My necro skill guide

My skill guide to primary necromancer.

Right off the bat, I'd like to say I have played many a necro.
I've played Bipper, Death nuker, Minion master, Curses focus fire enhancer, Curses melee debuffer and Order of Pain spammer.

I hope other players will appreciate this skill guide I have put together based off that.

Skills are ranked from 1 to 5, 5 being the best.

Soul Reaping
- General:

Soul reaping gives the character X energy whenever
anybody in the radar range dies(minions included).
It works well with minion master types of builds and
in PvE.

- Problems:

1. Its benefits are conditional.
2. Hardly works if oposing team is heavy on monks.
Expect next to no use of it if facing 3 monk team.
Don't forget 3 monk oponents will also likely have low
damage output, that means nobody on your side won't
die for a long time either.
3. Returns are not big. I rarelly had over 8 SR and
that's less than one spell's worth of energy per
death. (assuming here average spell is 10 energy,
which isn't far from truth with necro).
4. No linked skills.

Curses
- General:

Curses is a very versatile attribute. It can do a lot
of things and you are sure to find at least 3 good
skills for what you want to do in this attribute.

- Problems:

1. Lack of decent healing. There are 3 skills with
potential healing and they are all lame as far as
healing goes.

2. Lack of good direct damage. Sometimes you just need
to nuke someone. You won't find the skills to do that
here. Feast of corruption is good aoe damage, but you
have to consider it is elite and has 30 sec timer.

3. Anti-hex can mess you up.

4. Most hexes in this attibute line are good at what
they do, but they often are not versatile. Generally
reducing healing and enhancing damage are better
choices than reducing melee damage or degenerating
energy.

- Skills:

Barbs:
- Plus: 30 sec duration for minimal cost, good damage
output, damage can be improved if put on focused
target.
- Minus: it is a hex, 30 sec recharge, so you can
forget about hexing more than one person, weaken armor
gives more damage to anyone doing more than 16 damage.
Lacks versatility(for instance if you are on caster
heavy team then it is next to useless).
- Rank: 3
- Comments: Good skill to use in focus fire enhancing
builds. It isn't anything special though.

Chillblains:
- Plus: Aoe enchant removal is pretty sweet.
- Minus: Cost, cost, cost, disease sucks unless whole
team is ready for it like war machine guild was, it
always spreads to your own team as well, making it
something like a nature's ritual, low damage
- Rank: 1
- Comments: This skill sucks. Players could use a skill
that only removes enchants in aoe for 15 en. Not this.

Defile Flesh:
- Plus: Compared to Lingering curse cheaper and not
elite. The reduced healing effect rocks. Cheap. No
rechage. Versatility. Useful in any type of team.
- Minus: The sacrifise cost is ludicrous. If you go
for 14 curses for other skills you will end up paying
almost 100 HP just so you have 19 or 20 seconds
instead of 18.
- Rank: 3
- Comments: Effect is very good, but I never managed to
keep this skill in my build for more than 2 missions.
Sacrifise is just a bit much. Has use in focus fire
enhancing builds. Unlike many other curses it works
with any type of team. You can never go wrong with
lowering healing.

Desecrate Enchantments:
- Plus: Nice AoE. Really hurts if many enchantments are
stacked.
- Minus: Costly for that amount of damage.
- Rank: 2
- Comments: Tried it and swapped it out quite fast. Damage
is just too low.

Enfeeble:
- Plus: Cheap, low recharge, isn't a hex, weakness is
strong
- Minus: Sometimes you could use AoE better.
- Rank: 3
- Comments: Skill that's worth taking. But beware,
there are plenty of situations where it will just sit
there unused(like facing casters).

Enfeebling blood:
- Plus: Good at what it does.
- Minus: Sometimes it doesn't make a lick of
difference
- Rank: 3
- Comments: Good at foiling melee trains. But if you
need to kill their hero, guild lord, relic carrier or
when facing a caster, it just fails. It is good in
melee debuff builds. Same as enfeeble, it doesn't get
a 4 because it lacks versatility.

Faintheartedness:
- Plus: Stacks with shadow of fear and has degen. Also
long duration for low cost.
- Minus: Shadow of fear is generally better, if you
can afford only 1 slot for attack speed debuff. Lacks
versatility(works vs rangers and melee only).
- Rank: 3
- Comments: Good, but won't be used unless you run all
out melee debuffer.

Feast of Corruption
- Plus: Cheap, aoe, good damage, heals.
- Minus: Elite, recharge makes it fall short of being
a nuke.
- Rank: 4
- Comments: A worthy elite, could be used in any hex
heavy build, but most of the time you will want elite
with a special function to reach a specific goal with
your build and not a generic nuke.

Insidious Parasite
- Plus: It heals.
- Minus: No longer healing hands vs a single warrior.
Cost is pretty steep.
- Rank: 2
- Comments: This one falls into "meh" category. It
doesn't exactly suck, but you could do better.

Lingering Curse
- Plus: Mass enchant removal. Reduces healing a lot.
- Minus: Elite. Cost. Casting time.
- Rank: 4
- Comments: The problem this skill has is that if you
use it at the beginning, the enchantment stripping
effect will likely go to waste. And cost. If it only
reduced healing for half for 15 en, it would totally
own. Currently it is best used in N/E. Grab a glyph to
reduce cost and cover it with another 1 second cast
hex as soon as you put it on.
Another problem is the long casting time. 3 seconds is
practically asking for some R/W or mesmer to interrupt
you. Blam! 25 energy down the drain. These probs make
it miss 5.

Malaise:
- Plus: Nice anti caster effect, but works vs wars and
rangers too! Cheap, quick casting, long lasting.
- Minus: Health drain. That's a minus primarily
because curses lack decent healing.
- Rank: 5
- Comments: This is a great skill. If your team can
heal you, you can spam this baby around without
problems. I can still hear my guild's monks shouting
over teamspeak how they can't heal cos they have no
energy.

Mark of Pain:
- Plus: Best damage potential in game. Long lasting.
- Minus: Recharge is same as duration. You have to
yell at your team to stop changing targets. Sometimes
it has no effect at all.
- Rank: 5
- Comments: With curses specced really high you have
some major damage potential. I have often did more
than 120 damage per sword hit because 3 people stood
in effect and I was the only one hitting. Now imagine
several people hitting the hexed target in a packed
enviroment like king of the hill maps in tombs. That's
easily more than several hundred damage per second.

Parasitic Bond:
- Plus: Hmm... low rechage?
- Minus: Useless. Damage is negible.
- Rank: 1
- Comments: Damage sucks. And all it does is delays the
healing. Seriously, how many times you know 20 seconds
in advance, when you will need healing? Compare it to
ether feast. Ether feast heals quite a bit more for
half the cost and it also drains 5 energy off target.
This skill seriously sucks.

Plague sending:
- Plus: Useful for sending cripple you get with
illusion of haste.
- Minus: Sucks compared to Plague Touch. Double cost
and cast time. Not to mention sacrifise climbs up
while effect stays the same.
- Rank: 1
- Comments: Just read the minus. This skill ain't worth
taking.

Plague Signet
- Plus: It is a signet, means harder to disrupt. Works
at range.
- Minus: Elite. Recharge time.
- Rank: 2
- Comments: This one is totally not worth elite with
that recharge time. The only good use is losing the
dazed condition.

