Update - January 5, 2012

Deathly Swarm actually isn't that bad. Keep in mind, Necros can easily reach 18/19 death magic, and at that point DS has a good +10-15 damage over Chain Lightning. Plus it has an even BIGGER AoE. Cold damage also, on average, seems to be the one which exploits the most weaknesses and faces the least special resistances. Titans, destroyers, etc all have a base -20 armor vs ice, which is about equal to a free 25% penetration, and I can't think of any big name enemies that have +20 vs ice.

The main problem around making a full damage build is that you don't have 2 Deathly Swarms to use, while air eles had both invoke and chain lightning. You could use tricks like EBSoW though, but then there is the difficulty that 2s cast time DS means you basically can't do anything else. Not that this is a huge deal in comparison to Air eles (who didn't have anything else worth doing), but not being able to exploit death magic/secondaries without dilluting your damage is annoying.

The three hits are separated in time much more, but they also hit farther enemies. Deathly Swarm hits In The area while chain lightning nearby.

Considering how much HM enemies love to run around and kite, taking 1 and 2 more seconds for the other two hits is better than not hitting at all because they moved away right before the skill activation finished.

If you also bring minions, they'll likely won't move away far from in the area, distracted by them.

Double Dragon is amazing with a Strike As One Ranger. Moving the other copy of DD around on the pet is insane. This would be great for Sins calling their shadow steps too. A lot of fun applications to try out for sure and it works wonderfully in RA.

Some results of initial testing:
- ran around NM with my mesmer (running echoed DD+ ebon escape and ward) with a derv team; most of the mobs melted within a few seconds (180+ dps against master of damage). HM, on the other hand, was not pretty to watch. Even with prot, ST, and panic, I was having problems with my group surviving, mainly because the damage of DD goes down 30% (against foes in vizunah). I'm not sure the PBAoE skills will be useful for anything aside from caster spikes in SCs.

-Buffing shatterstone when the rest of water magic is so pathetically weak damage-wise is a rather odd move; even with spamming shatterstone, snow storm, ice spikes, and rust, I can't even match the DPS of an esurger (which is saying something).

-Heroes DO NOT use use DD AT ALL, which is a shame because I would love to mimicry the skill with starburst.

-Unsteady ground offers some decent AoE shutdown and damage, and works well with RoJ

It's a pity, most of these skills will go unused simply because non-elite skills of eles are extremely weak, and were barely touched aside from cast times. It is nice to see Mist form changed from offering a form of self-immunity to actually supporting the team. If only the other skills were changed...

Discord might be crap aoe but atleast it has the right attribute. For nice amount of damage with Icy veins you need to spec high in soulreaping. Normally all my heroes have around 9 in SR just for nrg.

The best part of IV is its pure bar and attribute compression. Its SR attribute lets N/Rt healers take it to help speed up runs. It also helps that the restoration line has so many limited elites. 15 SR provides so much energy and damage it ain't even funny. IV wiith 15 SR = 90 initial cold damage and 110 AoE upon death. IV may have +3 recharge vs Discord but it has zero conditions in order for it to have effect.

Now you're giving me insane ideas, as I run SaO on my main. But I'd need another person for DD seen heroes are unable to use it (maybe a melee hero would but meh)...and i'm talking about pve, probably you were only talking about pvp as you named RA?

But do they spam IV?

Bring four necro heroes, three with Discord and one with IV. The IV hero can also bring Putrid Bile and Putrid Explosion for more AoE goodness, if you care to micro-manage them, too - i got bored, and stick with only IV now.
Cast EVAS to ball the mobs up, followed by AP. Manually micro IV on the same target.
Call YMLAD.
Discord blows the target up, triggering IV, while two domination mesmer heroes spam ESurge, Unnatural Sig and other AoE goodies.
If the group is still alive and balled up, repeat the process.
Kill the single stragglers with Discord, fueled by your AP and YMLAD.
You don't really need to fill all four necro bars with rit heals or monk prots, since minions from four necros + spirits from the last hero will soak up enough damage, so you're free to bring some more damage yourself, plus Fallback! on the mesmers and the rit.

