Fractal Meta

What is it?

Metabattle disclaims its lead fractal builds as "not the best dps." Snowcrows only has raid builds. Anywhere else I should be looking?

pretty much every class can be used in fractals well, even T100's and challenges etcwell all except necro, never try to play necro into t100's etc, even in some T4's just don't bring a necro

Most pug-groups (that want to do cm's) won't accept necros.That's at least what I heard from friends of mine. I'm currently not doing fractals. So this might not be 100% accurate.In raids, necros get rarely accepted as well.

It's not the best profession to play if you want to join any group you want in pve-endgame.

BUT:

Necro is pretty good at stripping boons, even as a heal/support necro.

There are two instabilities where it can be very beneficial to have a necro with you:"No pain, no gain" and "vengeance" both apply boons to enemies.

And even Condi scourge can apply some good support if played correctly. Just don't stick that hard to the given utility slots from snowcrows or other build sites.You should always take epidemic and blood is power, but the third utility skill is free to choose.Take out epidemic if there aren't any adds or if they die too fast.

Healskill:sandflare (to prevent dmg)Well of blood (to heal allies if you're not good at timing sabdflare)

Useful utilities:

Corrosive poison cloud (projectile block, poison stacks for epidemic)Well of power (condicleanses and might)Trail of anguish (stability)Desiccate (additional might)Well of corruption (ae-boon corrupt)Corrupt boon (single target boon corrupt, mostly against bosses)Spectral grasp (to pull enemies to you position)

Not for fights:Sand swellSummon flesh wurm

both of these skills can create shortcuts. Especially in the aetherblade fractal with the underwater mines at the beginning. You can cheat your way up in the electric path and the room with the rotating electric things.

And there are even more nice spots to skip with this or to reach some activatable buttons more easily.

https://discretize.eu/builds

For necro anything works up till about t2 and some of t3 at t3 and t4 you want to have a defined role be it support healing with some damage or just pure damage with minior support depending on the instabilities this could range from being a condition manager, off healer with wells, or boon stripper.

When a group is not organized necro is one of the strongest picks you can take. How ever in organized groups this is not the case, up to t3 for sure you should have no issues for the most part regardless of what you use.

At t4 its a bit more serious though of the few times I've been in t4 recently unless some one invited me to be there, groups just never fully formed, Its rather hard to get an unorganized t4 group in general. I could have also been searching at a off time of the day though. Most days i just stick to t3 cause its easy to get a group and clear all the dailies in like 30-40 mins depending on the ones we get give or take 10 mins. I'm all about saving time missing a few chest per day never hurt me lol.

I would rather play what i like to play than have to swap and play something i dont like to play or not play at all. :p

My reaper is doing just fine in t4s, I wouldn't mind the chill crits backs in pve but still, she is doing just finehttps://discretize.eu/builds/necromancer/power-reaperI don't take her to CMs tho. She doesn't like it not because no one accepts but I can see whatever I do, dps falls behind. Even if it's Nightmare Cm and I'm on night sigil with Scarlet's utility.

Both condi scourge and power reaper are extremely viable in End-game activities as long as you understand how to push the highest DPS out of your spec.As a power reaper I have no problem maintaining highest DPS over my teammates in both organised and non-organised groups. We're in a very good spot at the moment.Know how your rotation works, feel every ability you pop and have your follow up attacks chain eachother without delay.

@Falcon.8713 said:Both condi scourge and power reaper are extremely viable in End-game activities as long as you understand how to push the highest DPS out of your spec.As a power reaper I have no problem maintaining highest DPS over my teammates in both organised and non-organised groups. We're in a very good spot at the moment.Know how your rotation works, feel every ability you pop and have your follow up attacks chain eachother without delay.

If you're always top DPS, either your teammates aren't good, or you know how to position yourself much better.But if you know how to position better, you might be better of playing another DPS spec, that has higher dmg potential.And if the first thing is the case, your teammates might want to practice a bit more...

What I want to say, reaper/necro isn't the best DPS spec. It's still at the bottom of the benchmarks, but is a solid DPS, when your supports aren't that good, due to 50% quickness uptime, 100% crit and permanent 25 might

@Nimon.7840 said:

@Falcon.8713 said:Both condi scourge and power reaper are extremely viable in End-game activities as long as you understand how to push the highest DPS out of your spec.As a power reaper I have no problem maintaining highest DPS over my teammates in both organised and non-organised groups. We're in a very good spot at the moment.Know how your rotation works, feel every ability you pop and have your follow up attacks chain eachother without delay.

