Anchoku.8142

Just for fun, let's try again for a land-spear for melee bleed application as an alternate to scepter.

If mobility is a concern, you can add Flesh Wurm and/or Spectral Walk, then practice rotating between front line and back line combat. Don't over extend yourself or you'll be bagged. You are part of a team so tag in and out.

^ All good points If Arenanet could rework how barrier-sharing depends upon attributes and traits to drive support builds to lower dps and broaden the amount of support accordingly, that could free up dedicated dps builds for some fine tuning of traits and skills. My original thought was to make barrier-sharing scale with both healing and concentration, or another attribute that lowers Scouge dps, and refine the elite spec' for a smoother, more balanced range between support and damage output.

Maybe it is avarice but a condi dps Scourge with miniscule, short-duration barrier-sharing is one end of the spectrum I would like to see, while a Scourge with Blood Magic heals and larger, longer lasting barriers but half, or less, a competitive dps is at the other end of the spectrum. Scourge does not scale as much as I like between support and damage, though there are other professions with the same, or less opportunity costs.

Barrier scales with healing power. Is it scaling enough? Also, should barrier duration also scale? If so, what should it scale with? There are several options such as concentration, vitality, toughness, or something else? The thought here is to further differentiate and improve a support-Scourge without making it trash and allow good dps on a non-support build.

@starlinvf.1358 Nice explanation! I like it. One thing to add to your discussion on equipment stat's is that the 3-stat equipment has higher major and higher minor stat's than 4-stat so, if a 4th stat does not materially-contribute to your build and use, stick with 3 stats for higher peak performance. Also of note is that a 3-stat minor is not far below a 4-stat major. 3-stat major = 100% (max possible) 4-stat major = 86.4% 3-stat minor = 72% 4-stat minor = 47.2% (Because there is no 2x of a single stat, players are forced to accept their allocation among different attributes.) Berserker's is one example where having a 4th stat subtracts dps. Viper's is an example of needing a specific minor while avoiding a stat that does not contribute to dps. Bringer's (weapons) are an example of taking 2 less-desired stat's to get 1 highly desired. You might be wondering why you cannot have a 4-stat, Power-Ferocity-precision-power combination. There are equipment stat combinations that are not available precisely because they are too strong, while there are lots of 4-stat combinations that essentially add a small amount of sustain in exchange for peak dps. Others are just there seemingly to bait newbies.

Aim for the Ascended or Legendary numbers after exotic. For perspective, Ascended/Legendary is slightly better than exotic so it is no great loss if you only have exotic equipment.

Personally, I would start with Guardian. For exploring PvE and evolving to elite professions, it is quite good and always in demand.

The main point is to play something besides Necro, learn it and enjoy PvE on another profession.

^ This is the problem with PvE in GW2. The AI is not good enough so encounters are scripted and include puzzles (mechanics) that, once memorized, decrease the challenge a lot. Since maybe a year after launch, my wish is for Arenanet to work on AI to be more like a real player's and for the aggro formula to be changed to give more weight to dps, support and overall sustain rather than overweight Toughness. Ironically, by valuing Toughness so highly, not only does it make pets/minions more supportive, it also enables a "tank" role in a game that was supposed to be anti-triad.

Power Minionmancer is the easiest to use in open world. The minions get aggro and usually hold it for you. This allows you to learn combat skills with less pressure. It also allows you to use any equipment you have on hand because minions do not scale off of your equipment stat's. Learn to support minions and use their active skills. New players can do lots of things in open world with help from minions... except jumping puzzles.

For roaming WvW, especially solo, you should use a PvP-like build. There are plenty of posts here in the Necro sub-forum with suggested builds and build discussions. Try some different builds for comparison to zerging and roaming and you will see they must be very different to obtain decent result for their intended use. Also, practicing a rotation on golems can only get you so far and can actually teach you bad habits if you are not careful.

It's called a balance "split."

Working as intended 😁

I do not think this is strictly true. A tank's sole purpose is to control mob position. Other players can do buffing, healing, debuff and dps. However, hate-management can vary between games because of how the game calculates it. Other games I have played take into account dps, healing and other factors where GW2 only seems to rely on toughness. I played FFXI when it came out on PS2 and it took a brutal view on aggro generation and removal: * Healing anyone produced aggro according to the heal amount. If an Ele in GW2 dropped a massive AoE heal, the formula in FFXI would focus the boss entirely on punishing the Ele. * Pure dps professions could steal hate from the tank simply by doing too much damage so they often had to meter out the dps instead of maximizing it. * Tanks had to generate hate using skills and keep holding aggro by avoiding or reducing imcoming damage. GW2 would take conditions like Taunt to add a large amount of aggro, boons like Protection to reduce loss of aggro resulting from taking damage and damage avoidance skills like Mesmer's sword skill, Blurred Frenzy. If a mob was unable to sufficiently punish a player, the player would retain that much aggro and the boss' attention. The aggro calculation in GW2 is pretty simple. The "tank" has only two things to consider: high toughness in the build and ways to avoid or prevent control effects from disabling the ability to control mob position. With that said, Arenanet has added wandering and movement skills to bosses that make controlling position difficult or impossible. Still, toughness rules for simpler mobs and bosses.