I really don't get the all Discord-hate that's going on Guru lately - sure, it sucks balls if you don't run a caller bar, fully relying on your heroes to fuel Discord, and/or can't manage to call proper targets, keep them hexed/conditioned etc. But it's fast, stable and reliable if you can manage it, and it certainly is much more entertaining than spamming spirits. If your AP or IV get stripped, it's your fault - bring a cover hex. If you don't manage to kill your target within the duration of AP, it's your fault - should have waited for heroes to be in Discord's range before calling.

HM missions, vanquishes and weird stuff - easy. Getting 14~16 min to vq MQ, without using the optimal path, without pulling at all (just rushing into mobs), with going for all the chests, popping all Onis, and so on. And having only two copies of Fallback! at 6 Command each.
HM FoW, no cons - easy, though took me longer than it should, as i'm not familiar with FoW.
NM DoA, no cons - easy, except for Mallyx, obviously; Foundry needed Panic and Ineptitude instead of two ESurges; not a time record, as i'm not familiar with DoA either, but i had really no problems at all. Gonna try HM when i have a while.


Onto the update, now. The reduced damage of PvP Mistrust is actually a good thing, and mesmers should be hit a bit more, both in PvP and PvE (my main is a mesmer, my secondary RA toon is a mesmer, too - and still). All spirits should be balanced down, not just SoS, while ranger's spirits should be summoned much, much faster, as the rit's.
The reduced damage of Spirit Rift and the armor-dependancy of Ancestors' Rage make some vanquishes easier, particularly of Haiju Lagoon. Back when i was working on my vq title, i did have some problems with Tin Dao, until i pre-cast spirits, pre-cast Prot Spirit on myself, cast PI on the boss and quickly summoned the spirits, having heroes flagged back all the time. One of the easiest ways to deal with nasty caster bosses with strong AoE.

In regard to ele changes, i couldn't really care less, as i don't have an elementalist (save a mule that's too old for me to delete her easily and a LDoA character, who doesn't care about the changes at all) and never use ele heroes unless bringing Zhed is necessary for a mission. That said, i hope that some ele mobs have become harder in HM thanks to this update, though i yet have to meet one.

Discord is not a bad skill, my major complaint is that it is single-targeting. If ESurge hits 4 targets in the area, I believe ESurge can dish out more damage than discord.

Discord is certainly viable and in some situations it may even be optimal but I don't bring minions nowadays so I don't use discordway.

And it is not always your fault if AP or IV get stripped before you can place a cover hex. It is a fault of the discord build if another build can be provide the same or better performance without this added inconvenience.

Whenever I bring discord heroes, there's two things I always bring with mysef: a skill that deals conditions unconditionally, and a quick recharge hex.
Once an enemy has a condition and a hex on it, they quickly gang up and show no mercy to that target, spamming discord like crazy.

I no longer bring them that much, though. Since I have the HoM filled, I have mor fun trying stuff, like bow paragons, full-elementalist parties, Doublecast elementalists tagging along pressure dervishes...

Last time I checked they use it, but they seem to target enemies.
Double Dragon targets the ally closest to the target enemy. And so, if there's no ally, they won't use it.
I've tried with a dervish, and at least Sousuke liked to use Double Dragon on her while she was attacking with a scythe. But it wasn't as often as the skill recharges.
Weird enough, they won't use it at all on the training dummies in the Isle of the Nameless or Istan.
I don't know why.

You just reminded me of the second major problem with discord. In counting the discord DPS, people don't usually count in the time it takes to setup the pre-conditions (i.e. both hex and condition), for each target, before discord is able to be used.

To be more accurate, one should factor these into the calculations.

Because heroes would only cast DD when BOTH themselves and the target would deal damage from it.

If you add the right kind of spells to his bar, the hero would move closer to the enemies before casting, thus increasing the chance of them casting DD. This also means greater risks on your ele hero though.

Nah. I tried that. He used even if there was no enemy next to him.

http://www.guildwarsguru.com/forum/s...&postcount=124

Maybe i overevaluate my Discordway (quite substantially different than the pvx one) a bit because of my mesmer primary - Fragility is an easy cover hex, and IF AP gets stripped somehow, serves as a good fuel hex; in addition, the inspiration line provides some decent e-management in case AP is stripped.
Setting it all up is only as long as casting AP + shouting YMLAD; not even a full second. And the necro heroes cast other spells before they can discord the shit out of my target, so that time is not wasted. It's not like all they have on their bars is Discord and rit heals.
Decent AoE is provided by IV and mesmers' domination line - skills that hit ALL foes around the target, not only four. Armor ignoring, at that, besides IV. Sure, my heroes won't kill all mobs at once - one-two mobs will die extremely fast to discord, but the remaining mobs will be put to ~1/2 hp, easily finished off by a mixture of discord, spirits, minions and mesmers. Not to mention all those mobs you can just hex with PI and forget, as their own AoE thrown at your minions will be enough to kill them...

