Nag

I've made a sign-up for Beginner Raids for next week, since I couldn't make it for this weekend. Sign up if you're interested! ^^

That feeling when you've known for several days that you've forgotten something, but can't remember what...

I finally added pictures to Traits and Utilities! I also fixed some errors, so recheck your traits so they match with what's shown.

I've added the fact that Magic Find does nothing in the raid - no regular mobs drop any loot of any kind, and all other loot is in chests (that are completely unaffected by magic find). Just so nobody ever has to worry about that ^^

As a side note, I was wrong about one thing: Multiple conditions can be transferred at the same time, depending on how many minions you have. So if you have Bleed and Poison on you and two minions up, one will take your Bleed stacks and one will take your Poison stacks (but in the case above, having more than two minions wouldn't do anything special). There's still no "multiplication" of the stacks, mind you, but it makes it easier to manage skills that put a lot of different conditions on you (Corrupt Boon is Bleed + Poison, Blood is Power is Bleed + Torment).

As a kind reminder, it would be nice if those interested added their experience level (again, "Complete beginner" is fine, but it's useful to know for planning purposes) and what classes/roles you can play, otherwise planning gets quite hard.

I need to check some things with my schedule, but if things are looking up I may get something going next weekend. No promises though.

I know you can ^^

There's also a few potential healers in here, so if we have the "guide" acting as tank then I guess we're more or less set. Still, it's good to have multiple people able to cover the special roles.

Hmhm, seems there's some interest. Good!

The main problem seems to be the lack of tanks, healers and condis. I recommend that anyone that has the ability to start learning these builds - even if you're not confident with them yet - starts to consider them. For Vale Guardian we'd need at the very least one tank, one healer (theoretically they could be the same person) and two condis, ideally three. Tank is quite hard to learn, but both healers and condis can do a lot of good even as beginners.

Susimusta's idea of a "raid weekend" seems solid. Again, the goal isn't to full clear the raid and get epic loot, but to introduce people to the mechanics, make them comfortable with raiding etc.

I'm hesitant to place a hard date on anything yet, but this is definitely something I'd aim to see sooner rather than later.

Evening!

This may be overdue, but - I think it would be a good thing if the OpenCommunity were to arrange scheduled beginner raids. A lot of players are intimidated about taking the first steps into raiding, but once they've taken their first steps they can often go on to find that raiding is quite doable and even fun.

Ideally, this would be a scheduled event in the sense that you arrive at a given time, not just slowly drip in at random points. Tries would not be expected to last too long - certainly not more than two hours, probably less - as the idea isn't to bash our heads against the raid until either it or we collapse, but to see mechanics and get a feel of the content.

I'm not keen on putting entry requirements, but I'd probably have to ask that people fill the bare minimums listed in this other thread of mine; it would most certainly be required that any beginners read that thread first. Basically, you'll need HoT, a level 80 character with an exotic set and as many Ascended trinkets as possible, reasonable Sigils and Runes and willingness to play builds tuned for raiding. TeamSpeak is obviously also necessary. If you're uncertain about these requirements, feel free to ask!

Again - this thread is more just to gauge interest. The main problem is that any raid will require at least some special roles to be filled, and having at least one or two experienced people to act as guides is pretty crucial. Personally I can explain any of the fights and fill any role, but I'm just one person, and my schedule is not all that forgiving, sadly.

So - if you're interested even slightly, please make a post here! Ideally, make it clear how experienced you are (be honest, "No experience" is a valid answer!) and what sort of roles you could fill or learn to fill.

This is a look at the Druid's role as a dedicated healer in group PvE content. Druids boast some of the strongest healing in the entire game, and can keep an entire team (and their various pets, minions etc.) alive through the roughest of times. This build is specifically tuned for raids, where people take constant damage and need constant healing. For smaller groups and solo play, this build is rather slow due to low damage, and has unneccessarily much healing, so it's not recommended for those situations.