Agree with both Dadnir and KrHome; SoU is potent enough in competitive game modes to justify the long cast time. For PvE, I do wish it could restore defeated players to the downed state as an additional function, though. I agree the long cast time takes the utility's value away for PvE groups.

IMO, the only reason Reaper cannot tank is because it is still subject to control effects and, therefore, cannot reliably control mob positioning. All Necro spec's are susceptible to control effects by design. Toughness and sustain are not what I consider a problem but lack of good anti-contol effect skills and traits is, and I do not mind at all. Plenty of other professions are easily capable of holding aggro and holding position. It is Death Magic and Carapace that I consider poorly thought out.

Although the probability seems extremely low, a boon-generator build is the only gap left that I see as significant. Necro pays a large opportunity cost for concentration with little or nothing to show for it. An elite specialization able to be competitive in terms of damage and support looks impossible, given core Necromancer's trait lines and skills, but maybe I will be surprised. Resistance and Resolution could be a fit for some crazy boon-build, though, and Arenanet may add new boons, conditions and control effects with the ex-pac, too.

Agreed. They, too, offer both support and dps.

This is a wish list of mine. Staff, Necrotic Grasp - increase chance of a finisher to 50% without Soul Marks or 100% with in PvE only Mark of Blood - increase bleed duration to 15 seconds in PvE only Chillblain's - increase poison duration to 15 seconds in PvE only Putrid Mark - additionally transfers 1 condition from up to 5 allies to the target in PvE or 0 conditions from allies in WvW or PvP. Reaper's Mark - additionally creates a Light combo field in all game modes or a Fire combo field with the trait Soul Marks. Main Hand dagger Necrotic Slash, Necrotic Stab, Necrotic Bite cleave is increased from 2 targets to 3 targets. MH or OH dagger Quickening Thirst additionally increases damage by 15% in PvE only. Off Hand dagger Enfeebling Blood bleed duration increased from 10 seconds to 15 in PvE only Plague Signet - change the passive to increase condition damage by 10% for Necromancer only in PvE (not Reaper or Scourge) and change the active to instantly gather 1 condition from the Necro and up to 4 allies to a target. Traits Spiteful Talisman additionally doubles Spinal Shivers and Lesser Spinal Shivers critical hit damage to targets with Defiance Banshee's Wail - war horn skill recharge reduction is increased from 20% to 33% in PvE only. Blood Bank - change this trait to modify the Vampyric Presence trait by adding barrier conversion of over-healing for allies given VP. Furious Demise - Change this trait to give 300 expertise when in shroud and 150 expertise when out of shroud. Split the trait for each game mode. Master of Corruption additionally reduces cool down of skills which transfer conditions by 10% and reduces cast time of skills which transfer conditions by 50%. Master of Corruption also adds Mark of Blood to each target of Life Blast. Carapace - make this exempt from aggro calculations. Death Nova - when a minion's active skill is on cool down, attempting to use it again will destroy the minion and create a Death Nova.

A nerf to Scourge in PvE seems most likely to me; possibly to make barrier-sharing and condition dps builds more mutually exclusive.

What do you predict will happen with regards to Necro in the next balance update?

Healers are not required for any group content. Neither are tanks. Raids and fractals can be completed without these functions. Consider that Druid and Chronomancer were both created as support to facilitate content completion only after HoT release and any profession can load up on toughness for boss positioning, however inefficiently, and the difference between triad systems and GW2 is clear. Healing, buffing and tanking helps but are not required.

GW2 was designed to allow people to do everything alone, together, if that makes sense. Compare that to MMOs with profession systems dependent on each other to complete content. If tanks, support and dps were distinct professions, players would be forced to rely on others to fill out a mandatory group composition. GW2 has no such strict comp formula so groups are more ad hoc with much less profession dependencies.

I look at animations as pre-cast, channel, after-cast, and direction/orientation indicators. Each is characteristic of a profession skill.