Price of Failure
- Plus: Long duration
- Minus: In any anti-melee build it usually doesn't
get a slot because other skills are better.
- Rank: 2
- Comments: Damage does crop up. It also stacks nicely
with Spirit of Failure for 45% miss chance(both
effects fire on that miss). But usually due to limited
number of slots it loses in slot battle with other
skills.

Rend Enchantments
- Plus: A much needed effect
- Minus: Recharge time, you take damage, long cast
time.
- Rank: 3
- Comments: I guess it is decent, but that's more due
to lack of other mass enchant removal skills than
anything else. Damage taken is hardly small and
protection monks have a lot of spammy enchants like
guardian which will neatly leave you sitting there
with your recharge.

Rigor Mortis
- Plus: One of most needed curses out there.
- Minus: Not so many occasions when you can use it.
- Rank: 4
- Comments: This is the most underused powerful hex out
there. You know what are the favourite defensive
tricks? Ward against melee, guardian, shield of
deflection, and stances. This hex puts an end to that.
With all the guardian and shield of deflection spam
going around this days, this should be in any focus
fire enhancing necro's arsenal.

Shadow of Fear
- Plus: Long duration, good AoE
- Minus: Situational
- Rank: 4
- Comments: Good anti-warrior and anti-ranger hex. But
it doesn't help to bring the enemy healers down.

Soul Barbs
- Plus: Good duration, works nicely with the rest of the
attribute line. Works well in team.
- Minus: Well if you don't have many hexes it doesn't do
much.
- Rank: 4
- Comments: Combo this with Wastrel's worry for killer
damage. Over 70 damage if both fire, for minimal cost.
It also works on enchantments, providing a little bite
when oposing monks spam guardian on target. Also
triggers when other teammates put hexes on the target.

Spinal shivers
- Plus: All kinds of stuff you can do with cold damage
wand and this spell
- Minus: You need curses so high you get 5 energy cost
and if someone else on your team is packing cold
damage you could find yourself empty of energy.
- Rank: 3
- Comments: This is very good for disrupting troll
unguent, heal sig, raise dead, resurrection, or just
plain old costant monk nagging. 5 en per interrupt is
pretty cheap compared to spells that do the same.

Spiteful spirit
- Plus: Kinda like empathy only tons better. Nice
damage.
- Minus: A bit costly. Elite.
- Rank: 5
- Comments: This could be the king of "stab yourself in
the foot" skills. It works like a charm on those freny
users. Their attack speed gain only brings them more
damage and they take double damage as well. The fact
that it is aoe makes is very good versus melee trains.
Heck it even does damage on skills.

Suffering
- Plus: AoE
- Minus: Nothing special about it
- Rank: 3
- Comments: 100 damage over time in an AoE. It falls
into that "meh" category. 15 energy cost ain't
helping.

Weaken Armor
- Plus: it enhances physical damage by 50%
- Minus: Casting time, recharge time is as long as
duration
- Rank: 4
- Comments: If on physical heavy team this skill is
best choice for enhancing focus fire. 3 second cast
time is begging for interrupt though.

Wither
- Plus: Doesn't degen life like malaise
- Minus: Costs more, elite, ends when energy reaches 0
- Rank: 3
- Comments: Not quite as good as malaise. Of course you
can still stack them if you really want, but all
negatives considered(elite) it isn't a great skill.

Summary:
Curses offers quite some directions for any character.
If you want to debuff melee, you should go with
Spiteful Spirit, Enfeebling blood, Shadow of Fear. If
you want to devote extra slots to that aspect of your
character go with faintheartedness.
If you want to improve the effects of focus fire go
with weaken armor, rigor mortis, mark of pain and
defile flesh or lingering curse. Any extra slots in
that direction should go for barbs or scourge healing
if you have it.
Malaise and Rend Enchantments are good as well, but
for those you don't need high curses and so they do
really well when trying to fill a few extra slots on
anticaster builds.
You should get some other attribute to do your damage
or healing though.

Death Magic

- General:

1. The minion attribute line and some nukes is the
best way of describing it.

- Problems:

1. Let's say that all skills that involve minions or
corpses or something dying are corpse skills. Now
let's count them. 16 out of 24 skills are useless
until someone dies. That's 66%. 16 skills for those
measly few deaths.
2. Huge redundancy of skills. Look above.
3. No healing if you ain't got a corpse or minion.
4. The out of remaining 8 skills that don't require
dying, there are 3 nukes(1 sucks) and 3 disease
spells(disease sucks unless whole guild build packs
Tainted flesh like Warmachine did last BWE).
5. If you ask me this attribute seriously needs a
revamp. Too many skills fighting for very limited
resources(corpses). Corpse skills and 2 average nukes
and 1 sucky one. One suggestion is that corpses that
get exploited can be exploited again in 30 to 45
seconds. That would help in PvP.
6. Only 3 elites. They all suck.

- Skills:

Animate Bone Fiend
- Plus: When a lot of them, they kick ass. They can
also trigger the mark of pain a lot.
- Minus: High energy cost. Minions are largely
ignored. Requires corpse. They lose health over time.
- Rank: 2
- Comments: I would prefer other 2 minion skills over
this one as I haven't been able to see any real
advantage for getting ranged minions. Needs a corpse.

Animate Bone Horror
- Plus: Same as with bone fiend
- Minus: Same as with bone fiend except the cost
- Rank: 3
- Comments: Mainstay minion spell. It is nice to have a
few of them if you can get corpses.

Animate Bone Minions
- Plus: Same as other minion spells
- Minus: Requires corpse
- Rank: 3
- Comments: This spell is good if you want to get as
many minions as you can off one corpse. They are weak
and numerous and thus ideal for use with death nova.

Aura of the Lich
- Plus: It doubles regen effectivness
- Minus: Elite, often useless, 3 sec cast time
- Rank: 1
- Comments: This skill is a lot like nature's ritual.
It is a door that swings both ways. Except when it
swings your way it is prone to hit you in the head.
Halves damage, but it also halves healing. It
effectively enhances regen, but also degen. You many
think, great, I'll pack Healing Breeze with this one.
But think this way as well. What if they put life
transfer + conjure phantasm on you. Congrats, you've
just spent an elite skill slot so you could get owned.
Here we have a skill that works both ways like the
ritual and it is linked to death attribute. An
attribute that has 0 regen skills.
As an added bonus, the fact that skill is elite
prevents you from using Life transfer and such.
Because of 3 sec cast time you can forget about
casting in a hurry if any interrupter is on you.
Dropping that elite tag would make it earn a rank of 3.
Maybe giving the caster undead immunities(no bleed,
poison, disease or something).
Right now it is like spending elite slot on something
of no value.

Blood of the Master
- Plus: It is effective
- Minus: Not much use in PvP
- Rank: 2
- Comments: It works, but hey, when was the last time
you saw anyone with it in PvP. In PvP nobody cares if
minions die. More fun with Death Nova!

Consume Corpse
- Plus: It teleports
- Minus: Teleporting isn't ever direly needed
- Rank: 1
- Comments: There is absolutely no reason to use this
spell instead of Soul Feast. Soul feast give much
more life. Avoid this skill.

