My first montage! Duels & roaming w/ core Necro and Reaper

[Shroud.2307]

If you'd like to know any of the builds used in the video you can visit my build page here. Curses Reaper, Spite Reaper, Dreadmancer and Terrormancer all made an appearance.

I'd also like to state as a disclaimer; a montage is something I've been wanting to make for years. It's just a goal I wanted to achieve and I'm happy I finally managed! My game play is pretty average but, I hope if it's not impressive it's at least entertaining or inspiring (:

Thanks for watching, it means a lot to me!

[Gamble.4580]

Good fun! Love the core parts butI click for the reaper! Are you Na or Eu?

[EremiteAngel.9765]

Personally I've largely placed Necro roaming play-stlyes into 3 general categories:

• Aggressive Play-style (attempts to seize the initiative from the start to the end of a fight)
• Defensive Play-style (passively reacts to opponents' moves before striking at the end)
• Balanced Play-style (mixture of both Agg & Def)

Examples of Aggressive Play-style would be like Holts and Solovet.Holts excelled at kiting.Solovet excelled at setting up combos.Their play-styles were aggressive and they like seizing the initiative in fights.But neither gave me the impression that they were particularly good at timing/reacting.Largely because they don't have to as they are constantly putting opponents on the back-foot.

I would categorize you as under Balanced Play-style.You are one of the very few Necros I saw consistently doing the right things at the right time.You may not be as flashy as Holts or as pressurizing as Solovet.But your decision making is excellent.

Thank you for sharing the video because now I can add to my list of excellent Necro Roamers:SpellofIniquity excelled at timing.Fabulous ?

Also a shout out to Hobo for his excellent Scourge roaming videos which have been very impressive.Although I'm still unsure of where he would fit into my 3 broad categories of play-style as many of his clips are group fights with his guild.Probably somewhere in between Aggressive and Balanced Play-style?

And to my very first mentor Ascii who still holds the title of most graceful play-style from a Necro roamer ever (Balanced Play-style).

[Etterwyn.5263]

Awesome! And pray tell, what are those fabulous songs?

[Shroud.2307]

@Gamble.4580 said:Good fun! Love the core parts butI click for the reaper! Are you Na or Eu?

I am NA, currently on Maguuma. And thank you (:

@EremiteAngel.9765 said:

Aw, thank you so much! I appreciate your attention to detail :D.

@"Etterwyn.5263" said:Awesome! And pray tell, what are those fabulous songs?

In the order they appear:"Nocturn" by Tonebox"Jupiter" by FM-84"iLLume" by DJ Ten"Keep Shining" by Flamingosis

[mazut.4296]

how does all your enemies die instantly, skipping downed state???

[ZDragon.3046]

Hmmm Hybrid Core... i like it. I do wish your cele/ grieve combo was a option in spvp i have always wanted to run cele necro for a while now but its just to low on the damage stat end. But your mix of grieving seems to add just enough punch to provide pressure. Good job.

[JusticeRetroHunter.7684]

@ZDragon.3046 said:Hmmm Hybrid Core... i like it. I do wish your cele/ grieve combo was a option in spvp i have always wanted to run cele necro for a while now but its just to low on the damage stat end. But your mix of grieving seems to add just enough punch to provide pressure. Good job.

Cele in spvp is terrible because of the gimped stats at lvl 78 exotic.

But in WVW cele is actually pretty decent...as it gives the same as berserker stats...with the exception of precision and power which need to be facilitated with traiting for it (precision is not really an issue, and you can solve the power deficiet with foods, utilities and traits.)

I’ve ran power cele reaper in WVW zerg, and I’ve basically pulled the same DPS as zerker reapers (around 7-11kdps)

Only thing I found about cele is that you don’t need the other stats. Condi healing power and even vit and toughness arnt really all that special in a zerg setting. They are nice to have and can help you survive, but they don’t solve fundamental issues that will cause you to die.

[KrHome.1920]

@JusticeRetroHunter.7684 said:But in WVW cele is actually pretty decent...as it gives the same as berserker stats...with the exception of precision and powerNowhere near it does. You are confusing berserker with marauder (cele and marauder have the same ferocity stats) and even the latter deals a lot more damage than celestial.

Cele: 639 on all attributes

This results in:1639 Power35% crit chance193% crit damage

Berserker: 1381 Power, 961 Precision, 961 Ferocity

This results in:2557 Power51% crit chance214% crit damage

Non-critical hits on berserker gear deal 56% more damage.Critical hits on berserker gear deal 74% more damage.And you critically hit a lot more often on berserker.

Marauder gear deals about 50% more damage than celestial.

Celestial hits like a wet noodle on necro (tested it by myself, you can not kill a significant amount of encounters). It is only viable in zergs as you summarize the damage of multiple players which causes overloading effects.