The version I will discuss will be the most healing-focused one, playing as a dedicated healer/support with negligible DPS output. There are DPS-oriented Druid builds out there that are quite strong, but when your team is less experienced or has Necromancers who want you to spamheal their minions, this build will generally provide more useful to the group. As such, I won't really go into detail about how to maximize your DPS – this build is about learning to pump out as much healing and support as possible, then you can tune into more DPS when you're comfortable with healing (or you can stay as a dedicated healer, it's legitimately good!).

This build also has the advantage of being quite cheap for a raid build, having pretty low-cost gear requirements. Healers are also always highly sought after in raids, so it's a good choice for getting into raiding.

This build requires HoT to play, no way around it, sorry.

 

Equipment

Full Magi's gear (Healing Power/Precision/Vitality). Exotic quality is more than good enough. Ascended stat combination name is [Hronk's], but I really wouldn't craft that unless you're bored, as your healing will be more than good enough with Exotic.

For trinkets you can't really go wrong. You can pick up some exotic Magi's trinkets (there are no Ascended Magi's trinkets), use Ascended Cleric (Healing Power/Toughness/Power) or just keep the good old Berserker's (Power/Precision/Ferocity) trinkets.

Magi's, Zealot's (Power/Precision/Healing Power), Cleric's or Berserker's Staff as your main set - I heavily recommend Magi's, but your choice. Anything (even a second Staff!) works as your second set, as most sets can have a use for different situations – see below for a discussion of different weapons.

 

If you want to go more offensive, then you'll want either Berserker's, Zealot's or even Viper's (as Condi Druid is actually a very good way to go if you want to do more DPS as a Druid). However, as this guide focuses on the most heal-oriented Druid setup, I won't discuss how to make the most out of these offensive stat types here. You will see a lot of people loving their Zealot's sets, though, and that's fine, the healing is a bit worse but it has marginally more damage to make up for it - and for skilled groups where incoming damage is very low, this can be a good tradeoff.

 

A pretty good option for your trinkets is getting Exotic Magi's trinkets (of all sorts, including backpiece) from the Karma Vendor at the Temple of Lyssa in Orr or as random drops in Fractals, then slot them with Crest of the Magi. It costs a fair bit of karma / takes some lucky loot drops, but they're kind of "ideal" unless you somehow get Ascended Magi's trinkets from the raids. Feel free to mix in some Ascended Cleric's trinkets, though, they have a bit more Healing Power - just make sure you have less Toughness than your tank.

 

If you do a lot of PvP or did a lot of dungeons back in the day, the dungeon collection for Twilight Arbor and Honor of the Waves both give you an Ascended Magi's Accessory for completing them, but yeah, that's kinda hard to get and not really something I'd grind for.

 

Runes / Sigils

 

Armor: [Superior Rune of the Monk] x6. [Superior Rune of the Druid] x6 works as well if you'd rather spend money than run Ascalonian Catacombs (although Ascalonian Catacombs is a perfect source of Magi's armor with Rune of the Monk, since the dungeon vendor sells this exact set); the Druid runes are more focused on short bursts of healing, while Monk's is about consistent, sustained healing.

Staff: [Superior Sigil of Transference] and [Superior Sigil of Water]. Since Sigil of Transference is quite expensive, a budget option could be [Sigil of Benevolence], although it's unfortunately not very well suited  to all raid content. Still, it's actually quite good in some fights with many adds, like against Sabetha.

Second weapon set: If you are running a double Staff build, you can just use the same things as the main Staff on it. If you are running any other weapon, the Sigils are kinda up to you, as they won't matter that much unless you want to do something specific with them. If you had Transference on your main set, having Benevolence and Water on your off-set is okay, although Transference and Benevolence would be the "best" option for add-heavy fights.

 

Traits

Nature Magic: 3/2/3

Skirmishing: 2/1/1

Druid: 2/2/1

 

If you are running a lot of spirits (any two of Frost Spirit, Sun Spirit and Water Spirit), consider changing the last trait in Nature Magic to Nature's Vengeance (top trait), as it will increase their effective range and grant some very nice boons to your group.