Dark Aura
- Plus: Well, the damage is nice
- Minus: They nerfed it by giving it a health loss
- Rank: 3
- Comments: This is an "OK" skill. If you are strong
on healing you can try to use this skill with touch
of agony for some good damage.

Death Nova:
- Plus: It is cheap and moderately strong
- Minus: It requires dying or minions. No longer
poisons enemies.
- Rank: 3
- Comments: It is great skill if you have a build
specifically built for this, like having Animate
Bone Minions. But if you can't get corpses, you will
end up doing no damage with it.

Deathly Chill
- Plus: None
- Minus: Everything
- Rank: 1
- Comments: This skill sucks. Don't ever use it,
unless you are desperate for a third death nuke.
In ideal case where target has more than 50% HP
and has 60 armor, this skill does 56 damage.
Vile Touch on the other hand has 62 armor ignoring
damage with much smaller recharge timer.
In worst case you are hitting an 80 AL target that has
less than 50% HP. In that case 28 cold damage becomes
19 cold damage and you can forget about shadow damage.
Vile touch still does the same damage.
So it is 19 damage vs 62 for the same cost. I really
don't understand what arenanet was trying to do with
this skill, but I want some of that stuff they've
been smoking.

Deathly Swarm
- Plus: Good AoE, good damage per cost on 60 AL targets
- Minus: Casting Time is horrible
- Rank: 3
- Comments: What could be a good nuke becomes average
nuke because of that 3 seconds casting time. Deathly
swarm has to be number one reason I got dazed so
many times last BWE. 3 sec cast doesn't help any
vs mesmers as well.

Infuse condition
- Plus: Good at what it does
- Minus: Very specific
- Rank: 2
- Comments: To be of any use, you have to be minion
master type of build and then get hit by condition.
That's pretty narrow right there.

Malign Intervention
- Plus: Makes one more minion, than you would get
normally.
- Minus: You have to percive who will die soon.
Also requires you to spend another slot on Verata's
Gaze to use it to its fullest potential.
- Rank: 2
- Comments: Well you need a 2 slot combo to use it
and it takes a lot of observing the enemies to
use it correctly. Not exactly good.

Putrid Explosion
- Plus: No recharge and it works.
- Minus: Better way to use corpses, AoE is small
- Rank: 2
- Comments: This spell may look good until you
think about it a bit harder. So you need 5
corpses to bring someone down provided they don't
heal. 5(!) corpses. Not to mention you have to
hit with it. AoE is not big you could have a
problem hitting someone who is chasing your monk
with it. The last straw is that Well of Suffering
offers more damage per corpse in a much larger
radius. Look at Well of Suffering for details.
The damage of Shatter hex is higher and hexes
on alies are way more common than corpses.
Corpse skills need more punch than other conditional
skills because corpses are the scarcest resource
in any combat.

Rotting Flesh
- Plus: Well disease sure spreads good.
- Minus: Usually to your own team as well. Large
casting time.
- Rank: 2
- Comments: Tried using it and I didn't like it much.
It ALWAYS hit both sides. Disease in general sucks.

Soul Feast
- Plus: Very good heal
- Minus: Requires corpses
- Rank: 4
- Comments: Great and cheap heal. It also foils other
necros who want to make minions. The corpse requirement
costed this spell rank of 5. But if you intend to take
no corpse exploiting skills, you could take this one.
It always comes in handy.

Tainted Flesh
- Plus: Gives immunity to disease.
- Minus: Immunity doesn't do much if it hurt all 7 of
your guild mates. Elite.
- Rank: 2
- Comments: The only disease spell that can work.
Warmachine had a group where everyone had this spell
and it worked. That is quite extreme and most of the
time it just affects both teams. Totally not worth
the elite tag.

Taste of Death
- Plus: Excelent heal, cheap
- Minus: Requires Minions
- Rank: 3
- Comments: Great skill but it requires ammo. If you
run a build without minions then it does nothing.
Even if you do, doesn't mean you will have a minion
when you need a heal. Average mark on this one.

Verata's Aura
- Plus: Long-lasting and powerful effect
- Minus: Requires the player to be all-knowing
- Rank: 1
- Comments: Looks great on paper, but then you realise
it is only useful if enemy has a minion master.
Minion necros are rare in GvG, so why bring a
counter like that, when you can just pack Verata's gaze
and use it on Malign Interverntion as well. Thumbs down.

Verata's Gaze
- Plus: Cheap, works great
- Minus: Rarely useful
- Rank: 3
- Comments: Great spell, but only useful if you plan on
enemy minion necros or you're using Malign Intervention.

Verata's Sacrifise
- Plus: Enemies may pick it.
- Minus: It really serves no purpose.
- Rank: 1
- Comments: Nobody cares about healing minions in PvP and
if they did, they would take blood of the master. This
one heals less and also transfers conditions. Why would I
want that? The only conditions minions could have is
Burning, Cripple, Blindness. And nobody even tries to give
them conditions, usually people will go right for necro.
Stupid spell.

Vile Touch
- Plus: Ignores armor
- Minus: It could have more damage, not being AoE.
- Rank: 4
- Comments: The only good nuke on death.

Virulence
- Plus: Cheap
- Minus: Elite, disease sucks, requires condition to set
it off
- Rank: 1
- Comments: More than 80% of condition inflicting skills
of necromancer inflict either weakness or disease.
And here we get the same. Not to mention disease sucks,
it is an elite.

Well of Suffering
- Plus: Good way to use corpses, huge radius
- Minus: Requires corpses, crappier than Well of Blood
- Rank: 4
- Comments: Corpses are scarce and this is a good way to
use them. As promised heres the Well of Suffering vs
Putrid Explosion comparison:
At 12 death magic:
Putrid Explosion: 101 damage in a small radius
Well of Suffering: 144 damage in a really large radius

At 14 death magic:
Putrid Explosion: 125 damage in a small radius
Well of Suffering: 200 damage in a really large radius

As you can see, well of suffering is clearly superior,
it also increases in damage faster than putrid explosion
does. Having at least twice as much radius as putrid
explosion means it covers 4 times as much area. But
people can run out of well area. That often causes loss of
an important position, and sometimes, like when well in
center of king of the hill map or next to guild lord,
players don't have much options.

Well of the Profane
- Plus: Really strong effect
- Minus: People can just walk out of it, prohibitive
cost, consumes a corpse
- Rank: 2
- Comments: Again a good skill on paper, but in real
combat, when a body falls, and I have to decide
between this or well of suffering. Most of the time
I don't even have the energy for it. Then it's a
no brainer. Even when I have a choice which one to
use I usually use the latter. Its a shame, but there's
just too many skills competing for corpses.

Summary:

Death magic is, in my opinion, the worst necro skill line.
It is up there right next to beast mastery. Only 3 elites
and none of them even got the grade of 3.
Whole truckloads of skill have that "we needed to put
in another skill to get 25 skills per line" feeling
attached to it. So much duplicated functionality
in death magic. Consume corpse=soul feast, 3 animate skills,
Blood of the master=Verata's sacrifise
Too many corpse spells. Disease is crappy as currently
implemented.
And finally one of the crappiest spells in the game,
Deathly Chill.
Notice huge amount of skills ranked 1 or 2 and no skills
ranked 5.


Blood Magic

- General:

1. Blood magic is good, if somewhat one-sided attribute line
with good elites. Best healing in the whole necromancer class.
Death is weak, curses forces you to get another attribute
for healing. Still it has a lot of potential and gets a lot
of good skills.

