-optimally, but that's going to depend on the post-release meta environment. Yes, specialists can be countered easily by certain builds, but until we get into organised team play I don't see that being a problem in sPvP - even then a team will want a combination of specialists and generalists.

I have similarly stringent views about certain Engi build combinations, so I'll bow to your wisdom on this matter for the necro :)
 
Very enjoyable discussion so far, thank you for that. I feel the Necro is set up to be capable of being elite on multiple levels at the same time if spec'd right.

Elite Survivability as a Matter of Course:
1a. Condition Manipulation - Just take Corrupt Boon and/or Plague Signet as utilities, have Consume Conditions as the heal, and make sure to have the dagger as an offhand option for Deathly Swarm. Easy peasy.
1b. Tankability - Naturally high hit points and Death Shroud give us an advantage here as soon as the class is created.

That innate survivability allows us to almost automatically be masters of a Condition style of play as we can DoT em up and then turtle as needed. I mean, with the Scepter skill being so bleed friendly, all any Necro has to do is stack bleed duration armor runes and take a Condition Damage Amulet. It's basically auto elite condition-mancer, and we still haven't even really needed to touch the traits yet. The only sneaky part here is that Necro's don't build bleeds overly fast, but there are tricks to stack em up. Blood is Power is a x2 that also puts a x2 bleed on you, but you can send that bleed over to the target with Deathly Swarm, so that's a very fast x4 stack with a long duration. Mark of Evasion, the dodge trait, is a x3 bleed which is basically free and incredibly easy to drop on an enemy by just rolling into them. So, even there, our weakest area of stacking bleeds fast, can be gotten around if you know how.

So, to me, the class is ready made to be elite in survivability and Condition Damage. If you spend your traits maximizing Power and Burst damage, you can become elite there as well as long as you focus on the Axe, Life Blast, and Lich Form. You do have to trait heavily for that, but by that point, what else is there to spend traits on? Support concepts? Pfft!

The good news, to me at least, is that most Necros detest the idea of going Power/Burst DPS. Most are sticking with the staff or going the pure support roles, which is fine, but often one dimensional and boring to me. I offer no support at all outside of trying to be a killing machine, but then, in the end, I find DPS always is king in competitive games. The dilemma I'm dealing with is whether extremely high base power and hit points are more effective long term dps over a glass cannon crit build.

But regardless, I feel any Necro can be elite in two areas at all times. Condition Damage and Manipulation as a matter of course, and then either Power/Burst or Support as they can focus their entire trait tree on one of those two. I've never played another class in this game, probably never will either, so I am unsure on if this kind of setup is unique to the Necro, or if all classes can naturally dominate on multiple tiers just by design.

The Engineer for example, how many prongs can you be elite in within one build setup?
 
The engi doesn't have any innate leanings, unlike the Necro. I'd say they Necro's natural tankiness makes it the exception to the rule rather than a general trend. You definitely have to choose one thing to be good at with the Engi, but a secondary 'soft' specialisation can be implemented without harming the first one too much.

That said, the Engi is in the strange position of having a lot of useless crap in his trait trees right now. Anet are working on it and we'll hopefully see a more balanced engi by launch.

So what do we have so far?
Inventions - well, I like individual gadgets - but turrets are pretty weak in PvP as I bemoan here.
I haven't found a build I like that doesn't use alchemy, so far.
Explosives are viable, but I have yet to test them extensively since the skills were buffed...

Which leaves me with guns and alchemy. Tankiness and condition/crit/power dps...

So yeah, two things. Extreme tankiness from Alchemy traits - the most important being self regulating defenses - 4s invulnerability at 25% health and secondly, Automated response, where you become immune to conditions below 25% health.

That leaves you your entire equipment build to focus on damage, if you so desire (but a few more HP wont hurt). I fear however, that we are getting off topic.
 
We are, but it is very interesting. I suppose Engi's are a great example of why Necros that can do both Conditions and Burst will be important since you'll have to burst them down at 25%.

To get back on topic after I derailed it....I found this Modden:

There are some other oddities I have noticed. For example, the bone minion Explode skill does not appear to benefit from minion master traits unlike the other minion special abilities. Also, if you look at all the numbers, they don’t seem to universally relfect the 30% damage increase given by the trait Training of the Master. I have no idea why, so don’t ask. It may be because of my sampling method, which amounted to me staring at the screen and writing down numbers as fast as I could and as long as I felt like. Yeah, I know, SUPER scientific of me. However, the Flesh Golem for instance sits at about a 66% damage increase on Minion Master and that has the most raw data I collected of any of them, over 100 data points.
Click to expand...

Complete article: http://www.guildwarsinsider.com/death-you-pet-job/#more-12031


Also, in his chart, we see that Putrid Explosion is hitting for 1550 damage, with and without the 30% pet damage boost, much higher than the 1100 base the tool tip states. I think this makes it 100% certain power applies to Putrid Explosion.
 
Well, now that there is a stress test tomorrow, I'll find this answer out for sure personally. My main goal tomorrow is going to be testing:

1. Putrid Explosion
2. Hit Points v. Toughness for Necros
3. High base Power v. lower power but high crit % for best dps over a moderate period of time.
4. Looking at any changes to the class abilities, weapons, or traits.