+1if reaper gets top dps, then this might say more about the group then the reaperyesterday in 84 daily i, the banner slave, had the topspot, and war is far from a capable dps class in the current state lol

and condi scourge, will never ever be top dps. maybe, with epidemic, but any capable mesmer will pull in the adds and the melee cleaves them instantly so there goes the dps increase on condi scourge

@Xxnecroxx.4039 said:pretty much every class can be used in fractals well, even T100's and challenges etcwell all except necro, never try to play necro into t100's etc, even in some T4's just don't bring a necro

Except Necro is actually really good in fracs, but keep thinking like that.

@Mini Crinny.6190 said:

@Xxnecroxx.4039 said:pretty much every class can be used in fractals well, even T100's and challenges etcwell all except necro, never try to play necro into t100's etc, even in some T4's just don't bring a necro

Scourge is good in fractals. Reaper meh. Reaper doesn't have enough corrupts to take away the boons, enemies apply

@Nimon.7840 said:

@Mini Crinny.6190 said:

@Xxnecroxx.4039 said:pretty much every class can be used in fractals well, even T100's and challenges etcwell all except necro, never try to play necro into t100's etc, even in some T4's just don't bring a necro

You can always just swap in Corrupt Boon for NPNG, if the BS doesn't want to run SPB or the Renegade doesn't want to run Mallyx.

The thing with Necro is and always has been, yes it's very much so viable, the only problem is that it's strengths only come to play in bad groups, while in good groups you can perform better on most if not all other popular DPS specs.

I've had some Reapers do just fine in CM's+T4 when giving them a shot, so in the hands of a competent player there is no reason to discriminate as you can complete the content fine. That's just usually not the case, and people joining on Necro for endgame content is considered a pretty big warning flag.

So while you can use it for that type of content, there is just no reason to, and if you are serious about it, why not run something that's better with less effort.That's usually what it comes down to.

Necros are easy to play, unlike many more super complicated twitch classes you need to be at your A game to do competently to reach potential numbers. If you have to remember long and convoluted rotations to play optimally? Who can do that consistently without flubbing it and lowering their potential?

That is not fun classes to play.

@Nimon.7840 said:

@Mini Crinny.6190 said:

@Xxnecroxx.4039 said:pretty much every class can be used in fractals well, even T100's and challenges etcwell all except necro, never try to play necro into t100's etc, even in some T4's just don't bring a necro

if boons are an issue, you might want to add a bs (bannerslave) warrior, who is he cares will switch to spellbreaker when no pain no gain, or in certain fracs (like twilight oasis, siren reef to name a few)

if the warrior doesn't care /kick there are plenty of warriors aroundtoxic right?but he( or i) the warrior is there for 3 reasons-boonstrip when needed-support (empower allies + banners)-cc

if he refuses to do any of those (like axe/axe+greatsword core) then what's the point in taking the warrior? better off with a third dps

you don't need a necro for that

@"Agrippa Oculus.3726" said:https://discretize.eu/builds

This.

Please realize, any of these builds will perform excellent. Even the "good" builds. The only reason the good builds are considered good and not meta is because they do not fit as perfectly into the meta setup. I can tell you from experience that both Daredevil and Power Reaper can top dps charts with minimal effort.

Power Reaper especially is very new player friendly since it has necromancers self-sustain while pushing very nice damage.

@Nimon.7840 said:

@Mini Crinny.6190 said:

@Xxnecroxx.4039 said:pretty much every class can be used in fractals well, even T100's and challenges etcwell all except necro, never try to play necro into t100's etc, even in some T4's just don't bring a necro

You really need to stop giving advice if you have no experience in the game mode. Power Reaper is a very strong, easy to play and safe power dps for fractals.

@Cyninja.2954 said:

@"Agrippa Oculus.3726" said:

https://discretize.eu/builds

@Nimon.7840 said:

@Mini Crinny.6190 said:

@Xxnecroxx.4039 said:pretty much every class can be used in fractals well, even T100's and challenges etcwell all except necro, never try to play necro into t100's etc, even in some T4's just don't bring a necro

but as someone else said, yes you CAN play power reaper, but you can play another class and easily get more value from it, more damage, boons, utility, etc. necro brings nothing that useful to the table that you cant just have another class do and still have it outperform the necro. unless you are in a bad group and you play necro PERFECTLY you will be lacking in damage.