- Problems:

1. A lot of healing comes in regeneration, and you can only get
up to 20 HP per second with regeneration.

2. No counters.

- Skills:

Awaken The Blood
- Plus: The only attribute raising skill in necro, helps
curses as well.
- Minus: Doesn't help Death magic. Hurts if you use sacrifises.
- Rank: 3
- Comments: Would give it rank of 4 if a lot of the best
skills out there didn't require sacrifise: Order of Vampire,
Blood is power, Defile Flesh and the like. Other than that it
offers a lot to blood or curses builds. Death magic is
discriminated against.

Barbed signet
- Plus: Free damage
- Minus: Long recharge
- Rank: 3
- Comments: A solid 3. Not for every build, but if you find
your build too costly in terms of energy and would like
to keep the damage, this could be what you need.

Blood is Power
- Plus: Great support spell
- Minus: Requires good monks, elite
- Rank: 4
- Comments: Great support spell, well worth the elite. You
just need to make sure your monks know that they must heal you.

Blood Renewal
- Plus: It may surprise enemy when you regain life
- Minus: Only regens 60 HP
- Rank: 1
- Comments: Definitely not worth a slot in any build. Why make
yourself temporarily vulnerable so you can regen 60 HP?
At high blood attributes totally owned by Life Siphon.

Blood Ritual
- Plus: It is a good support spell
- Minus: Specialist builds prefer BiP
- Rank: 3
- Comments: Nothing wrong with this skill, but the support builds
that are there to recharge energy generally prefer its bigger
brother. You should too.

Dark Bond
- Plus: It increases survivability by a lot.
- Minus: It requires a minion, which requires
death magic and a corpse. 60 sec recharge is teh ouch if you get
dispeled.
- Rank: 3
- Comments: Good spell, but puts in a specific mold. Needs quite a
bit of setup to set it up.

Dark Fury
- Plus: Nothing
- Minus: Many better spells out there that do way better at supporting
melee.
- Rank: 1
- Comments: Energy cost and sacrifise and duration is identical to
Order of Pain and Order of Vampire. Those 2 produce way more
damage than a bit of extra adrenaline ever can. What makes this skill
even worse is that it affects warriors only, while Orders affects
wand and bows as well. Thumbs down.

Dark Pact
- Plus: Cheap, Fast, Spammable
- Minus: You get hit with same stick as the target
- Rank: 3
- Comments: When playing blood necro with life siphon and the like
you will find yourself overflowing with regen as necros are rarely
the targets of choice for players. This is a good way to dish out
damage when that happens. When you are getting hit this skill becomes
a big no-no(unless you are going to finish someone off).

Demonic Flesh
- Plus: Long lasting
- Minus: This is one-shot-per-fight deal
- Rank: 3
- Comments: Never was a big fan of this skill. It gives you 170 extra
health if you use it before battle, but that is one shot thing,
just like energy storage. If 170 extra health is worth a slot
is debateable.

Life Siphon
- Plus: Good HP swing, stacks nicely on separate targets for regen
- Minus: You have to have 12 blood to have really good effect
- Rank: 5
- Comments: A great and popular blood skill. At 12 blood it produces
a HP swing of 264 per cast. Stack a few and you are all set for
a while. Well too much focus fire can kill you since you can
only have 10 regen.

Life Transfer
- Plus: Gigantic HP swing, scales good with high blood
- Minus: Nothing really, except if it gets removed early, it
doesn't do much
- Rank: 5
- Comments: One of the best spells and elites out there.
If you don't have a specific elite in mind when making your build
this is what you should get. Produces HP swing of 288 at 12 blood
and a HP swing of 384 with 14 blood.

Mark of Subversion
- Plus: It foils the spell
- Minus: Cost, small HP swing, works for only 1 spell
- Rank: 1
- Comments: Could be a nice spell but not at that cost. If you wanna
add some anti caster flavor, try getting Soul Leech.

Offering of Blood
- Plus: Gives as much net energy as mesmer Energy Drain elite
- Minus: Sacrifise, elite, long casting time
- Rank: 3
- Comments: If you really need some energy. Energy Drain is much better
though.

Order of Pain
- Plus: Incredible damage potential, works with wands as well
- Minus: Very short duration, high HP and energy cost per second
- Rank: 4
- Comments: Very short enchantment, but totally worth basing a build
around, incredible support spell. The cost may be too high for a
non-dedicated build, but that's what GW is about.

Order of Vampire
- Plus: Same as order of pain, and it heals as well.
- Minus: Same high cost as OoP
- Rank: 5
- Comments: One of the best support spells in the game. Making a build
that uses this skill as effectively as possible is a good idea.

Shadow Strike
- Plus: Nice damage if target is above 50% HP
- Minus: High cost, crappy damage if target is below 50% HP, situational
- Rank: 3
- Comments: If you are short on slots, then you are better off taking
Vampiric touch, which is only slightly worse than Shadow strike if target
has about 50% and vastly better if target is below 50%.

Signet of Agony
- Plus: AoE, you can transfer bleeding to someone with plague touch
- Minus: Sacrifise
- Rank: 1
- Comments: I see no purpose to this skill. YOu should skip it unless
you know exactly what you are doing.

Soul Leech
- Plus: Nice anti-caster skill
- Minus: Crappier than Backfire, elite
- Rank: 3
- Comments: Sure it heals. But blood line has lots of other healing,
and total HP swing is barely 20 HP better than backfire and this is elite.
Not worth it if you have backfire or if you are not focused on anti caster
role.

Strip Enchantment
- Plus: One of the rare enchantment removal skils
in necro arsenal and in GW in general. Also heals nicely.
- Minus: Recharge time
- Rank: 4
- Comments: If you have blood line already high up
and you have a spare slot, you could grab this
While it may not stop protection monk spam,
it performs admirably vs Illusionary weaponry and conjures.

Touch of Agony
- Plus: Can be used with Dark Aura. Though not
as good any more.
- Minus: Just a weaker touch range version of Dark Pact
- Rank: 1
- Comments: There is no use for this skill.

Unholy Feast
- Plus: If it hits more than 2 persons, then it beats
Vampiric Touch
- Minus: If it doesn't then it is just a waste. Also has
30 sec recharge time.
- Rank: 2
- Comments: If you have a free slot beside Vampric Touch, use it in crowded
situations, otherwise ignore it.

Vampiric Gaze
- Plus: It is ranged
- Minus: Does less damage than touch and it takes 3 sec to cast
- Rank: 3
- Comments: Not a bad skill but gets creamed by Vampiric touch. 3 sec cast
is a mesmer bait as well.

Vampiric Touch
- Plus: It does a lot of damage and heals
- Minus: Cost can run you out of energy fast. If you want only damage
then Vile Touch is more cost effective
- Rank: 5
- Comments: A staple blood skill. Good, quick effective. Not much reason
not to try to find a place for it in your build.

Well of Blood
- Plus: Best of all wells. Owns Well of suffering.
- Minus: Needs a corpse. But since blood doesn't so many corpse skills
as death, it shouldn't be as much of a problem.
- Rank: 5
- Comments: It isn't just one more regen than suffering has degen,
that makes this well own well of suffering. There is also the fact
that it is a lot of easier to keep allies in a well of blood, than
to keep enemies in well of suffering

Well of Power

- Plus: Energy regen is great.
- Minus: Elite, lower regen than blood
- Rank: 3
- Comments: I expected more of elite. If it gave +5 HP +2 energy then it would
be worth an elite, not I prefer well of blood. It also has 3 second cast time.