I figure 2-3 hours in the Mists testing on the guardians as well as Chiefton, and then 1-2 hours to test out some builds in Spvp. Heck, might spend all 4 hours in the Mists crunching some numbers. We'll see.
 
Ok, so....

1. Putrid Explosion definitely is impacted by Power and not at all by increased Minion Damage. With a Power Build, I had each hitting around 2k with no crit. that's with about 1900+ power. Of course, Toughness mitigates this as when I had them going off against a Guardian, they were hitting for 500. They are also a HUGE pain in the ass to control. They get left behind a lot of the time in Spvp when you go through portals and such, and they'll chase down players that run away across the map without switching to a new target. Not sure if I'm missing some controls somewhere or what, but the pet control was so bad in Spvp, I'm not sure I can use the ability. Also, these things die fast. People AoE or focus them, they're dead almost immediately. There is a 1-2 second delays between blowing up both minions and the blast radius actually seems pretty darn small. On PvE fights, they worked much better. I'll definitely use them in PvE.

2. What I did with the Hps v. Toughness is I simply changed out an Amulet for the same number of each and ran into the Chiefton in the Mists and let him wail on me. With base toughness, I had his Kicks hitting around 4350, his slashes at 2500, and his big burst Dual Strike attack at 4600 per. With 569 toughness amulet, I had kick at 3600, Slash at 1850, and Dual Strike at 2330-3500 per. I'm going to have to dig into this a little more to determine the best routes. The thing that is going to make it easy for me is that there isn't a Toughness amulet option with Power and Condition Damage. Still, without Toughness, you're going to get ass-raped by burst damage, especially thieves and warriors. If it's 1v1, I could usually hold my own and win half the time, maybe. But, if either class gets the jump on you, you won't be able to recover. Just run.

3. Didn't really get to test this as much as I wanted with the server being down the first hour or so. I did run a full power/moderate condition build extensively in Spvp and had mixed results. I'm not sure I like it. I switched back to a High Condition/Moderate Power build and enjoyed that much more and was much more effective. Without a doubt, that's how I'm going at launch. Still, I was trying new builds and utilities. I spent some time with Poison Cloud, which is decent. Takes a bit to cast and is ground targeted, but the cloud lasts 15 secs and continually reapplies the conditions if they stay in the cloud or run back through it. I used that because I was trying a pure Corruption build, complete with the 20% cooldown reduction in the Curses tree. I liked it for the most part, but I don't think the cooldown is needed. Blood is Power is great. And I used Corrupt Boon a lot this time, and that's really a core ability that I'm going to keep I think. It's situational, but ungodly powerful against some players. I came away thinking every Necro in this game should have this ability for pvp. I tinkered with Plague Signet a little bit, and I probably will end up going with that as my third utility along with Power and Boon. I'm not sure it's as necessary to the Necro as Corrupt Boon, but it's pretty close. The assholes this Test were dodging my Deathly Swarm at a record pace somehow, and I had problems when other Necros would Plague Signet my own crap back at me and Deathly Swarm was down. If my heal was also down, I died fast. So, I guess that's what I'm coming away from this Stress Test thinking.... Corrupt Boon, must have. Plague Signet, must have. And for what I like to do with reliance on Death Shroud and Bleeds, Blood is Power is a must have as well.

4. The Chill which gets added to your blind via a curses trait lasts 1 second. That's it. I was very excited about that trait since I use Deathly Swarm so much, but not any more. It's probably very useful for those that want to run Plague as their Elite and chain blind while on a node, but that's probably all. I forgot to test how long the critical effect bleed lasts, so that sucks. Unholy Feast was an instant cast prior, now it has a pretty long cast time which makes it kind of bleh. It's still unreported from last Stress Test, but Ghastly Claws got a massive damage boost to like 1400 or so. I had Axe on auto crit rune, so when I'd switch, i'd always crit with that ability and it would crit each of 8 attacks, probably pulling in 4k damage at least in a full power build. Also, the dagger ability Life Siphon got a massive boost. It hits like 10 times now or something, but it does even more damage than Ghastly Claws, so it might be our biggest individual damage dealer if it hits on all attacks. That's about all I have for this stress test. Oh, and they nerfed the top tier Death Shroud Stability trait in Soul Reaping. It no longer lasts the entire time you're in Death Shroud, now it's just 3 or 5 seconds, forget which one, but ugh.....
 
^ How so?



List as to things I want to test tomorrow:

1. How long a Barbed Precision bleed lasts.
2. With the dagger being upgraded, a life stealing dagger/axe build with high toughness
3. With the dagger being upgraded, my normal build with dagger instead of axe
4. Does Spiteful Vigor trigger off life taps, Other Runes/Traits that trigger off of heals
5. Effect of Healing Power on Life Siphons, Rune of the Dolyak, Consume Conditions, Signet of the Locust
6. Do the various movement skill increases all stack? Dagger, Locust, Swifttness
 
How so? You're the one who said it ;)

Mat'hir Uth Gan said:
I had problems when other Necros would Plague Signet my own crap back at me and Deathly Swarm was down. If my heal was also down, I died fast. So, I guess that's what I'm coming away from this Stress Test thinking.... Corrupt Boon, must have. Plague Signet, must have.
Click to expand...

