As a necro...what do I have to do to get a group in TPOK thats not IWAY??

Woah! I just wanted to know what I had to do to get mote invites in the TOPK....I didnt want this to turn into a debate.

Join a guild who actually runs HoH. Doesn't matter if they suck; you'll all get better together, unlike PuGs, where you all get frustrated together.

It requires thinking to use Soul Reaping. oh noes, not thinking! haha, just kidding a bit. SR is not the easiest thing in the world, but I do believe that either sooner or later, SR will be abused. But all in time...

soul reaping is great. i lot in soul reap provides you with all the energy you will need to exploit the corpse that has just appeared.

you can have 0 energy then something dies and with a descent amount is soul reaping you can cast any type of well or putrid or anything.

Soul Reaping is Great.

Fastcasting is great. with 16 fast cast you half (and that is very good) the casting time on all spells.
how is that crap? or useless?

No every team does not require a necro. Have you forgotten that someone on your team might be xxxxxxxxx/n? I'm not talking about tainted though.

Now...IWAY builds...What appeals to you about them? I'll admit they are fun, but they also suck. All you do is ball up, smite, and ward! Maelstrom is NOT the answer to countering this tactic if you're facing a good team. They will just interupt the spells. And you're iway team is useless.

what tombs do you play in? not the same one as us.

you have to compare it to the other primary atttributes available. Soul Reaping and Fast Casting don't come anywhere near touching Energy Storage, Divine Favor or Expertise. If it's in the bottom half of the available primary attributes in the game...it's obviously "among the worst"

Even with Soul Reaping at 10 (9+1), you're going to see why it's worth playing a primary Necro, particularly in Tombs. The range of "nearby creatures" is wide enough so that you're firing Vampiric Gaze from its max possible distance and gaining 10 energy when your target dies--not to mention 10 energy from any other deaths around you.

Given that a primary Necro will only have a max of about 50 energy, there's no issue at all there. After two or three deaths around you (and we've all done Tombs, so we all know how much death goes on there), you've already netted back 20-30 energy.

Energy Storage is only given to Eles because Eles are the ones who really only need it, so pointing to that doesn't really make any sense. Eles regularly have 25 energy spells and skills in their repertoire. They need as large of an energy store as they can get.

Divine Favor, same thing. It's only useful to primary Monks specced to Healing and/or Prot.

Expertise, same thing. If you're a Ranger and using Expertise, you had better be speccing entirely to Marksmanship, Wilderness Survival, Beast Mastery...basically a pure Ranger. Because Expertise won't do jack for any of your secondary skills.

But Fast Casting and Soul Reaping from the primaries? They're the truly universal primary attributes. They are the two that every class in the game can benefit from. Secondary Wars, secondary Eles, Rangers, Monks, etc.

And why is that? Because Fast Casting and Soul Reaping are versatile as hell, in that they don't become useless if you spec your Mesmer from Inspiration to Domination, or your Blood Necro to Death Necro. Or for that matter, any secondary respec.

But if you were to respec a Healing/Prot Monk into Smiting? Divine Favor will just take up attribute points.

couldn't have said it better myself Siren.

although energy storage is useful for other classes it is not really needed for any class other than an ele.

in tombs at least 8 deaths will occur per battle. with only 10 in soul reaping you are getting 80 energy. over a period of time. this gives you a maximum of >130 energy at your disposal. and that is only with 8 deaths and 10 soul reap.

for energy storage to even come close you need 16 in it. even then you need the very best items to get over 100 energy.

also for fast casting. any class will benefit massively from a near halved cast time. imagine divine healing with a fast cast of 16. imagine meteor shower with fast cast 16. all people want to get their spells off quickly.