Summary:

Blood magic offers a lot of good support builds, a lot of effective skills.
There is a bit of overabundance of life draining and sacrifise->damage skills.
Still a very good attribute line.

Conclusion:

Blood offers dot healing and 3 or 4 support builds. Curses offers a lot of hexes
for all tasks. Death needs the most lovin' out of all 3.
I see no reason why is Well of Suffering one pip weaker than Well of blood.
Another thing that doesn't make death attribute any better is the fact that
Awaken the blood totally skips it. This is another balance mystery.

Hmm...... my left wrist claims it hates me....

Nice skill reviews, all necro players should read this as it includes a lot of experience.

Will put some of my comments later on.

Just to bring up some of the skills that actually merit discussion:

Faintheartedness has the same "12 or bust" issue that Life Siphon does, and as far as shutdown goes Shadow of Fear just outclasses it. It's not a bad skill, but you only get to use eight skills from two classes, and 'not bad' just donesn't cut it. You have AoE shutdown in Enfeebling Blood and Shadow of Fear at comparable energy costs and cast times, leaving Faintheartedness on the bench, permanently.

People seriously overrate energy degeneration (people even use Ether Lord!), but Malaise is solid. It's cheap, spammable, and is a slow but potent form of energy denial. Just make sure that you have Life Siphons or the like running so that you can eat the cost.

Rend Enchantments isn't good, perse, but because it is the *only* playable piece of enchantment removal it's stock is through the roof. It won't be the most amazing skill on your bar, but it had better be there anyway.

The damage on Spiteful Spirit really doesn't scare me. Against casters it's a joke, and for shutting down Warriors I'd rather use SoF / EB. It isn't a bad skill, but is this really what you want to be spending your elite slot on? Didn't think so.

Wither is trash. As Blackace mentioned, energy degen isn't scary until someone's at low energy. When someone's at low energy, Wither has a nasty habit of ending, quickly. You're going to end up denying yourself more energy with Wither than your opponent. Stick to the good denial options like Malaise or Debilitating Shot.


Death requires corpses, and that's a huge strike against it. If you want to use corpses, just use Well of Blood - it puts you into a deeper attribute and you don't need all that many corpse exploit skills anyway.

I don't think any of the Death self-heal options are all that impressive. They're way too conditional, and while they're decent as one-shots the options you'll have available elsewhere are just going to be more effective in the long run.


Blood is Power is that good - use it at level 0 and pump the fist. It isn't just great energy regeneration - it's energy regeneration that you get to dole out to the rest of your team, making everyone go nuts.

The original statement about the elite mechanic being invented to break up broken combos was correct - but the combo isn't a pair of obscure skills, it's an absurd spam skill comboed with absurd energy regen. Blood is Power allows you to create that combo on multiple teammates, effectively dodging the elite mechanic.

The only downside of Blood is Power is that it is at it's best at a Blood Magic of 3, locking you out of the attribute if you really want to maximize its use. But you should really be running BiP, your won/loss record will thank you.


Demonic Flesh is decent but unspectacular. A couple hundred health in a PvP match really isn't all that much - a focused target will easily take and be healed for thousands of damage over the course of just a dozen seconds. What Demonic Flesh gives you is a larget margin for error - that heal that otherwise would have been a half second too late will land with Flesh up. I wouldn't cut something important for Demonic Flesh, but it's definitely playable.

Life Siphon is great at attribute 12, and just kinda eh below that. The big selling point of Life Siphon is that it is spammable, that you can keep multiples running at all times to keep you in good shape and slowly whittle away at your opponents. It isn't as swingy as some skills, but if you have the 12 in Blood then you should be running this.

Life Transfer is pretty mediocre - the 30 second cooldown kills it. Each cast has the potency of a Life Siphon, but the fact that you can only cast it twice a minute means it just doesn't have enough of an effect on the game to justify the elite slot. I don't even think it would make the cut if it wasn't elite.

The Orders are still playable but they're just plain fair at 10 energy - you're going to up and choke yourself if you try to spam these the way you did two months ago. They're also particularly niche, only useful if you have a dedicated, physical heavy team, and can avoid the standard shutdown that physical attackers normally encounter. Definitely not for general use, but they're good enough to try to work around with an organized team.


I think you're rating Vampiric Touch far too highly. 15 energy is a ton for a skill with such a small effect - there are just better things to do with your energy. No way I'd run it with all of the other options available.


Well of Blood isn't just a good skill in its own right - the fact that it also denies other Necromancers the use of corpses pushes it over the edge. They aren't going to be animating anything if you're springing wells out of everything that dies. That two second recycle is a sexy beast, at that. It has the standard problem of requiring a corpse to function, but giving up just one skill slot on an eight man team to make use of any corpses that arise is a small price to pay.

Peace,
-CxE

I would like to comment on some of Blackace's reviews.

One thing is weakness. I don't know how much Blackace tried playing with Enfeebling blood, but that skill deserves more than a 2. It reduces melee damage by a lot.

Enfeeble isn't useless. Often it is better than enfeebling blood in Arena. You can put weakness on 2 people that are far apart for the same energy and without sacrifise. Often you will get a single warrior on you and then Enfeebling blood is kind of a waste.

Rigor Mortis is a 5 because it kills a lot of defensive skills that are either:
a) Hard to counter(like ward vs melee and stances)
b) Enchantments that are too spammable to be countered by enchantment
removal like guardian and shield of deflection.

And all those defensive skills are very common. In fact, you can find most of them on pre-made builds.

Why is wastrel's worry a waste of skill slot? It works great. I got hit by it a few times during last BWE with it and usually before I reacted with a 2 sec cast spell, I was already too late. It also always hits runners, and it servers as an excelent buffer hex to protect other hexes. I think Postopac can testify here that wastrel's worry is an excellent skill.

I will have to disagree about Strip Enchantments.
I have faced Me/W with IW 3 times while using it, and every time I hit them with it when I saw them cast it, and their damage went into nether regions. IW builds never pack swordsmanship, because it doesn't do anything when they are using IW. But without IW, they do next to 0 damage. It is useful just to kill random enchatments off W/Mo.

Ok now that I am done with that, I would like to add another relevant topic not discussed in my first post.

Damage vs HP swing

HP swing is defined as damage+healing a skill does. It is the relative HP change of your HP vs your opponents HP after using the skill.

Thus skills, that do damage and heal, like Vamp touch and Life transfer have the biggest HP swings in their category.

But sometime you aren't under attack, and thus don't need healing, and you only need damage to help bring someone down.

This is, essentially, the reason why biggest HP swing doesn't make a skill the best skill in all situations.

Consider Vamp Touch and Vile Touch.
Vile touch costs 10 en and does 62 damage.
Vamp touch costs 15 en and steals 62 HP. That is a 124 HP swing.

Sounds like Vamp Touch is better, right? I mean for 50% more energy you get 100% bigger HP swing. But if you are at full HP and there are 3 of you chomping on a monk, you will find Vile Touch better, since it will do more damage with that 30 energy you have.