Condition<->boon switchovers/transfers seems to be becoming more prevalent in sPvP.
 
Ahhh, I misunderstood what you were saying. The "hate" term confused me, I was trying to figure out what that meant. But yeah, certainly players are getting better at manipulating conditions, the meta is in full swing, and my experience was that as a Condition-Mancer it was far too risky to rely on just Deathly Swarm, and then Consume Conditions if that was down, for sufficient survivability. Specifically because of other Necros using Plague Signet. Corrupt Boon is just wicked fun.
 
Sorry, it's a Magic:tG term where, for example, 'enchantment hate' would mean taking anti-enchantment cards in your deck. A very appropriate term for GW2 'deck building' I think...
 
Makes sense.

I did confirm the critical bleed, Barbed Precision, is a 1 second bleed. As for everything else, the lag made it too hard to judge. It's a shame, I was genuinely interested in the Dagger/Axe/Toughness build.

Now I'm really just scared to death for launch. The game was completely unplayable on the US East Coast for myself. I couldn't even move in Spvp, I'd just run in place and then die. Other people seemed to be playing fine though, so I'm worried this is an east coast US issue, which would massively suck. I hope they figure out whatever they need to so that this does not happen at the end of the month.
 
Mat'hir Uth Gan said:
Makes sense.

Now I'm really just scared to death for launch. The game was completely unplayable on the US East Coast for myself. I couldn't even move in Spvp, I'd just run in place and then die.
Click to expand...

If I can play the game well enough in Australia, then you'll be fine :p
Seriously though, the lag issue was an Anet server/internet problem that affected both GW1&2, so that's unlikely yo be indicative of launch.
 
Well, that's good to hear. I saw their server message at the end where they actually apologized for how laggy it was. Hopefully, they'll do one more stress test so as not to leave on a sour note.


Also, since I just compile my beta notes, and lately in this thread, I did remember a few more little tidbits from last night:

1. With roughly 2000 power, Life Siphon would do 3000 damage, and Ghastly Claws would do about 2500 damage. They did not crit all the way through if you crit the first tick of the channel. I assume I just missed this fact from last stress test. So, my auto-crit runes upon weapon switching were of no great use here for either of these big channels.

2. The Hydromancy rune, which freezes enemies in place for 3 seconds, would also do about 1200 damage upon switching weapons. I don't think it did it every time though. But, I did like that rune as it allowed me to do the the two abilities above without the enemy avoiding my attack.

3. 6 Rune of the Dolyak provide a constant regen of 30 hit points per second. You can't increase this with healing power. It's pretty lackluster.

4. Picking up the minor trait Vampiric to make all attacks siphon health netted 24 hit points per attack. This also felt pretty lackluster. I don't think this was increased with healing power as a I had 500 or so.

5. All the speed buffs seemed to stack. The dual dagger trait Quickening Burst, Signet of the Locust, and Swiftness for 58% speed increase. With Spectral Walk, this is pretty much constant.

6. With a Sigil of Superior Battle on each weapon set, it was very easy to keep up 6 stacks of Might by just switching weapons upon cooldown, sometimes I'd even get 9 stacks for a few seconds. 6 stacks of Might equals 210 Power, a fairly significant amount. I tried putting two Sigils on each weapon set, for a total of four, to see if I could double this, but no dice.

7. I tinkered around with the trait Reaper's Protection, and while I probably had a 30 mins of quality Spvp the entire night, I never got hit with the massive damage abilities that were really hurting me in previous betas by warriors and thieves, as both stun you and then try and unload. It's possible this trait puts an end to it, at least at 90 second intervals.

8. I also spent this beta going very heavy in Toughness, a little over 2000, while running with only 20kish hit points. The survivability was much, much better as expected. I think the Vitality v. Toughness thing is pretty simple. If you're going Plague Signet and Scepter/Staff, Vitality seems like a better deal. You'll need to stay on the fringes of the battles though, but that's the play style with high range. If you're going dagger or axe, or just like running into the middle of battles, Toughness is far more important.

9. I continue to greatly enjoy Lich Form and Death Shroud, especially with 2k plus power. Once both are pierceable with their auto attacks, they pretty much become machine guns. They play so different from my Condition build because now they are big time offensive weapons. It's tricky though because Lich uses your real hit points, so it's an ability best used to start a fight, while Death Shroud uses life force, and still remains an Oh Shit ability when you're close to dead. Still, with Death Shroud now really doing nice damage, 1.2k per normal hit every second or two, I needed to do a better job of using it during fights for burst. Lining up your angles for Piercing can be very tricky as well, but since you have to do it for Lich as well, you get used to it pretty quick.

10. Corrupt Boon, even with 0 Condition Damage, is still wicked fun. Deathly Swarm, not as much.


Hopefully we'll get one more quality stress test before launch. This one really didn't count for actual battle testing, but at least knocked out some supplementary things I wanted to test/verify.
 
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