Siren you are absolutely right

the people who think soul reaping is a crappy attribute have never used it correctly

hmmm OK so let me get this straight. you are saying all you need is one corpse for WOP to be effective. I ahve to differ with you. You cannot choose which corpse your well is going to come from, it is the closest one to you that the well is made from. it is very very easy to run out of one well (even if the well yo umake goes where you want it, which does not happen all the time)

so yes more than 1 well is usually needed since no one i play with is gonna stand in the one well you make.


now can you please list for me the skills i mentioned that you think are "ineffective"?


I would love to hear them

This thread is an excellent example of why the quality of posting on gurus has reached an unbeatable low.

I'm not sure which is worse: the necro fanboyism or the debate over skill descriptions. Regardless, a lot of the old quality posters here are gone because of this stupidity. I guess those who actually want to learn will have to frequent somewhere else now. What a pity.

For wotp, glyph of sacrifice is not wise b/c you don't know when the corpse will die usually and therefore you're stuck not casting anything till it wears off or someone dies. And if a body dies in the wrong spot then congrats you just screwed yourself over.

Soul Reaping is at the ok level in tombs right now because of all the IWAY teams. In gvg it's absolute garbage though especially with the recent trends of low dps stalling builds.

Now if you want a real energy engine, throw 14 in energy storage and abuse ether renewal because nothing else in the game comes close.

Well, I think you're both right, because the amount of corpses you would need will greatly depend on what you want to do with WotP.

If you want to blanket the arena (which is a bit iffy, given WotP's 25 energy cost and 3 second cast time), you're going to need multiple corpses. There's really nothing more delicious than having two or three Death Necros dropping three WotPs that overlap ever so slightly so you've got an entire arena of enchant strip/suppression.

But unless the battle is really spread out, you're not really going to need to do that.

And if you're engaged in the opposite (really bunched close combat) with Monks on the distant perimeter along with the other spellcasters, that's where you only need one corpse. Speaking from personal experience, one of my first outings in Tombs, using a Fast Casting Mesmer with heavy Death and Domination magic, it's so very delicious letting your team know that you just need one corpse to completely screw the other team's enchants.

I've done it before (to a Korean team, no less) and the other team dropped within seconds. And what's really interesting about WotP is that with a primary Necro, you have so many ways to tell if a corpse dropped.

Whether through your energy/Soul Reaping being triggered, if there's one less life bar on the field...and the beauty of the Wells is that you can time them so as soon as that corpse hits the floor, your Well is already there. Get the timing down, and Putrid Explosion, Animate Bone Fiends...are all entirely useless. It's entirely possible.

And that's another reason why people need to really start accepting the viability of primary Necros, and why the only reason people think primary Necros suck is because they haven't taken the time to understand the fundamentals and dynamics of the class. The two deadliest classes in the game are Necros and Mesmers when played competently. I stand by that. Other classes are dangerous when played well, sure, but if you face against a Necro/Mes or Mes/Nec on the top of their game...you're going to die.

And what's really interesting is that the biggest threat to Necros and Mesmers is other Necros and Mesmers. Everything else is just an annoyance if you know what you're doing. And come to think of it...that's probably why Nec and Mes Mirror fights are so much more difficult than other classes: because your Mirror is using your own skills (Mes and Nec skills, mind) against you.

Zeru, no offense, but your reasoning falls apart when any experienced Corpse Exploiter plays. The very reason one plays a Corpse Exploiter Necro is because one has learned when to expect a corpse to appear, where a corpse will appear, and how fast that corpse will appear when the target dies.

There's a window of around 2.0 seconds when a live target counts as a corpse. If you study the life bar really carefully, you can see this. When the life hits a certain point, and the damage infliction is going to kill the target, you hit WofP, WoP, or WoB, WoS, etc., and your spell won't hit "Invalid Target."

I guarantee that if you really play Corpse Exploiting, and study the dynamics of what you can and can't do (see what rules can be bent, as it were), you'll see why your argument about not knowing where and when a corpse will appear...is completely laughable. Because if you just pay attention on the field, you'll be able to read it well enough so that your Wells will be right where you want them, 90% of the time, barring random, weird exceptions.