Charles is right. Vamp touch costs a lot for that effect. But really what are the other options? If you are getting 15 blood or so, support role is out of the question. OoP, OoV, BiP they all suffer from the same problem as all necro sacrifise skills. When attribute goes beyond 12, sacrifise cost heads for stratosphere while the skill's power barely even moves.

There really aren't any cost effective nukes in necro's arsenal. The only skill that does good damage per energy without using up corpses is Deathly Swarm. And it takes an eternity to cast and is in death line which sucks.

But here is question that keeps nagging me:
If I use awaken the blood and death pact, does the extra 50% sacrifise yield 50% more damage as well?

Spura [Myth]

This is an excellant thread a must read for all .. I'm impressed. I'd love to see the other professions analized like this also.

Pax

Have to disagree, as there are many situations, where this skill is much better than it's aoe comrade. First of all, this skill has no sacrifice, which can be coupled with awaken the blood without negative effects, and every bit of your health spared is very precious. In many situations, you would only have to curse one or two attacking warriors/rangers (which are almost always far apart). Added DOTs is a bonus that does slow but steady damage, especially if coupled with life siphon. In my oppinion blood/curse necro would rather pack this skill than shadow of fear.

Have you tried combining this skill with empathy? Careless warrior dies in matter of seconds.

Aggree on everything, except that running it at 3 is best. In my oppinion, it is better at 0 blood, as sacrifice is almost halved for only one energy regen arrow. If we look at the numbers, you spend 10 mana and 64 hp for 2 casts to get 20 mana out at 0 blood, while at 3 blood you spend 5 mana and 58 hp to get 13 mana. Effectively, you get 2 more mana points for sake of 6hp. The difference is not that great, but considering versatility of buffing 2 players for 3 mana regen instead of buffing one player with 4 mana regen is in favor of 0 blood. Not mentioning you spare 6 attribute points

Mediocre? Not at all, this skill has great damage and self healing power, and at high blood attribute, you can yield very high DPS with right skills. If you have support (BIPer) vampiric touch is great supplement.

Vampiric touch is fast damage (not so small), and in melee very useful. I think the rating is justified. As spura said HP swing is worth it. With BIP support this skill becomes easily spammable and producing high DPS.

Agree, well of blood is very good in team that is not running any death necromancers. Wasting corpses and team supporting abilities are great.

Wastrel's worry is such a powerfull skill, can't believe my eyes you are saying this skill is waste of a skill slot Coupled with soul barbs can produce up to whooping 80 damage per cast, not to mention team that is heavy on hexes can yield very high damage output with this skill.

With all those positive health regeneration, this little spammable baby is great damage spell.

Have to agree with spura with Enfeeble, in most cases, targeting specific targets with Enfeeble/Faintheartedness is more effective than aoe's.

My 2 cents.

RE: Faintheartedness

There are situations where Faintheartedness is better than Enfeebling Blood. There are also situations where Enfeebling Blood is better than Faintheartedness. That's a given. The questions you have to ask yourself when choosing between the two, though, are:

'In situations where Faintheartedness would be better, how reasonable of a substitute is Enfeebling Blood?'
'In situations where Enfeebling Blood would be better, how reasonable of a substitute is Faintheartedness?'

The deal is that when you want the AoE of EB, you *really* want the AoE. Faintheartedness wouldn't even come close to cutting it. On the other hand, against a single target Faintheartedness is clearly better, but you're really after the weakness and EB still does a reasonable job. Basically, EB is *always* an effective tool for the job, while Enfeeble and Faintheartedness will come up short in the most important situations.

Given that, I still think there are reasons to run Faintheartedness - if you have that 12 curses, if you have other DoTs to back it up with - but in general, if you want a weakness effect you want Enfeebling Blood. It's just better.


RE: Spiteful Spirit

I don't take skills to beat up on careless or bad players. I take skills to knock out the champions, to make the team holding the Hall of Heroes for the last hour /kneel and lick my boots.

Combining Empathy and Spiteful Spirit in an attempt to shut down Warriors isn't nearly as good as combining Shadow of Fear and Enfeebling Blood. Why?

First off, the SoF/EB combination is Area of Effect. If multiple Warriors are ganging up on someone, you can knock them all out in one shot.

Second, SoF/EB is much more spammable. If you need to spread them around to different targets quickly, the instant recycle of Shadow of Fear allows you to do so while Empathy/SS choke on the cooldowns.

But, most importantly, Shadow of Fear and Enfeebling Blood doesn't give your opponent the choice. A Warrior hexed with those two is not going to be dealing any damage, period, whether he likes it or not. It's a hard shutdown. When you're using Spiteful Spirit and Empathy, they'll take a lot of damage for attacking, granted - but they can still do so if it makes sense for them to. I'll happily eat the damage to get off a Concussion Shot at the right time, or a well placed knockdown effect. That option is still there. Taking away your opponent's choices is always preferable to just making their choices more difficult.


RE: BiP

0 is the second best option in my experience. The energy gained, net, per life loss is pretty similar (6.4 health per energy at 0, 7 health per energy at 3), and if that's all you're concerned about then 0 is indeed better.

But there's a bit more going on here - you're also concerned about just how effective you're being with your own time and energy. While a level 0 BiP only nets you around 3 energy per second casting time, level 3 BiP gets you close to 5 energy per second cast. You also need to take into account the fact that you aren't getting any of the energy you net from BiP, so your own energy supply needs to be taken into account. Two casts of BiP costs you twice the energy, and if you can cram that into a single cast you're a whole lot better off.

Basically the energy transferred per health ratio dips slightly, but the energy transferred per time and per energy increases dramatically, and that's what makes the level 3 BiP better. Two casts are going to be wiped out by a single Orison in any case, so the health loss isn't that big a deal.


With a single cast, yes. But that's the problem - it's a single cast spell. The 30 second cooldown is huge, but it can't be cast often enough to have a really big effect on the game. Life Siphon is going to have a much bigger effect on the game as you can cast it roughly six times as often as Life Transfer, and over time their outputs are comparable. If it wasn't elite I'd give it serious consideration, but for an elite it just doesn't cut it.


The damage is time efficient, but extremely energy inefficient - 61 damage for 15 energy to a single target doesn't exactly excite me. Add in the touch range and I'm underwhelmed.

Life swing isn't a particularly good metric because healing is so much more efficient than damage. Casting a 110 health Orison for 5 energy and 1.5 seconds of cast time is par for the course, decent but unspectacular, but damage at those numbers would be patently ridiculous. If you just care about life swing, straight healing is going to blow away all of the siphon effects.

Given the efficiencies that damage and lifegain run on, is Vampiric Touch efficient? Not even close. 15 energy is just far too much to pay for this effect. It's a playable skill at low levels when skill availability is an issue, but once you start having access to better skills Vampiric Touch should quickly find its way off your skill bar, making room for much more efficient uses of energy.


Whoever designed Wastrel's Worry should get a raise - it's an absolutely brilliant skill design. Why? Because the skill is awful, but figuring out *why* it is awful is a huge step towards understanding the game. It is incredibly difficult to design unplayable skills that people think are amazing, but in Wastrel's Worry they've managed to pull it off.