[JusticeRetroHunter.7684]

@KrHome.1920 said:

@"JusticeRetroHunter.7684" said:But in WVW cele is actually pretty decent...as it gives the same as berserker stats...with the exception of precision and powerNowhere near it does. You are confusing berserker with marauder (cele and marauder have the same ferocity stats) and even the latter deals a lot more damage than celestial.

Cele: 639 on all attributes

This results in:1639 Power35% crit chance193% crit damage

Berserker: 1381 Power, 961 Precision, 961 Ferocity

This results in:2557 Power51% crit chance214% crit damage

Non-critical hits on berserker gear deal

56%

more damage.Critical hits on berserker gear deal

74%

more damage.And you critically hit a lot more often on berserker.

Marauder gear deals about 50% more damage than celestial.

Celestial hits like a wet noodle on necro (tested it by myself, you can not kill a significant amount of encounters). It is only viable in zergs as you summarize the damage of multiple players which causes overloading effects.

Ya I mean, Like I said, you have to facilitate the drop in precision and power by focusing them with traits, sigils, runes etc. in a zerg setting crit cap is 47%...so you just need to find like 10% more precision from somewhere. If fury isn’t available to you then it becomes a lot more difficult to fill that gap...and your forced to use runes like Rune of the thief, precision amulets. And precision food too...things that could otherwise be filled with power to help close the power gap. This is why in zerg setting it makes sense, but in a roaming setting it doesn’t (I’ve roamed on cele power reaper too and it’s still pretty good...but there are stronger options)

Ya I mean I run raids with my guild all the time and I’ve had many ample data points on cele reaper dPS. Although on average it’s less than the potential of zerk reaper dPS (which can go as high damage in cele is still good enough to basically one shot people.

Anyway, your calculations on the stats you shown are in a vacuum in which runes, sigils and food don’t exist. Adding Rune of the eagle for example will put you at about 210% ferocity.

Edit: Here is just an example build of how far cele stats can bring you to berserker stats (just look at the stat page only, the other pages is just me throwing whatever traits and skills) http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vRAQRBIhdu1JHNQjNY3mgfNA9mY5XwgSaBgPA1TYMEsiXiNxrIA-jlRNQBAY/BsofoLKBnj6PZ8EAUDlfBAOAOv6Vv6Bnf+5nf+518zP/8zP/8zP/8SBs1QL-w

Now, I went overboard and made everything full on celestial, just to see how far it can go...but ya, on a build like this, just compare it to a berserker set and you'll see it brings you almost exactly to Berserk gear. As you'll notice in the berserk build linked above, Bloodlust and Might aren't included, just to show that berserkers set with power fully specced out, runes/food/utilities Will reach nearly 2.9k Power without might/bloodlust, while celestials can sit at roughly the same amount.

I'll reapeat, this is full on celestial with nearly the same amount of offensive stats as Berserkers.So ya it's completely reasonable why, in MY tests, my DPS was almost exactly the same as every other berserk reaper.

You'll notice that a full on berserk reaper can go and hit 3.8k power, and has an additional 20% ferocity...so a reaper can top out at like 20k dps in wvw setting, while celestials will cap out at around 15k. Again i repeat that this is still an absurd amount of damage, so you still ONE shot people with shroud 4.

So to bring it all together, celestial is not complete garbage like people believe if you just spec for it correctly. Like the OP proves in the montage it's possible to move things around and switch up some gears and traits to still get a build with damage as sufficient as meta, but with additional stats that give you sustain.

[ZDragon.3046]

@JusticeRetroHunter.7684 said:

@ZDragon.3046 said:Hmmm Hybrid Core... i like it. I do wish your cele/ grieve combo was a option in spvp i have always wanted to run cele necro for a while now but its just to low on the damage stat end. But your mix of grieving seems to add just enough punch to provide pressure. Good job.

Cele in spvp is terrible because of the kitten stats at lvl 78 exotic.

But in WVW cele is actually pretty decent...as it gives the same as berserker stats...with the exception of precision and power which need to be facilitated with traiting for it (precision is not really an issue, and you can solve the power deficiet with foods, utilities and traits.)

I’ve ran power cele reaper in WVW zerg, and I’ve basically pulled the same DPS as zerker reapers (around 7-11kdps)

Only thing I found about cele is that you don’t need the other stats. Condi healing power and even vit and toughness arnt really all that special in a zerg setting. They are nice to have and can help you survive, but they don’t solve fundamental issues that will cause you to die.

Well i know why cele cant be topped out in spvp i was there when ele's abused cele like no ones business and to think about passive sword weaver or good d/d weaver players using cele they would NEVER DIE like literally. Although I do think the offensive portion of Cele could be boosted a by a good bit to make it a viable choice for quite a few classes and elite specs. That said this build does it perfectly only added offensive stats to what is mostly a cele build instead of rolling 100% full cele. I can totally respect it.