 

Utility Skills

Heal Skill: If you need personal healing, Troll Unguent is your best bet. Once you are comfortable with your own health, you can go for Glyph of Rejuvenation, which heals and buffs other people.

Utility Skill: Frost Spirit and Glyph of Empowerment. For your third slot, you can run Sun Spirit to boost your Condi-geared teammates, Glyph of the Tides for extra CC (invaluable on Vale Guardian) or Glyph of Alignment as a general heal. “Search and Rescue!” is also a very strong rez skill if that is needed.

Elite Skill: Glyph of Unity. Rarely you can use Spirit of Nature, but it is generally not worthwhile. Entangle is an amazing Immobilize, which can be especially useful on the second boss of Spirit Vale, Gorseval.

 

You should not underestimate the other heal abilities, Water Spirit and Healing Spring. If you have enough healing to keep yourself up without problems, these healing skills add a lot of healing to your group. Water Spirit gives a lot of sustained healing to your entire group. Healing Spring adds nice burst healing and condition clearing, although it's generally a bit clunkier to use than the Glyph of Rejuvenation.

 

Practice

Unlike most DPS classes, healing Druids don't have a “rotation” they stick to, but rather several ways to tune either more DPS or more healing as each situation requires it. The trick is to learn the most important combos.

The most important feature of the build is the Quick Draw trait: “When swapping weapons, the next ranger weapon skill you use will recharge 66% faster.” Furthermore, going into your Celestial Avatar form will trigger this trait, allowing you to get reduced cooldown on your most powerful heal, the Celestial Avatar 4 ability, Rejuvenating Tides. Thus whenever you go into Celestial Avatar form you want to use:

 

Rejuvenating Tides (Celestial Avatar 4).

Lunar Impact (Celestial Avatar 3).

Either spam 1 (Cosmic Ray) or 2 (Seed of Life) on people (1 heals more but 2 clears conditions and applies Blind) until 4 (Rejuvenating Tides) is off cooldown.

Rejuvenating Tides (Celestial Avatar 4).

Keep spamming 1 or 2 until Celestial Avatar form is over to give people Grace of the Land, and use 3 and 4 whenever they are up. If people are already full health but you'll need to heal a lot later, you can exit Celestial Avatar early to conserve a bit of astral force.

 

You can also use Celestial Avatar 3 (Lunar Impact) as a small CC instead of a heal if that is necessary. Celestial Avatar 5 (Natural Convergence) is generally not worth using as it has no healing, although you can use it as a soft CC (cripple/slow/immobilize) if you're desperate. It does okay damage too, but has a long channel and you can't move while casting it.

Whenever you swap back to Staff, you want to use either Astral Wisp (Staff 2) for both DPS and healing, or Ancestral Grace (Staff 3) for burst healing. You don't have to disable your autoattacks, please disregard that.

If you need more burst healing, Sublime Conversion (Staff 5) is a Water Field and Ancestral Grace (Staff 3) is a Blast Finisher, so place Sublime Conversion near allies and use Ancestral Grace on top of it. Make sure the center of the AoE is on top of the water field (a thin line), or you won't get the AoE healing.

Finally, Vine Surge (Staff 4) is good for soft CC (immobilize), and is very useful for Seekers on Vale Guardian. It also cleanses conditions, but does not heal.

 

Unlike what I've claimed before, Quick Draw is not wasted by autoattacks, so you can keep your autoattack on, yay! But Quick Draw has a very limited window to use it before it expires, so make sure you use an actual ability (e.g. Staff 2, Staff 3 or Celestial Avatar 3 or 4) as soon as possible after switching weapon sets to get the most out of this amazing trait.