The reasons why it's unplayable have already been touched on in this post. I'll leave it as an exercise to the reader to put it all together - understanding why Wastrel's Worry sucks is one of the most important lessons one can learn, and I'm a huge fan of the Socratic method. =)


Rigor Mortis is just extremely conditional, and it never does any better than break even. They're using Shield of Deflection? Ok, now it's just an armor boost instead of an armor boost and block chance. Plus they're ahead in the cooldown race. It can be somewhat useful if you're trying to fight through a ton of miss chance skills, but if you aren't you're just playing the old breaking even on 1:1 trades game - and I refuse to play that game.

I'd give Rigor Mortis a 2, even using the scale used here that gives out more 5s than skill slots. It's just a very conditional skill that isn't even a particularly good solution to the skills that it's trying to fight - it costs more, takes longer to cast, and has a long cooldown. It's never good, but sometimes it's useful enough to justify the skill slot. Stick to your guns Blackace. =)


That's what you're taking Rigor Mortis to fight, right? You certainly aren't grabbing it because you're afraid of Guardian, are you? No, you're trying to fight through Shield of Deflection, since that's everywhere and you're looking for a counter.

Rigor Mortis isn't it. They still get the armor boost, they can spread it around, and the cooldown on Rigor Mortis is too high to matter if you switch targets. You're getting tackled for loss and are somehow happy about it. Don't be.


In a pure Blood Necro/Warrior Vampiric Touch is in the mix for the 7th and 8th skill slots. Demonic Flesh and Life Siphon are obvious, and Plague Touch is likely making the cut as well (it gets worse as you pump Curses). Then you still get to grab some Warrior skills to flesh your bar out. It's in the mix but certainly not something to get excited about taking. Plus, as you say, if you grab curses at all, which you should, it clearly isn't going to make the cut over contributors like Mark of Pain and Shadow of Fear.


Energy degeneration is a strong effect, sure, but you have to take into account what you're spending on it. Spending 10 energy to degenerate your opponent's energy by 10 over time just isn't all that impressive - even if it is an even trade and they're at low energy, you're trading your position of strength to put both of you into a position of weakness. I'm not impressed.

Malaise is strong because it's cleap, it's spammable, and it actually hits their energy pretty hard. If someone's at low energy, as you say, it's a solid way to put the hurt on at a low cost to yourself. Wither on the other hand turns to junk at low energy - they regenerate a couple points, cast themselves down to zero, and it promptly ends. You spent 10 energy to cost them a fraction of that - not exactly what you want from any skill, not to mention your elite. Add in the other ways people have of regaining energy, and degen really needs to be pulling its weight.


Running Rend Enchantments is like putting in your third string quarterback after your first two guys are out for the year - you aren't excited to have him there, but what can you do?

Enchantment removal is neccessary. Single target removal is too bad to even consider, and Rend, even though it isn't spectacular, at least hits multiple targets, letting it pull its weight. You're not happy to be playing it, but you have to if you want to win.

If enchantment removal got buffed up and there were other viable alternatives, then yeah, Rend Enchantments would lose some priority as people messed around with better alternatives. But that's a big if. In the meantime, the best solution to problematic enchantments is to interrupt them - the only solution to stacked enchantments after the fact is to pound through with Rend. Just smile and bear running it.


I'd consider it, if just for the versatility. It's not as good as Shadow of Fear at shutting down Warriors and Rangers, but it's an ok punisher and the fact that you can toss it onto a Monk as well and still have it be effective is a nice touch. The cooldown and duration help, as well. It's a solid skill with a good amount of utility, something that I'd consider running in a supplemental role, but it just doesn't have the power to up and dominate that I look for in an elite.

But would I run it if it wasn't elite? Yeah, I'd use it in some builds.

Peace,
-CxE

Are you worried about fighting careless warriors? I figure I can kill them in other ways with better elites if they're really that dumb.

Life Transfer is mediocre because of the 30 second cooldown, not because of the health swing. Even +10 regen arrows aren't going to save you if you are really the target being focused. That's 20 health per second and dedicated attackers are going to do 35+ DPS to you EACH. Healers don't cast Healing Breeze on you when you're going critical, they cast it on you when there's a relative lull and you're maybe at half health.

Vampiric Touch is mediocre for the same reason- when you really need health, Vampiric Touch will not save you. It's nice when you have a moderate amount of damage that would be nice to heal but you can't bug your healers. But as Ensign said, any target getting focused is going to take thousands of points of damage and healing. Two Vampiric touches and you're out of energy, and you can't use any of the other 7 skills on your bar. Does that 120+ health look so attrative then? 1 Orison of Healing from a decent monk will heal about the same amount for 5 energy as opposed to 30.


As for coupling Faintheartedness with Awaken the Blood- do you really want to waste one of your eight slots on Awaken the Blood? So you're turning a mediocre choice into a fair choice.
And the AOE of Shadow of Fear and Enfeebling Blood really do make them superior choices in most situations. Are you really afraid of one warrior? I hope not. I'm a monk, and I laugh when one person is attacking me. I fear 3 warriors who are up in my face. That's when I want the necro on my team dropping Enfeebling Blood or Shadow of Fear on them.

And finally, BiP.
3 is indeed the sweet spot. It's certainly usable at 0 blood, but the extra health sacrifice is negligible. It's an extra 26 health sacrificed for an extra 3.33 energy. Why were you using BiP in the first place? To avoid losing health or to turbocharge your healers? Again, a 5 energy orison is going to heal you for 110-130 health. Give your healers more to work with and they will be better equipped to help you out if you suddenly become the focus fire target.

just a side note on the use of necro in pvp, ppl seem to overlook the wealth of available npc corpses to exploit. not to mention the necro/ranger with 0 in beast mastery and the whole ranger pet, die, exploit, rez, repeat fun.

hmmm i may start a necro hmmm

youve inspired me to start a necro hmmm

If rigor mortis sucks at countering defensive skills, how do you propose to counter guardian and shield of deflection then? Rend Enchantments does next to nothing, enchants are back up instantly.
Besides you are too hard on the skill. Even if Shield of Deflection still gives armor, other skills like Ward vs Melee and guardian, which are poplular enough, still get countered completely.

I would also like to ask, can anyone think of any Death attribute build that is not minion master? I've been trying out hard to come up with one whole BWE and now that I am in alpha and I can't find any decent skills. The only alternative to minions are death nukes. Deatly chill sucks compared to Vile Touch, Vile touch is mediocre compared to lightning nukes, and Deatly swarm, while being cost effective, is very cumbersome to use because of the 3 sec cast time. Death magic needs some new and inventive skills.

Honestly, I don't think there is any good, reactive way to counter defensive buffs at the moment. All of the solutions are slower and more expensive than what they're trying to counter, putting you in a position where you just cannot punch through in any reasonable fashion. How do you counter a Guardian of Shield of Deflection once it's up? Simply put, I don't think that you can.

The only good way to deal with these defenses is to be proactive - interrupts, energy denial, the various debilitating hexes that you can drop onto a Monk. You have to keep them from being cast in the first place, because you're pretty much helpless once they're up - Rigor Mortis doesn't do enough, Rend only buys you a couple of seconds, and then you're sitting there waiting for your skills to finish cooling down.