This isn't a Necro Fanboy talking. This is an Experienced Necro talking.

Probably a stupid question but what is IWAY? What does it stand for?

I Will Avenge You.

It's a noob build. Generally a W/R build with pets. You take charm animal, REs Sig, and I Will Avenge You. I Will Avenge You gives you 10 seconds of HP regen for every dead ally and it makes you attack faster.

Necros are generally used for Order of Vampire so that the warriors steal health when they attack.

Something like Wall of the Profane is most efficient against an enchantment heavy team trying to hold a certain tactical position. Get one off at the right spot (if needed using a corpse of your own) and their enchantment web is gone, and they'll need to move out of the place they were defending (such as the altar in HoH), thus potentially breaking open a healing impasse.

The skill you mentioned you'd use, being Consume Corpse, is effective in the sense that it will stop opponents from using long-casting Wells in a regular fashion, but a instant cast Well through GoS will still beat it to the corpse.

Those are valid practical concerns, but the basic point I was trying to make is that if you want to use Well of the Profane against a team trying to stop you from doing so, Glyph of Sacrifice is pretty much the only way to be sure. How successful you are casting it depends on your experience, team coordination (for spiking or sacrificing to create a corpse), timing and the measures the other team may take to stop you. Failing it screws you over, yeah, but not using GoS to get WotP going will mean they'll Necrotic Traversal, Putrid or otherwise pop the corpse before you can do anything with it, and WotP can do nothing for you, which is worse when you need its effect to break through an impasse.
Many also left because of dissatisfaction with the game itself, but you might be right about the rest. The skill description 'debate' was pretty much a fluke though, someone got called on a mistake but refused to stop and realize it, I guess because those that called him on it weren't "respectable" enough, which isn't surprising considering how that kind of stupidity is chasing those "respectables" off day by day.

to answer your original question....

1) tomb with your guild
2) go to international d's where most guilds meet, they might be looking for an extra

Brilliance.


The term you're looking for here is 'latency'.


Clearly.

Peace,
-CxE

lol who got called on a mistake?

these are opinions here not facts as far as i can tell unless you are talking about algren's lack of proper punctuation.

you were probably spamming american districts. only newbs there. thats probably why you were seeing so much IWAY. try international districts. i dont think anyone builds IWAY there plus every good build there involves a necro. the only problem might be your rank, because thats where all the higher ranked players play and they might not need you if you arent up to their level.

If it was just punctuation it wouldn't be so bad, there wouldn't be much discrepancy between that which he wrote and that which he supposedly meant to write. But he gave a description of Lingering Curse that precisely described an effect the skill doesn't have, which anyone with half a clue about Guild Wars will just raise an eyebrow over and move on, but people unfamiliar with Necromancers might actually pick up on the misinformation and run with it. Given Algren's reputation for cluelessness when it comes to the mechanics of skills and the time and effort it took for him to realize the flaw, calling it a 'mistake' is actually very forgiving, but that's that.

You can't have discussions of any noteworthy level without some base knowledge of how things work. If I enter a discussion about maximum damage output and note Flare does 16..146 fire damage and is therefore an awesome damage skill, I'm only off by a single digit. Did I make a typo, and just love flare for what it is? Or do I think Flare actually does that much damage, and is that why I love it? Until that is cleared up my statement on the skill is pointless, but it doesn't help if I go off and ridicule anyone who points out the error. Unfortunately my mistake already dumbed the thread down to a point where people shy away from it because it has people struggling with basics instead of actual discussion, so hopefully the mistake isn't repeated.

hehehe ok good enough for me

anyway back to our debate. my responses were for the poser who said to go 16 death.

in my opinion 16 death is way too much, lets for the sake of argument say you can get up your WotP before yo lose the corpse. you still need only 5 attribute points in death to avoid the 50% chance of failure.