The problem when AP gets stripped is not so much an energy issue as it is a skill recharge issue. You are probably right that if everything works out fine, the combined time to cast AP+YMLAD is not high, maybe about a second added mostly from AP's 3/4 sec cast time and 1/4 sec human reflexes between the skills. But if AP is stripped then you have to deal with the 10s recharge of YMLAD and use another hex since the 45s recharge of AP would be too long.

IV is probably quite good now.

When we discuss builds, we usually compare against the alternatives. I have not experimented with IV since the update but it is obvious why it would be stronger now. It has the same range as ESurge, I need to compare IV against it before I comment.

As for discord, even though it is viable, there seems to be better alternatives in the mesmer line which is why I don't use it. ESurge doesn't need prep time, and doesn't demand that I use AP+YMLAD on all my characters. Like I said, there are situations where a high single targeting damage skill like discord works better. But for most general pve situations, ESurge is better.

Even if you say E-surge is better, let's say you take 2x E-surge, you still have 5 other hero slots to work with. Let's say you also take 2x rits and one dedicated AotL. What are you going to do with the remaining 2 slots? Death magic, especially now that deathly swarm is viable seems like the best option.

It depends on the situation. What is your character class? What is the area that you are playing in? Depending also on the rest of your build, you may also consider a BiPer or a UA monk.

As for me personally, I am fortunate enough to have 3 merc slots. My builds are here: http://www.gwpvx.com/UserarkSpirit

Like I said, I would have to test run an IV/DS necro before I change my team builds. But before that, I could tell that the effectiveness of armor respecting damages can depend on the area that you are playing in, unlike armor ignoring damages.

There is already a discussion thread on IV/DS necros, so I am not going to talk much about it here.

http://www.guildwarsguru.com/forum/i...t10500907.html

No and there's many reasons why you only want to bring one atm but the update to mob armor makes it worthwhile to slot, especially since most resto elites are crap. One IV here and there should still produce good damage and help you complete content faster.

The main problem with IV is the AI casts it when the mob reaches 30-40% health. Since the hex lasts 30+ seconds and it gives quite a large initial burst of cold damage the AI should use it whenever.

If aNet made 100/100 instead of 50/50 HOM, where one would need 50 statues in Honor monument to max it, it IS possible that ppl would mass PVP.

Discord builds have the following attributes:

AP spikers w/ PvE skills are ridiculously imba.

Minions/Spirits are imba

Soul Reaping lets necromancers run secondaries really well (not imba in and of itself, but combining powerful secondaries with minions in the same build is).

Discord is pretty bad. Just an elite, conditional flare really.


The build itself works because the 4 of these average out to a still pretty good build overall. As a spike build, when an AP player can do 280 damage with 0 cast time every 2s (EVAS is another ~200 in 1s cast time, and isn't even needed most of the time), it doesn't matter much what the rest of the team does as long as it includes not dying.

It's a lot more likely that they'd just find some way of exploiting the system.

The truth in this made me laugh.

Don't people already do "red resign" or something like that? I'd imagine it would just migrate to other formats.

I don't get, why would Anet buff the elements of the Elementalists, didnt they see how op the pvp spike was with Eles in GVG, because u could 1 shot anyone in pvp with spike build that consisting with Water, Air, Fire, Earth. Now that build got more buffed that any before.

With DWG wasn't really nerfed post guy in the (Ele Re-balance thread) stated that now DWG can do 2800 dmg in HM and now HM areas go faster cause you can for instance 1 shot mobs grps in DOA because LB Strike does 613 dmg which will increase speed of DOA clear a lot faster

Stone Sheath is definitely bonkers.

No, it isn't. As a compulsive completionist, who already has 50/50 and is one VQ title away from GWAMM, if ANet shifted the goalpost to 100 at this stage, then they can just RED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GO off and die.... painfully.

Seriously, all that would do is just make more people throw up their hands in despair at the idiotic levels of grind required and quit. I know I'd quit, and not just GW1 either.