I think that, to fight defensive enchantments, you need to be hitting their Monks with Energy Drains and Debilitating Shots, Power Leaks, Distracting Shots, Arcane Conundrum, Backfire. In the meantime you need to switch targets frequently because you can't pound through these buffs - as soon as that Shield of Deflection goes up that target is lost for 10 seconds. So move to a different one, make them recast their buffs, get them down to the point where they're choking on the energy it takes to keep casting these skills.

Defensive buffs are a fight you cannot win, so don't fight it. Pick another battleground, one that you can win on, and win there.


It's an expensive counter to a narrow range of skills, one that almost always puts you behind on energy, casting time, and recycle. Narrow solutions need to blow me away for me to want to use them, and Rigor Mortis doesn't even break even. I don't think I'm being too hard on it. I think I'm being generous by saying you should even consider using it at all. The skill is awful, being used only out of sheer desperation as people try and fail to break through defensive walls over and over again.

The tools to break down those walls simply are not there. Trying here is an exercise in futility, a fight that merely exhausts you and brings you closer to defeat. You need to stop the walls from showing up in the first place, or to find a way to sneak around them, or otherwise avoid the problem altogether. The one thing you're not going to do is go through that wall. That's just the state of the game at the moment. Adapt or lose.

Peace,
-CxE

Let me start off by saying, excellent post. Very good. I personnally LOVE reading posts like these.

1) I'd have to disagree with Faintheartedness.
At attribute 12, we're looking at a 3 degen spell and decreased IAS curse that stretches for 37 seconds! I mean, this is almost better than any condition out there, with low cast time and 5 second cooldown.

I'd bump that one up to 4, personally.

2) As well, Mark of Pain would be so situational (godly on things like King of the Hill maps with multiple heros. But skilled guilds would move out as soon as they saw themselves taking damage from Mark of Pain. Therefore not pumping out as much damage as you can. Is it a good skill vs PuG or not-very-experienced guilds? Yes. Will it make a huge difference vs an experienced guild? Nope.

I'd bring this down to a 2.

3) I agree 300% with Rigor Mortis, you summed it up nicely. Regardless of what Ensign may say

4) Life Transfer. I've used this skill for a while. It's not all that great (I think Ensign can agree with me on this one). We're looking at such a long recharge time and we're looking at something with Soul Reaping. Energy can hardly be a problem with this character (especially with a Mesmer secondary). I don't see any use bring Life Transfer when you can spread disease and cast lesser effect, MUCH LONGER hexes that recharge for a 1/3 of the time. (See Life Siphon and Faintheartedness).

If it wasn't an Elite, it would be a 4. But it's an Elite.. 2.

5) Order of anything. Such a short duration (they can get what.. 3 swings in?) I'd rather spam degen or other things, than use any Order of the XXX skill.

Order of Pain gets a 2 and
Order of the Vampire gets a 1 (because it's an Elite)

Any thought on how to best use Grenth's Balance? I looked at that skill and could not find a really good use for the skill. With the 60s recharge time it will probably only be used once in a battle, and it's elite.

How would you guys rate this skill?

Freyas has a nice GvG build utilizing the power of Grenth's Balance here:

http://www.guildwarsguru.com/content...s-3-id1152.php

Oww... the thought that NPCs may have a lot bigger health than our characters never crossed my mind. Shame on me

Two questions:

1) Are you going to run Faintheartedness over Shadow of Fear?
2) Do you really need two attack speed debuffs with no recharge?

I agree that it's not a bad skill, at all. I just can't see myself running it over the alternatives.


Well it is better than Ignorance. I don't think that says very much though. It just isn't worth wasting a skill slot on.


You don't get 3 swings in, you get 15+ swings in - 3 from every other attacker on your team. You only use the orders on a physical team where everyone can take advantage. In those situations, they're very good. Outside of those situations, they're rather poor.

Peace,
-CxE

Two attack speeds debuffs? Not really, I'm more a fan of the -3 degen for 37 seconds... throw some runes on there and you could hit -4 degen for 50 seconds. I'd definitely hit that.

But essentially, you're using 10 energy (let's assume you're using Order of Pain)

So, you're sacrificing.. 67 health.. for someone to swing 3 times, and do 39 damage? Let's be generous and say they're using Hundred Blades on 2 people (4 hits), that's 6 hits.. for: 6x13 -> 78 damage at the cost of 67 health?

So:

Being generous and assuming they hit two people with Hundred Blades:

Order of the Pain:
10 Energy
Do 78 damage
Take 67 damage

Is there something that I don't understand about the skill? Because this is what I gathered.

Rigor Mortis is a tricky skill to analyze. On the surface, it's a counter to the various block and evade buffs that are flying around. But dig a bit deeper. If your team is being held off by Protection Monks, even on a target under full focus fire, is Rigor Mortis really going to be enough to tilt the scales back into your favor, or is it just too little, too late? If an opponent tosses up an evasion effect, have you really given yourself an advantage if you spend the resources to toss Rigor Mortis on him?

I think that the effect of Rigor Mortis is an important one to have in the game, but far too often I think it's a day late or a dollar short. It just isn't good enough at what it is supposed to do to be effective. When you look at all the other sexiness that the Necromancer has access to, powerful skills with powerful effects that force your opponent to deal with them, I don't think there's any contest.


Well, you have to get to attribute level 19 to get that fourth pip. It's possible, but not likely.

I agree with you that it's some solid degen if you're at level 12 curses. If you can back that up with, say, level 12 Life Siphons I think you're in pretty good DoT shape. It's clearly a powerful skill, one that shouldn't be dismissed out of hand.

The question is just if it's the right skill. If you're trying to be offensive then certainly, grab Faintheartedness, it's a solid skill. But generally, in my experience, it just isn't the skill you want. You want to be using the attack speed debuffs on packs of Warriors and Rangers, while you want to be dealing damage to their Monks and Mesmers. The DoT on a Warrior really doesn't matter since it's likely going to be unsupported, and if you just want to DoT their Monk you're better off with any of the various conditions, Life Siphon, Conjure Phantasm, or the like. It has a lot of utility, but I'd rather grab a pair of skills that are better at their respective jobs - Shadow of Fear for knocking out Warriors, and something from another class to deal damage.

Still, your point remains, at level 12 the skill has a lot of power and should be given a good, hard look.


What you're missing is that the Orders aren't target ally, they affect the entire party in one cast. So they aren't just 39 damage from 3 hits - they're 39 damage *per attacker on your team*. So if you have a pretty standard physical build with 2 Warriors and 3 Rangers, that's 5 teammates with +13 damage per hit for 5 seconds. 5 teammates can get off a lot of attacks in that period of time, particularly if they're using Hundred Blades, Dual Shot, Barrage, and speed buffs. Just from badly timed normal attacks you're looking at 12 attacks (2 per Ranger, 3 per Warrior) for 156 damage per cast, and with various speed buffs, good timing, and the right skills, you can easily get off 20-30 attacks, dealing 260-390 damage per cast in the process.

That's the power of the Orders, the power of multiplication.

Peace,
-CxE

Fear me, for I come unto this battle armed with the power of multiplication! All fractions shall bow down before the might of my scaling properties!

Superficially it seems hard to get to zero energy since you'll end up with the odd 2 or 3 energy that you can't spend. Once you consider that you can remove your focus (and even armor if desperate) to reach zero energy, it becomes apparent that when cast on a good player, Wither has a lifetime numbering in the few seconds.