I see no other reason to put any attributes in death than need be when with blood/curse you have 3 spells at your disposal that take down enchantments. LC and rend take down basically all of them and strip removes 1 while giving you a great self heal to boot.

as far as defeating IWAY groups if you are in a miting group your best bet is to stay in a group and "smite ball" them anyway. with 3 monks and constant seed no way anyone should die in your party anyway.

and really the only 2 groups in tombs atm is iway and smiters the balanced groups are still thre but few and far between

The point was that too many people are missing those dynamics. That particular timing for the Wells is there, because I've done it in Tombs before, PvE, etc. So...I'm not sure what your point was, apart from a pseudo-intellectual spam reply.

lmao i agree 100%

but then again it is not the first time

he is just trying to make a guildmember look good

iQ does that from time to time...they've got a "reputation" to uphold

My point is that those dynamics do not exist. Go and reproduce them in a low latency environment. You can begin casting a corpse exploitation skill the instant something dies, and not a moment sooner.

How exactly do you think this is supposed to work? You can start casting a corpse exploitation skill on a living target just because his health is low? What happens if he gets heals? There is no point in time when an individual still has hit points left when he is guaranteed to die. I've never seen a corpse exploitation skill start to cast on a target at low health, then fail because someone got heals. That simply doesn't make any sense.

I have seen phenomena like what you described, and they're mostly latency and communication artifacts. The player who's corpse you're exploiting is already dead in game, you just haven't seen it yet. The two most common communication bugs come from DoTs and Deep Wounds. DoT will kill a player instantly when he hits 0, but the death animations from those can be delayed a couple of seconds - the game normally only updates clients of hit point states whenever damage is taken, while DoTs are calculated independently client and server side. That's why you'll see yourself linger at 1 HP from a DoT a lot of the time before you drop dead - the local interface will get you down to 1, but you have to wait for the server to inform you of death.

The Deep Wound bug is similar. Deep Wounds take off 20% of max health from max and current health, and that updates instantly. But the client's graphical settings do not update until damage is taken. So oftentimes you'll have a Deep Wound kill someone, but they're still standing up on a client's screen. The next time they're healed or take damage, the game will send the packet informing you that you're dead and you'll fall over. Again this is a client/server disconnect bug - the victim has been dead from the Deep Wound for a while and you can exploit the corpse even if it isn't on your screen.

To reiterate - you can only use a corpse exploitation skill once there is a corpse in range to exploit, but whether or not your client has been informed of the corpse is a different matter entirely.


My point is that you're wrong, followed by a short discourse on exactly why you're wrong, why your argument doesn't make any sense, and why you're seeing the phenomena that you're seeing. Did I miss anything?


I was trying to correct what was originally an honest mistake before it snowballed into yet another entry of ridiculous, erroneous 'common knowledge'. I find it downright offensive that people take issue with such arguments, and try to discredit them as personal politics.


It's good to see that the drooling morons that inhabit this forum take every opportunity possible to uphold their reputation as a pack of anti-intellectual scrubs who are more interested in stroking their own egos than actually learning something.

Peace,
-CxE

Ah...so presumably then, I shouldn't be able to get off a Well before others use Animate Bone Fiend, because I'm just getting lag and therefore that Bone Fiend should rise long before I can get through the 3-second cast time of WotP, because the other player has a so-called "true" connection? I shouldn't be able to steal corpses from opposing Necros in Tombs and PvP as they're casting a Well? Or Ritualists and PvE Minionmasters as they're casting a Well or raising a Bone Fiend?

If it's all just lag/latency...other players and characters should be able to beat me to those corpses.

But they don't. If it's a delay exclusive to my machine here, then 90% of my Wells shouldn't even be happening. Other players should be using those corpses entire seconds before I'm finished my cast time. And that's not happening.

