Curse

Aug 02, 2005, 11:44 PM // 23:44

Quote:

Originally Posted by Tuon

false

has no clue

ComMan · Aug 02, 2005, 11:47 PM // 23:47

Spirits tend to live for pretty similar ammounts of time, so when Soul Reaping refills your mana 2-3 more spirits are going to die and not give you any mana. If you dump all of your mana and then wait for them to die, then you have to spend 40 mana over 2 minutes, which isn't very efficient one way or another.

Zeru · Aug 02, 2005, 11:53 PM // 23:53

Quote:

@ Zeru: again, with the rise of spirits like NR, how are you going to maintain enough enchants for ER to be very effective? I agree though, ER is godly in PVE, there's no other energy regain skill quite like it. But for PVP, I'd have to say OoB > ER.

Ether Renewal
Aegis (up 80% or more of time with zephyr)
Aura of Restoration (10 second downtime with zephyr)
Zealots Fire (15 second downtime with zephyr)
Prot Spirit (spammable)
Guardian (spammable)

Multiple others that work.

Offering is a solid primary monk skill but you just cannot beat the broken ether renewal in terms of energy regen.

Trust me you won't have trouble with Ether Renewal with zephyr unless they have 4 rangers with oath shot, zephyr, and renewal.

And necro runes are pretty much the worst in the game. I,e nowhere near the level of something such as superior expertise. Curses you don't need many points in for good worth, death points are nice for putrid/rotting/tainted, useless otherwise, blood points are only needed for oob/orders/bip. The only ones you need to go over 12 for are the orders and bip.

For gaining soul reaping due to spirits dying, fertile makes mass killings prohibitive, and the other part is that with soul reaping you cannot go above your max energy (40ish). If you could then it would be a whole different ballpark.

quinaquen · Aug 02, 2005, 11:59 PM // 23:59

The fact that things die so often makes Soul Reaping better than Energy Storage. If you go the way of the Death Mage, the things you raise give you SR when they die, so figure them in twice for the energy, and bone minions is a free spell when you have 12-13 (actually free when you have 10-11, because the time it takes to cast the spell). You could make a case for the elementalist when you are blood magic, but even then, think: do I want a higher standing energy or a "never-ending" flow to come WHEN I AM USING THAT ENERGY? It looks nice to have 66 Energy, but that's all it is, looks. The minute you start to fight, you'll never have 66 Energy again. If you are a Necro, you only start with 40 or so, but as the battle continues, you'll continue to have around that same amount. If you are a Curses Necromancer...get out of my face.

Tuon · Aug 03, 2005, 12:15 AM // 00:15

Quote:

Originally Posted by Blackace

has no clue

lol you'd be surprised

Iraqalypse Now · Aug 03, 2005, 12:18 AM // 00:18

maybe a wierd dark aura based build for e/n with ether renewal...... which is basically a smiter that only can AoE around self, so it probably sucks except for surpise

Swarnt Brightstar · Aug 03, 2005, 12:31 AM // 00:31

Tuon is that avatar from warcraft?

on a more related note:
reasons to be primary necros: Runes, Near constant energy renewal, as the battle goes on everyone else weakens meanwhile you strenghten, and last but not least no one attacks you in PvP and you have your minions as meat shields in PvE.

Reasons not to: less max energy than elementalist who's energy would be gone in about 30 secs.

compare, now which is better

Hate · Aug 03, 2005, 12:40 AM // 00:40

I would go with soul reaping, (as i did with my N/W).

ElderAtronach · Aug 03, 2005, 12:58 AM // 00:58

Quote:

Originally Posted by Swarnt Brightstar

and last but not least no one attacks you in PvP

Untrue in tombs. Necros go down quick, because people don't want them putrid chaining nearby corpses. Primary necros get access to bloodstained boots which I believe halves casting time on spells that target corpses, and that means they will beat any nonprimary necro to said corpses. Plus, if they are wearing tormentor's gear for the armor bonus, smiting hurts them BAD.

Creed · Aug 03, 2005, 01:10 AM // 01:10

Death or blood you'll want to be Primary necromancer.
Curses... you could easily choose to be primary Ele and be happy.