@Xxnecroxx.4039 said:

@Cyninja.2954 said:

@"Agrippa Oculus.3726" said:

https://discretize.eu/builds

@Nimon.7840 said:

@Mini Crinny.6190 said:

@Xxnecroxx.4039 said:pretty much every class can be used in fractals well, even T100's and challenges etcwell all except necro, never try to play necro into t100's etc, even in some T4's just don't bring a necro

Yes, and if all players were skilled enough to play their classes well, this would not be an issue.

Given the average skill level of most players in T4 (and even some on CMs), I guarantee you a good power reaper will outperform all of them. I've seen Power Reapers outperform good Dragonhunters. The class is insanely easy to play. Again, the only reason it's not considered meta is because other classes are just slightly better (in a good players hands).

The same goes for Daredevil. A good Daredevil will outperform a decent Dragonhunter or other dps. Let's not even mention weaver.

@Cyninja.2954 said:

@Xxnecroxx.4039 said:

@Cyninja.2954 said:

@"Agrippa Oculus.3726" said:

https://discretize.eu/builds

@Nimon.7840 said:

@Mini Crinny.6190 said:

@Xxnecroxx.4039 said:pretty much every class can be used in fractals well, even T100's and challenges etcwell all except necro, never try to play necro into t100's etc, even in some T4's just don't bring a necro

may be because necro is the only profession that get affected by Frailty twice and the result is losing 25% of his LF and HP

2 other guildmates and me (1 of them druid) always run a T4 party composed by 4 condi scourges and one druid (or firebrand rarely).We love that comp, it surely takes a bit longer than standard meta comp but it's way WAY safer.

@Cyninja.2954 said:

@Xxnecroxx.4039 said:

@Cyninja.2954 said:

@"Agrippa Oculus.3726" said:

https://discretize.eu/builds

@Nimon.7840 said:

@Mini Crinny.6190 said:

@Xxnecroxx.4039 said:pretty much every class can be used in fractals well, even T100's and challenges etcwell all except necro, never try to play necro into t100's etc, even in some T4's just don't bring a necro

Sorry but: this should never happen.And reaper isn't as easy as you might think.

A friend of mine is support chrono main. He can even do the fresh air weaver rotation (that's much more complicated than reapers rotation in my opinion) yet he barely gets to 23k DPS on the golem with reaper.

If you say, that in pug groups a well played reaper is better than a mediocre played weaver (just an example).You assume here a very well played reaper. But how do you know, that the reaper player is good? #nooffensAnd let's be honest. A mediocre played reaper is worse than a mediocre played dragon hunter.

U need cc? Just save the elite trap on DHU need cc on reaper? Yes reaper has more cc than DH, but it's harder to get to these cc skills and use them properly in you rotation.

Reaper isn't as noob-friendly as you might think. Especially with the most recent nerfs to sustain and the most recent changes with soul barbs.Also knowing when (and especially how) to destroy your minions so they don't get you infight is a big point on playing necro.

Yes I might not have played fractals for 2 months now. But literally nothing changed for the most classes since I last played fracs.

The same goes for Daredevil. A good Daredevil will outperform a decent Dragonhunter or other dps. Let's not even mention weaver.

@Nimon.7840 said:

@Cyninja.2954 said:

@Xxnecroxx.4039 said:

@Cyninja.2954 said:

@"Agrippa Oculus.3726" said:

https://discretize.eu/builds

@Nimon.7840 said:

@Mini Crinny.6190 said:

@Xxnecroxx.4039 said:pretty much every class can be used in fractals well, even T100's and challenges etcwell all except necro, never try to play necro into t100's etc, even in some T4's just don't bring a necro

The same goes for Daredevil. A good Daredevil will outperform a decent Dragonhunter or other dps. Let's not even mention weaver.

I just have not played guild wars 2 for about 2 living story episodes, im waiting till necro is not shit tier, since I literally have pretty much all my stuff invested in necro and it feels like shit. im just saving up the content I get to play for when (I should say IF) ever condi necro is actually good again since necro is all about undeath, disease and shit so why is it not top in Condi numbers? I get it if it is not top in power dmg but it should be COMPETETIVE for it while say warrior + (insert elite spec here) can be top power damage or even ele due to the nature of ele being a glass cannon. right now necro excels in nothing and is near if not bottom of the barrel of everything, other then boon corrupt but there is boon stripping in existance to

@Nimon.7840 said:

@Cyninja.2954 said:

@Xxnecroxx.4039 said:

@Cyninja.2954 said:

@"Agrippa Oculus.3726" said:

https://discretize.eu/builds

@Nimon.7840 said:

@Mini Crinny.6190 said:

@Xxnecroxx.4039 said:pretty much every class can be used in fractals well, even T100's and challenges etcwell all except necro, never try to play necro into t100's etc, even in some T4's just don't bring a necro

The same goes for Daredevil. A good Daredevil will outperform a decent Dragonhunter or other dps. Let's not even mention weaver.