Others get the delay as well. It's just a matter of who hammers on the spell button faster.

not to be trivial...but how exactly is he going to emulate this scenario in a low latency environment? Have you ever had a ping under 150ms? I sure haven't and I watch it everytime I play...There have been many many people who have commented about their latency being unusually high....you can't test something in a low latency environment when that environment doesn't exist. 150ms+ ping isn't low latency...it's not even close.



you're kinda pompous, and by kinda I mean incredibly....which I can't foresee as being a good quality. But at least you're almost always right.

I'm gonna have to call bullshit when I see it. Soul Reaping guarantees you energy when something dies, which basically means you are guaranteed to have energy to use a corpse exploiting skill. When your skill bar is filled with wells, putrid, and curses, you do not need "another useful attribute". 14 death/11 curse/11 soul reaping with runes is all you need to run Lingering Curse, wells, and putrid/consume.

If you rely on SR to give you energy for anything other than corpse spells you're going to be disappointed. But when you need energy for a well of suffering, you can't beat SR for its passive gain (i.e. you don't need to stop to cast any other energy management spell).

Exactly, Red. Precise reason why I said it's a matter of timing, and why you can seriously have an advantage when you pay attention to the battlefield. And also, given that everyone gets that delay, as far as many are concerned, the corpse doesn't exist until the body appears. If everyone is seeing and experiencing that condition (the delay), the delay basically isn't even there. How can it be called a delay when most players aren't running under perfect conditions?

No. Reread what I said.

You can start to cast the Putrid or Well or whatever the skill is as soon as the player *actually* dies. Depending on your connection and how he dies (due to certain communication issues), that death could have occured a second or two before your client updates to show the death. If you were trying to cast your corpse exploitation skill before the clients update, and the other Necro was waiting to hear the death scream and see the XP pop up before hitting their skill, you're going to win several times, because you started casting when the victim *actually* died, while they don't start casting until the client finds out.

If you want to see an example of this communication latency for yourself, go and equip a Vampiric weapon, walk outside of town, and die from it. You'll watch your character's health count down, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, and it'll hang on 1 for a second, or even longer if there's a lot going on to tax your bandwidth. Your character *actually* died when your health would have hit 0, and someone could exploit your corpse immediately. But you don't see the death for another half second, or more, because the game doesn't update DoT deaths immediately. Necromancers usually use a lot of DoT, and you'll get kills off of those - kills that you'll be informed about late because of the communication disconnect.

If you're killing with DoT, yes, you want to start hitting your corpse exploitation button a good second or so before you see a target fall. Because the server is going to see him dead, and let you start casting, before your client updates with his death.

You can do the same thing with Ressigs. I've used a Ressig on a seemingly living teammate before - I was just mashing on it to get a fast res and it fired off before he degened to death. Dead on the server, alive on my screen. Same issue.


If they know to start casting before their clients update, yes, they should, and they do. You aren't going to get a well through if they're mashing on Putrid. But if you know about communication latency and start casting before they die, and they're waiting for a scream to hit Putrid, you can slip a Well in there.

Everyone can start casting at the exact same time - the moment that the victim actually dies and becomes a corpse for exploitation. Not everyone does start at that point, though, and those who know how to anticipate when a corpse is going to appear get a leg up, and more exploits as a result.


The latency isn't specific to your machine - it happens to everyone. The victim dies a good second before anyone's client finds out about it oftentimes, but not a lot of people know about it. They continue to use Putrid and Wells reactively, and they constantly get beat by good Necros as a result. The only way to guarantee a fair shot at a corpse is to mash on the button once people start to get close to death. If you can see the XP and Faction pop up, it's too late.

Peace,
-CxE

It is a delay - just stop the back and forth on that right here.

How you choose to play in regards to that delay, however, is a whole different story.

Can someone cast corpse exploitation skills before any creatures within the allowed radius dies? I have an idea: let us test it out!

Step one: Have a volunteer spam sarcrifice skills on his allies untill he has really low health.
Step two: Have the ally spam a corpse exploitation skill.
Step three: Take screen shots.