Blood / Death are really influanced by the attribute score in each. Having above 12 if you intend on being a death necro is'nt a suggestion it's a must. Sure certin skills will be fine without it being over 12 but alot of them will suffer.

Blood is pretty much the same, Soul leech / Life transfer are great examples of this, what might be a horrible skill to have cast on you while the casters skill value is 12, becomes an unbearable skill when the casters skill level is 16.

Curses, unless you're talking about Spitful spirit / Insidious parasite, are pretty much fine at 12. Skills like faint heartedness, 31 secounds at 12. 37 at 16. And that pretty much goes for alot of the time based skills in the curses line, 12 will cover the person a significant amount of time, and the 16 might eb worth it if you're trying somthing a little diffrent but generally wont be.

As for choosing based on primary attribute Soul reaping / Energy storage. I dont understand how you can comprehend this. Soul reaping is a form of energy managment so is energy storage when coupled with it's related skills. And even better when coupled with it's elements and their attunments. SR while, many will say it's under rated, and it can give you that energy boost just when you needed, is flawed. While you're waiting around for things to drop dead and for you to gain energy, you're an easy target and can easily become one of those things dropping dead.

Soul reaping really is'nt a great primary attribute, but it's all the necros get. While it does help, it is'nt work jack without a significant amount invested into it. While that might be practical for a pure death necro, it's certinally not for a blood/death curses/death, blood/curses necro, or at the very least significantly less practical.

Then again the choice is yours

Phades · Aug 03, 2005, 02:20 AM // 02:20

Quote:

Originally Posted by Swarnt Brightstar

Tuon is that avatar from warcraft?

on a more related note:
reasons to be primary necros: Runes, Near constant energy renewal, as the battle goes on everyone else weakens meanwhile you strenghten, and last but not least no one attacks you in PvP and you have your minions as meat shields in PvE.

Reasons not to: less max energy than elementalist who's energy would be gone in about 30 secs.

compare, now which is better

Your build is bad if you are draining out around 80+ energy using elementalist skills in 30s. This is just going off of the base pool, people can ramp that number up to, over 100. Its closer to possible if you are trying to bleed out your pool without some form of attunement, but that still doesnt account for things like ether renewal. Then you figure in regen over time and things like ether renewal played well, which can refill the entire mana bar in under 10s.

Most good builds and combinations will have energy management of some form that far outclasses the necromancer passive soul reaping. First off that skill does nothing for you if no one dies and secondly it happens at times that you have no control over. Trying to state that expertise in the form of an enchantment and another enchantment that just builds on that efficiency with energy regen is bad, is just foolish at best. Monk combinations are the easist due to abundance of low energy and spammable skills that do not cost life to use and is also rife with enchantments to inflate the efficiency of ether renewal.

Even on a really weak build fire that i play for giggles in the arena, it takes me right around 2 minutes to drain out to empty of constant casting. The largest limiting factor on draining it out is the recast times on the heavier energy cost spells. In this build im not using ether renewal, due to a lack of spamable spells (yes i dont use flare), so i run out of juice eventually. Also the amount of deaths are rather finite, so the gain from SR is limited within pvp as well. Either their team dies and you gain energy to summon to continue the process or your team dies and well it doesnt matter. Granted there are spirits, but fighting out a stalemate so that the spirits expiring over time does not promote a strong argument for a sucessful skill either. This is especially true when the aforementioned spirit builds employ a skill that neuters a large portion of the better skills within the class.

Cyan · Aug 03, 2005, 03:52 AM // 03:52

Quote:

Originally Posted by ElderAtronach

Untrue in tombs. Necros go down quick, because people don't want them putrid chaining nearby corpses. Primary necros get access to bloodstained boots which I believe halves casting time on spells that target corpses, and that means they will beat any nonprimary necro to said corpses. Plus, if they are wearing tormentor's gear for the armor bonus, smiting hurts them BAD.

Not necessarily... some teams run Me/N with fast casting putrid... Ive done a couple of tombs runs as the necro putrid guy and have gotten owned by the fast caster even with the bloodstained boots. Don't say I hit the putrid button after him cause I pretty much just sat there and mashed the key until I broke the keyboard.