 

Try to use Glyph of Unity (the Elite Glyph) while in Celestial Avatar form, as its "normal" version is quite useless. Also, be aware that Glyph of the Tides is a Pushback normally, and a Pull while you are in Celestial Avatar form; so if you want to push stuff away from your team, make sure you don't accidentally use Glyph of the Tides in Celestial Avatar form! (And vice versa)

Regardless, every time you use a Glyph you will also leave behind a Seed that works just like your Celestial Avatar 2 (Seed of Life) skill, healing, cleansing conditions and giving a stack of Grace of the Land to your allies, making all Glyphs good as heals and buffs.

 

Pets

 

Pets add a lot of flexibility to the Druid's arsenal. Pets are not affected by your own stats, so DPS-type pets will still do good damage even if you're in full healing gear, and support type pets are just as good even if you go full DPS gearing; the only thing that affects them is certain traits and any buffs on them.

 

DPS Support

Juvenile Tiger – Provides a lot of Fury for your team.

Juvenile Jungle Stalker – Provides Might for your team.

 

Pure Single Target DPS

Juvenile Panther

Juvenile Lynx

Since it got nerfed recently, the Juvenile Bristleback isn't as good as it once was, but it's still an okay DPS pet.

 

AoE DPS

Juvenile River Drake

Juvenile Marsh Drake

If you need AoE Condition Damage, switch River Drake for Salamander Drake or Juvenile Fire Wyvern.

 

Hard CC

Juvenile Pink Moa (a surprisingly strong Daze)

Juvenile Wolf (Fear)

 

Immobilize - very useful for Vale Guardian, the first boss of the first raid wing!

Juvenile Jungle Spider

Juvenile Krytan Drakehound

 

Defensive Support

Juvenile Fern Hound – Can moderately heal allies, which charges your astral force a significant amount.

 

Weapons

As stated earlier, most weapons serve some purpose, so be prepared to keep all of them handy. As they are mainly your off-sets, you don't need these to be very high quality or to have very good stats.

Surprisingly, having a Staff as your secondary weapon is quite good, as you can swap between your two staves to constantly trigger Quick Draw to get very low cooldown on your Staff 2 (Astral Wisp) or Staff 3 (Ancestral Grace).

If you need some CC, a Longbow has a nice pushback on Longbow 4 (Point-Blank Shot), and you can use it twice in pretty rapid succession due to Quick Draw. The other weapon sets are mostly either for DPS or personal defense, and is up to personal taste, really.

A Sword/Dagger set as your second setup is great for spamming Cripple, which is quite valuable at certain parts of the fight against the second boss of Spirit Vale, Gorseval. Stats don't really matter, but if you want to optimize you can get Viper's with a Sigil of Hobbling (+20% Cripple duration) and maybe Sigil of Ice or something (chance to Chill on hit). Both are very cheap, and you can get extra (exotic) Viper's weapons by completing HoT story on another character, but you really don't need to worry too much about optimizing this set.

 

So I've been nerding it out some more, and I'm getting more and more confused about the gearing suggestions people keep quoting.

The common consensus is that the "best" is Full Viper's (including Exotic trinkets), Sigil of Malice and Runes of the Berserker. I actually went ahead and checked the stats on the "upgraded" version of this build, where you use Ascended Viper's trinkets from the raid, and got the following (although for ease of comparison, I used Sigil of Geomancy over Sigil of Bursting):

"Full Viper + Berserker Runes" variant.

I compared it to the so-called "budget version" where you use Sinister trinkets, 4x Rune of the Nightmare and 2x Rune of the Trapper, and got the following:

"Budget" version.

Breakdown (Precision is ignored because you're overcapping on crit chance like a god due to your two crit chance traits):
 

"Full Viper" version:

2261 Power

1967 Condition Damage

100% on Bleed and Chill, 80.4% on Torment and Poison

+5% direct damage

 

If you were to add in Sigil of Bursting, you'd have 2079 Condition Damage but lose out on Sigil of Geomancy, which is very strong.

 

"Budget" version:

2083 Power

2001 Condition Damage

100% on Bleed and Chill, 81.4% on Torment and Poison

 

Considering that Necromancers have rather pathetic Power coefficients for most of their attacks - and your minions don't scale off of your Power at all, only your Condition Damage! - these two builds seem so close as to have almost no difference. And remember, the "Full Viper" version is almost impossible to get, as it requires Ascended trinkets that only drop from the raid.