Yes, so let me get this strait:

• https://discretize.eu/ , basically the snowcrows for fractals with even overlapping players explains and names the necromancer good (1 tier below meta)
• there is speed clear fractal videos on youtube clearly showing power reaper being top dps or very very close as far back as 8 months and more (before the buffs in the last 6 months patches)
• people who clear fractals daily as well as CMs (like myself) have seen reaper perform on the level I have explained which correlates with what high skill players say

Yet you, a self admitted not fractal T4 active player, know better. Reaper was strong 8 months ago, it has been buffed since then. I'm sorry, I won't waste time on convincing forum warriors of facts. If you want to stay in your little self-pity bubble, that's fine by me. It is not reflected in the class.

The reason DH is superior to reaper has hardly to do with cc... to even suggest this. Sad. DH is superior to Reaper due to: reflects, stability, aegis on demand and higher burst. CC is not even part of the equation. DH is among the classes with the highest ability to adapt currently, if people make the effort.

Long story short: i cleared all the fractals lvl 99 and 100 included on my power reaper just fine. For super bad teams or siren's reef there's scourge and his crazy good support. I did not do lvl 100 and 99 CM, so can't talk there, but i imagine this is prolly also people blowing things outta proportion.

Necro works in high end fractals, Period.

@Cyninja.2954 said:

@Nimon.7840 said:

@Cyninja.2954 said:

@Xxnecroxx.4039 said:

@Cyninja.2954 said:

@"Agrippa Oculus.3726" said:

https://discretize.eu/builds

@Nimon.7840 said:

@Mini Crinny.6190 said:

@Xxnecroxx.4039 said:pretty much every class can be used in fractals well, even T100's and challenges etcwell all except necro, never try to play necro into t100's etc, even in some T4's just don't bring a necro

The same goes for Daredevil. A good Daredevil will outperform a decent Dragonhunter or other dps. Let's not even mention weaver.

• https://discretize.eu/
  , basically the snowcrows for fractals with even overlapping players explains and names the necromancer good (1 tier below meta)

Actually it's 2 tiers below meta, if you'd look correctly. It's only mentioned as a good build. Right after the meta and great builds.

Basically it's just snowcrows build copied! Not even having the latest build. (I don't want to make their site bad)Great let me quote from their site:

"However, large amounts of self-produced Vulnerability, Quickness and Might will allow this build to perform well as a "solo carry" build that suffers less from underperforming teammates and heavily rewards a skilled user." - but if you have decent teammates, other classes will do better than reaper.

"The Power Reaper build, while not one of the strongest in terms of DPS, is a versatile build that can modify itself to suit a variety of scenarios without many issues."

They even point out a bloodmagic variant, but don't mention that

1. This will let you dmg drop by a noticeable amount
2. Without mentioning the wells trait

But good reapers will know. So let's not care about that right? - wrong! People asking how certain builds are doing either aren't mains of that class or look into high level play of these classes for the first time.So you have to assume they aren't reaper god's.But you are comparing those very good players to average players, assuming that all Necro players are automatically necro gods.

• there is speed clear fractal videos on youtube clearly showing power reaper being top dps or very very close as far back as 8 months and more (before the buffs in the last 6 months patches)

Didn't find a single video, where reaper was taken for Speedclear and was top DPS.

• people who clear fractals daily as well as CMs (like myself) have seen reaper perform on the level I have explained which correlates with what high skill players say

Yet you, a self admitted not fractal T4 active player, know better. Reaper was strong 8 months ago, it has been buffed since then. I'm sorry, I won't waste time on convincing forum warriors of facts. If you want to stay in your little self-pity bubble, that's fine by me. It is not reflected in the class.

Buffs for reaper?August 2018 reaper reciever like a 10% overall dmg buff.After that:are you thinking at the buffs, that were made to compensate for the dmg loss reaper had, from getting dmg nerfs, which ended up reaper doing almost the same DPS than before?Sorry but you got no point here.