Skills chosen:
BiP for sarcrifice, Well of Profane for corpse exploitation. WoP has 3 second cast time, chosen to see if the game mechanic actually place the cast-time of corpse skills into consideration of "possible corpse in the immediate future" when used.

Environment:
This test is conducted right outside of droknar's forge, in the explorable area where no monsters are in sight. This is to prevent any aggro from other creatures during the course of experiment and to make sure the trials are not errored by possible creature corpses.

Scenario 1:
Ranger/Necro Bipping herself to really low health, while a Necro teammate try to cast well of profane.

Screen Shot

Scenario 2:
What if someone argues that the health isn't LOW ENOUGH? Let's test it with Ra/N using a vampiric weapon.
Screen Shot


Notice the red text: "Invalid spell target"? This shows that nobody can cast a corpse exploitation skill when no one is dead, no matter how low their health bars are. We tried this several times, and each time the result comes out negative. Please take this as proof that you cannot "precast" corpse exploit skills. If you want to prove otherwise, try this out yourself and take screen shot of a casting bar going off when there is no one dead around you.


--------------
Now, onto flame/rant: (for nailz and salja Wachi. *passes other forum readers bags of popcorn*)
Guys, you are retards. You post for the sake of posting, for the purpose to ignite flames (which you deserve), and for the desire to gain attention (which you recieved). You fail to argue with logic or proof of in-game screenshots, and you try to label a group of people you hardly know shows how shallow you are. While it's entertaining to read your posts, seeing people 'backing up' false knowledge of this game without proof just tick me off. You are posting in a public forum, and sure, you have the freedom to your speech. However, when what you are trying to advocate is wrong and you resort to group discrimination instead of actual in-game proof, you show the world that you are just another pathetic, laughable clown. GWguru used to have a tight standard on forum content. Now, people can say anything they want regarding to this game, and still get their ideas supported without testing them out in-game. Sometimes they even got a mod replying without knowing that she is helping the negative trend. This isn't how GWguru got popular, so please, stop it. You are killing gwguru. Stop. Grow some brain cells, play the game, so you'll know what you are talking about in the future.

ensign ever think that we are tired of yo flaming people? every think your name calling does not become you, nor does it become a moderator of this website.

your condescending tone, and your obvious bias on these boards is out of control.

I for one am tired of it and i am gonna call you on it every time you try to post it here.

your patronizing to Silmore was so obvious it is not even funny.

you were trying to make a guildmate look good on these boards and that was all. believe me when i tell yo most of us are sick of it

excuse me????

exactly what false knowledge did i post here?

every thing i have said here is true. I never once said you can exploit a corpse before it is dead. and as fa r as your flames, at least do us the favor of posting an example before you make an even bigger fool of yourself.

if you canont give an example then shut your mouth and let people who cna give an example use this space.

ahh I see now lmao i should have known by the arrognat and useless post that Lonedust was a member of IQ.

go away we are tired of you

But I'm still not good (or experienced)?

Excuse me? Exactly where did I say you post false knowledge? Please: I accused you of advocated a response to someone that posted some false infomation (as pointed out)

But again, I guess not only you don't use your head when you post, you don't use it when you read, either.

PS. A fine double posting job you do there as well, good sir.

here is your quote the whole quote.

"Now, onto flame/rant: (for nailz and salja Wachi. *passes other forum readers bags of popcorn*)
Guys, you are retards. You post for the sake of posting, for the purpose to ignite flames (which you deserve), and for the desire to gain attention (which you recieved). You fail to argue with logic or proof of in-game screenshots, and you try to label a group of people you hardly know shows how shallow you are. While it's entertaining to read your posts, seeing people 'backing up' false knowledge of this game without proof just tick me off."


you directly accuse me of ignoring screen shots, and "backing up" false knowledge. now either show me an example of that or issue me an apology for all here to see.

or your third option is to go away