 

For reference, the "normal" version of the Full Viper setup, with exotic trinkets (now with actual stats!).

 

Breakdown of the "Full Viper (Exotic trinkets)" version:

2227 Power

1929 Condition Damage

99.3% on Bleed and Chill, 79.3% on Torment and Poison

+5% direct damage

 

With Bursting instead of Geomancy you hit 2039 Condition Damage, but again the loss of Geomancy is significant.

 

The loss of Condition Damage (about 4% loss) does not strike me as worth the slightly reduced direct damage.

 

tl;dr: Unless the build calculator is lying to me (again), the so-called "budget build" seems about as good as one of the hardest builds to make in the entire game, and may possibly be superior. Hm.

1 hour ago, Susimusta said:

Good job. I haven't organized T6 Drytop myself really, so I can't say whether you missed something or not, but for me it seemed like it had everything.  Also a nice thingy I stumbled upon while doing Verdant brink is this: http://gw2.ninja/timer. It shows the sandstorm times.

While the other timers are very useful (and I use them often), the Sandstorm timer is kinda moot since Sandstorms always start at exactly 40 minutes past every hour and end exactly at the start of the next new hour (so from xx:40 to xx+1:00)  Good for a reminder, though.

Spreadsheeeeets 

A very succinct guide. It made me nostalgic of the good old days of people map chat spamming "NO CC ON PLATINUM" and "NO AOE ON COPPER" and raging all over the place, and me getting into (utterly fruitless) half-hour long discussions about how they were wrong  

Updated with some build links. Keep in mind that just mindlessly following builds, while often a good start, is not enough in itself - you should know your class and feel comfortable playing it. Comfort levels matter!

6 hours ago, Fatal said:

need community raid days! love the guide!

I like this idea a lot. Unfortunately, I'm usually busy most of the week between work and writing a paper, otherwise I'd organize this myself... having beginner raids where people can get a feel of the raid is definitely something we need.

This is a short article meant to answer some simple questions about raids. It is not a guide – Dulfy has written really good guides, and you can find them gathered in this forum thread by Susimusta.

Let's start with the basics.

 

What is a raid?

 

A raid is an instance where up to ten players enter together and defeat bosses. So far, it seems like each raid wing will have three bosses. Think of them like ten-man dungeons.

 

What raids do we have so far?

 

At the moment there is only one raid – the Forsaken Thicket in the north-eastern corner of Verdant Brink. Judging by the success of this first raid, though, it's safe to assume there will be more raids in the future – but, as we all know, ANet are... kinda slow.

So far the Forsaken Thicket has two «wings», Spirit Vale and Salvation Pass. Raid wings are equivalent to the paths of dungeons – you choose one when you enter, and based on your choice you will face different bosses and challenges. The raid wings are completely separate in the sense that they don't re-use any bosses or fights; each boss has its own loot it drops, although all bosses in Spirit Vale drop the same raid currency, Magnetite Shards.

 

Do I have to clear the entire raid in one go?

 

No! During the raid, there will be several checkpoints, usually after you defeat a boss or complete a major event. If you leave the raid, then for the rest of this week whenever you enter, you will go right back to this checkpoint. All bosses that were killed will still be dead, etc.

Which checkpoint you start at depends on who enters the raid instance first. For example, if you have not beaten any bosses this week, but a friend of yours who has beaten two bosses enters, you will be able to join them into an instance where two bosses are dead. This means that it is completely possible to kill the second or third boss in a raid without having killed the first boss this week.

Looking at it from the opposite perspective, you can also go back and re-do bosses and events you have cleared this week if you join on someone who has an instance where these bosses and events haven't been cleared yet. This is nice to max out on raid currency, practice old bosses, get achievements, help people get their completion or just chill out.

 

When exactly is the raid reset?