The reason DH is superior to reaper has hardly to do with cc... to even suggest this. Sad. DH is superior to Reaper due to: reflects, stability, aegis on demand and higher burst. CC is not even part of the equation. DH is among the classes with the highest ability to adapt currently, if people make the effort.

I was only pointing out one strength that reaper has over DH, as an example.Now even you are saying that DH is stronger than reaper xD.That's pretty inconsistent of you.

And I never said, that reaper is bad. I said that there are (way) better classes even right now (power reaper seems to be in the best spot since hot launch)Quote from discretize: "The Power Dragonhunter is currently a good and easy to play build for fractals."

If You compare that to the reaper description, you have to be way smarter when playing reaper.

So again: it's not the easiest class to play. But. I think I'm gonna stop discussing with you here and now.As you showed you have only very little knowledge about the balance that happened since your mentioned time.

@Nimon.7840 said:

@Cyninja.2954 said:

@Nimon.7840 said:

@Cyninja.2954 said:

@Xxnecroxx.4039 said:

@Cyninja.2954 said:

@"Agrippa Oculus.3726" said:

https://discretize.eu/builds

@Nimon.7840 said:

@Mini Crinny.6190 said:

@Xxnecroxx.4039 said:pretty much every class can be used in fractals well, even T100's and challenges etcwell all except necro, never try to play necro into t100's etc, even in some T4's just don't bring a necro

The same goes for Daredevil. A good Daredevil will outperform a decent Dragonhunter or other dps. Let's not even mention weaver.

• https://discretize.eu/
  , basically the snowcrows for fractals with even overlapping players explains and names the necromancer good (1 tier below meta)

1. This will let you dmg drop by a noticeable amount
2. Without mentioning the wells trait

Want me to start listing the downsides of the other classes? I never said reaper was better than DH. Go through what I actually said please.

• there is speed clear fractal videos on youtube clearly showing power reaper being top dps or very very close as far back as 8 months and more (before the buffs in the last 6 months patches)

So you can't youtube. Literally the first 2 videos of typing in the following: gw2 fractal speed clear cm reaper

are both from 99 and 100 cm, both runs sub 10 minutes, both runs reaper is either tops dps or very close behind the soulbeast (try beating a soulbeast on dps in fractals on any class), both videos from 8 months ago pre buffs.

• people who clear fractals daily as well as CMs (like myself) have seen reaper perform on the level I have explained which correlates with what high skill players say

Yet you, a self admitted not fractal T4 active player, know better. Reaper was strong 8 months ago, it has been buffed since then. I'm sorry, I won't waste time on convincing forum warriors of facts. If you want to stay in your little self-pity bubble, that's fine by me. It is not reflected in the class.

Yeah, try again. I'm sure looking at only the benchmark numbers is a great way to judge the performance increase outside of actual real scenarios. Even IF it was only a 10% buff, which it was not since a lot of quality of life improvements and self buff uptime are not reflected in the benchmarks (since those are done with max buffs all the time). Nice try though, shows you have not been playing the class for a while and definitely not consistently for over 3/4 of a year.

@Nimon.7840 said:

@Cyninja.2954 said:

The reason DH is superior to reaper has hardly to do with cc... to even suggest this. Sad. DH is superior to Reaper due to: reflects, stability, aegis on demand and higher burst. CC is not even part of the equation. DH is among the classes with the highest ability to adapt currently, if people make the effort.

You know, I could go through this thread and link to every time I mentioned that reaper was in a great spot and only outperformed by other classes meta wise due to their versatility and how they fit better into the meta, but why bother? Anyone actually reading the thread will have read that and notice how you have basically skimmed over all of that.

@Nimon.7840 said:And I never said, that reaper is bad. I said that there are (way) better classes even right now (power reaper seems to be in the best spot since hot launch)Quote from discretize: "The Power Dragonhunter is currently a good and easy to play build for fractals."

If You compare that to the reaper description, you have to be way smarter when playing reaper.

So again: it's not the easiest class to play. But. I think I'm gonna stop discussing with you here and now.As you showed you have only very little knowledge about the balance that happened since your mentioned time.

Yeah, except that DH, while easy for decent players, goes down like a wet noodle if played poorly. Something new players will have to face. Reaper does not, so my argument as far as ease of play stands WITH the added fact that if your supports are mediocre, a reaper will outperform every dps in the group.

You are right though, no point in continuing this argument. Maybe you'd rather actually play the class a bit instead of just assuming things about it or going off of pure benchmark results.