Arathorn5000 · Aug 03, 2005, 04:33 AM // 04:33

Meh, I don't see why everyone thinks enery storage is so much better than Soul Reaping. With the same amount of attribute points in each one, you only need 3 things to die during the battle to receive the same amount of energy as energy storage would have gotten you. Every death after that is 'profit', so-to-speak.

Too many people just think about the poor necro sitting, waiting around for things to die

Take PvE: most mobs generally have 4 monsters, so soul reaping breaks even with energy storage in that scenario. They are quite balanced. But arguably, the only difficult PvE situations are where you get ambushed by a roving mob from behind, and in that situation soul reaping is clearly better.

In PvP, there are definitely less people dying. But you don't think 3 people will die? Of course, some builds need lots of energy at the beginning to spike damage against singled out targets...energy storage is great there. But I can almost guarantee that soul reaping will provide more energy throughout the battle than energy storage.

ComMan · Aug 03, 2005, 05:28 AM // 05:28

But will you get to use all of that energy and will it be effective? Almost every single team has Frozen Soil, so if even 2 of those 3 deaths were on your side, then odds are very good that you're already done. Let's not even think about all 3 of them being your team mates. If those deaths were on their side, then they're probably done, so either way your Soul Reaping hasn't helped.

If, by chance, neither team is running Frozen Soil, then Soul Reaping can be awesome. Then again, if your opponent was dumb enough not to run Frozen Soil, he was probably doomed anyway.

There's also the chance that your Soul Reaping will trigger when your mana is already full, so there's energy you don't get to spend.

You also don't get to spend that mana if you're dead, because you don't get it. The Ele, however, had his extra 30 before he died.

At the end of the day, there's very little reason to take your Necro to the tombs. If it makes you feel better, I have a necro too, along with a smite monk and a Ranger who refuses to join spirit teams. I know how it feels to be "teh suxor."

ElderAtronach · Aug 03, 2005, 06:01 AM // 06:01

Quote:

Originally Posted by Cyan

Not necessarily... some teams run Me/N with fast casting putrid... Ive done a couple of tombs runs as the necro putrid guy and have gotten owned by the fast caster even with the bloodstained boots. Don't say I hit the putrid button after him cause I pretty much just sat there and mashed the key until I broke the keyboard.

Hmmm... how can this be? Even at 16 fast cast, 1 second cast times are reduced to 0.5 according to the fast cast chart on guru. So that must mean either bloodstained boots are slower than 0.5, or maybe they had 2 necros outmashing you?

Ishamael Sedai · Aug 03, 2005, 06:22 AM // 06:22

Quote:

Originally Posted by Blackace

Soul Reaping is horrible outside of PvE and dias maps. Have fun.

but for those its fun

Maiyn · Aug 03, 2005, 10:46 AM // 10:46

Blood/curses all the way.

Totally sick life drain

Calibretto_9 · Aug 04, 2005, 12:46 AM // 00:46

I'd say with the current balance issues we're facing (NR) in Guild Wars, this is definitely something the developers should be looking in to. And that is the fact that necromancers are extremely gimped when it comes to pvp. I'd say that while soul reaping is absolutely outstanding in PvE (At least with my death necro), when it comes to PvP it is quite literally the worst of the primary attributes. People are just not going to be dropping fast enough to make up for the energy lost in battle. I think the best way to counter this would be to give the Soul Reaping attribute line some skills related to it, therefore being a primary necromancer would come with skills that no other class would have access to, and oh yeah, you get some energy when something dies. Much more useful in PvP, and a way to make sure that those who chose necromancers as the character aren't forced to go back and make a new character if they actually wish to compete. ^_^

Carinae · Aug 04, 2005, 03:41 AM // 03:41

Quote:

Originally Posted by Maiyn

Blood/curses all the way.

Totally sick life drain

I agree. People underestimate the Vampiric builds. But they are most effective in 4v4.

Skel Flamebender · Aug 04, 2005, 06:43 AM // 06:43

Quote:

Originally Posted by Calibretto_9

And that is the fact that necromancers are extremely gimped when it comes to pvp.

Your using the wrong necro then... I have the mesmer and ranger secondarys for my main character, mesmer for pve and ranger for pvp. With Curses and wilderness survival I pvp pretty damn good in my own opinion.