 

Raids reset on 1:30 AM CET on Monday mornings; that is, half an hour after the daily reset between Sunday and Monday.
Once the raid resets, all progress is cleared, all enemies will have respawned and all rewards can be gained again.

 

What bosses exist so far?

 

In the first released raid wing, Spirit Vale, there are three bosses:

• The Vale Guardian, an energy guy much like the Thaumanova Anomaly.

• Gorseval the Multifarious, a huge mutant ghost chicken.

• Sabetha the Saboteur, a really mean human bandit with a flamethrower.

These bosses are often referred to as VG, Gors/Gorsi/Gorse and Sab, respectively.

In the second raid wing, Salvation Pass, there are also three bosses:

• Slothasor, a very sleepy fire-breathing sloth who is angry that we stole his mushrooms.
• Three dudes (technically two dudes and a dudette).
• Matthias Gabrel, an evil man from a mysterious organization.

I'm not sure these have "common" names yet, but Sloth, dudes/trio and Matthias (maybe Matt?) should serve well.

 

 

How hard are raids?

 

Fair warning – raids are far harder than any other content in GW2 so far. While most content can be done with a random team with no communication, raids need specific roles filled and require heavy coordination between team members. All raid bosses are also timed – this means that you need heavy DPS, because the timers are tight, and when they run out the bosses will enrage, making survival almost impossible.

That is not to say that only the best of the best can do raids. With experience and teamwork, anyone can beat the raids. However, the following are probably «absolute requirements»:

• TeamSpeak or other voice chat.

• Read guides! While it's fun to experience things for yourself, when it comes to raids they are very complex, and there are a lot of other people waiting for you. While it's expected that newbies will take a bit of time to get used to the raids, that does not mean that you should go in there with no clue about what will happen.

• Willingness to adapt and use builds specifically designed for raids – check out the guides in this subforum!

• Use food and utilities. At the very least the «second best» types of food, but if there's anywhere you want to use the best food available, it's here.

• All your trinkets (minus backpack) should be Ascended. Getting Ascended trinkets is very easy if you know how to do it (feel free to ask). Exotic Viper trinkets are also good for some classes, but are quite expensive.

• All your armor and weapons should at the very least be exotic – but every piece of Ascended helps a lot. Especially weapons should be Ascended as a huge priority.

• You need proper Runes and Sigils. Runes and Sigils are a very important part of any build, and should not be skipped at any cost.

• Patience! Raids take time, and victory is never guaranteed. There will be many wipes.

Specific roles?

 

It has finally happened - Guild Wars 2 has finally started using tanks and healers. In raids, the bosses will always aggro on the player with the highest Toughness, no matter what, and so this player becomes the tank. This also means that if you don't intend to be the tank, you should not have any Toughness on your gear, or at least communicate with your tank to ensure that they have more than you. Aggro is completely binary - if player A has 1400 Toughness and player B has 1401 Toughness, then player B will always have aggro as long as they are not downed.

The tank has a difficult role - they must position the boss, move it as necessary, and ensure it does not cleave other players.

In Spirit Vale, having a tank is only necessary on the first two bosses, as aggro does not really matter on Sabetha due to her mechanics.

 

Since damage in raids is heavy, constant and wide-spread, having a healer to heal up the team is usually almost mandatory. The healer's job is to refill health bars, both topping off anyone who's taken a bit of damage, and burst healing anyone who's taken heavy damage.

 

In addition to tanking and healing, group support is very important. Warriors and Revenants are great at providing the team with Might, and Chronomancers provide the extremely valuable Quickness boon. Other buffs like Fury, Protection and class-specific buffs like banners, spirits, Empower Allies etc. etc. are also all very valuable.

 

For the DPS-related classes, both Power-based and Condition-based builds are powerful in the right situation. In particular, it is mandatory to have a couple of Condition-based players for the first boss of Spirit Vale, Vale Guardian, as one of the enemies that spawn during the fight is almost entirely immune to damage except from Conditions.