50/50or 100/100 , idc if they change it.
Alrdy got everything

There is an extended HoM calculator around somewhere that goes up to 100 but its in french only iirc (not official ofc).

"Might" is not the same as "will not".

I've seen Sousuke using the skill when the effect on him won't hit any enemy.


Bring 5 Doublecast elementalist and a dervish (preferably humans, since heroes underuse doublecasts) and watch the fun.

The dervish becomes a literally tank with massive health and armor surrounded by weakened enemies, burning and freezing everything around himself, and knocking down enemies that try to escape.

If it wasn't for the relatively long recharge in Double Dragon and the tendency enemies have to scatter in HM, it would be brutal.

But since this requires a quite some coordination and caution so the enemies won't scatter, it's not really that much of a problem, unless you go in a party with those annoying aggro OCD people that want HM monsters to bunch up like they do in other games.
But well, they won't, they will go for other targets as soon as they see them, so instead trying not to be seen, which is a frustrating playstyle it's better to change playstyle to not depend on enemies bunching up around some tank.

It's a good idea held back by a few things:

1. Lightning damage > Cold damage; cold damage is highly resisted by a few foes such as Frozen Elementals
2. Invoke is AoE
3. Invoke does more damage
4. Discord needs certain conditions to trigger

Without the exhaustion Invoke Lightning is very much the ideal nuke: AoE, high damage, fast recharge, not too taxing on energy, deals Lightning damage.

That said, I've been playing around with N/P Discord Necros and they've been doing OK. I don't feel that all the skills on the bar are pulling their weight, but the overall product (as in the teambuild) is an improvement over using unaltered post-nerf Invoke Eles.

man just DD and Shockwave Eles can 1 shot mobs like nothing, that insane, only need to bring those two and own any mob in 1 shot. bring even more dmg could always add the Starburst and really dominate.

necs or rend touch/rending sweep dervs = win.

it's funny when you face no ench removal with that elite thou.

Everything has a counter. Now, on a 6 second recharge, you WILL have some uptime except if the otehr team spams their enchant removal on you on recharge or bring multiple copy. Plus they would have to time to get it when it's on the top of the stack of enchant a dervish (for exemple) would bring.
Even then it would strip it on a single target, but stone sheath targets 2 allies...so you still win.

did i in any post say it wasnt 'bonkers', as lem said?

given necs were part of the meta in TA, often running dual ench removal, itd be enough to strip it off one target at least, but if you're forced to bring some type of enc removal 'just in case' because its so strong that you otherwise wont ever kill without removal vs a proper ele that already says enough.
and since necs arent really the meta in gvg/ha, you gotta improvise, i suppose.

Corrupt Enchantment has never been more fun in RA... Running this generally carries teams post-update. I sometimes bring Faint instead, but generally bring Insidious since there are about 0 good Rangers playing RA nowadays.

Don't forget that it's also a weakness applier that lasts a week and covers about half of the map between its two AoEs.

Oh, and it does damage.

It there some sort of trick to get heroes to use DD at a casters range? The only times I can get hero eles to use the skill is if I give them a melee weapon, which often ends badly for the rest of my team.

Or you can just put Mirror of Disenchantment on a mesmer and stop the doublecast nonsense in the first place

i was merely listing a few examples. obviously you can bring that too, but its quite a 'fat' slot taker on a mesmer's bar.

on a side note, my fav build for ench control has been a PoD nec with rip and ff/ps. and that has been the case ever since eles made their first big 'debut' in pvp (read: especially RA) with the stupid damage buff flux.
moreover, its cool to kill low targets with pod when they get a patient spirit or one of those double cast thingies.

but then again, my fav atm is a pleech mesmer that just rolls through eles of all sorts. anything anti caster has a field day ever since the ele buff anyway. until it faces 2 dervs+ranger, that is.

such a terrible update should have stayed in pve only or change it to adjacent + double ench lasts way too long.

I don't know of any trick of let heroes use DD at max spell casting range, unless the ele hero is being attacked by melee.

What I do is to equip my ele hero with spells that target nearby/adjacent enemies like Flame Burst and Phoenix which cause the hero to move much closer to the enemies. This increases the chance of the hero casting DD. Like I have said, the drawback, is also the increased risk to your ele hero but you can equip your ele hero with defensive skills too.