 

Finally, break bars are hugely important. You may have seen them on world bosses - blue bars that you must deplete by using crowd control (CC) such as Stuns, Dazes, Knockbacks, Fears etc. On raid bosses, these bars must be broken extremely quickly, or bad things will happen - and it is everyone's job to help out with those. That means that it's your job, too!

 

An important thing to be aware of is that currently, every class has good raid builds available to them. This means that, yes, you can bring any class to the raid! However, not all builds work so well for raids, so it is important that you check out raid build guides or otherwise use builds specifically designed for raiding. Also, teams usually need a variety of classes and roles filled, so having too many of any single class is usually not that good - so the more classes and roles you know how to play, the easier it will be to get into a raid group!

 

The two best sources of raid builds are this subforum as well the website MetaBattle.

 

What are the rewards?

 

Every time you attempt a raid boss – even if you wipe! - you get a number of tokens appropriate to the raid you're doing. For the Forsaken Thicket, this currency is Magnetite Shards. These shards can be exchanged to a vendor for a variety of powerful, cool and/or valuable items, including Ascended equipment with stats you cannot get anywhere else currently (e.g., Ascended backpack with Viper's stats).

You are limited to receiving 100 Magnetite Shards per week. Note that just clearing a single raid wing will not be enough to get you to 100 Magnetite Shards, so you will have to go back and help others defeat old bosses, do bosses in both wings, or just spend a lot of time wiping and getting shards that way.

In addition to shards, every boss you defeat will leave behind a chest, much like world bosses. You can loot this chest only once per week per boss.

The chest contains 2 gold, a considerable amount of experience, random pieces of rare and exotic equipment, a chance at ascended equipment or miniatures, and a Legendary Insight, a special item used to craft Legendary Armor. You gain double gold from bosses in raid wings that were only recently released. The chest can also contain various collectibles, based on what collections you have unlocked.

A semi-important note on rewards - nothing in the entire raid is affected by Magic Find. Nothing. Thus Magic Find food and buffs are completely wasted - but on the bright side that means you never have to worry about "Should I get damage food or loot food?".

 

Wait, Legendary Armor?!

 

Indeed. The Forsaken Thicket has a collection associated with it, and completing this collection will give the player a set of Legendary Armor – the Envoy Armor set. However, be aware – this collection requires doing the raid a lot, and at the moment of speaking the collection cannot even be completed, as it will require the player to complete all the different wings of the Forsaken Thicket – and so far only two wings have been released.

This means nobody has the Legendary Armor yet, so nobody knows all the facts about it. It is exciting, though!

 

Anything special I should know about the raid?

 

Dead players are dead, and cannot be rezzed, not even with a Revive Orb. You cannot enter the raid at all unless you are in a party that has had its type set to «Raid»; this is done from the little menu above your party window. There are no waypoints inside the raid – instead, there are Ley Rifts that you can travel if you have unlocked the mastery in the raid masteries category.

These masteries do not unlock until you've killed at least one raid boss, but once you've killed one boss (no matter which), all the Masteries will become available for training.

There are two masteries associated with Spirit Vale, both fairly quick to train and costing only one Mastery Point. The first mastery is the one that lets you use the Ley Rifts, while the second one is a specific mastery for the last boss battle of Spirit Vale, and is quite useful to have. Additionally, there's a third mastery associated with Salvation Pass that will help a lot on the last boss of that wing, although it takes a bit more experience and three Mastery Points to master.

You will also need the Updraft Use mastery for the second boss, and having Stealth Gliding is quite useful for this boss as well. It is good, but not necessary, to have the Blazing Speed Mushrooms unlocked. No other masteries are used for Spirit Vale.

 

I see people «Selling cleared raid» and promising «Three chests you can loot». Is this a good deal?

 

No! These chests are not the chests that drop from defeating bosses (these chests can only be looted by those that defeated the boss themselves), but rather three small «normal» chests that contain a few random pieces of not-very-rare loot. The main reason you would want to loot these chests at all is that they contain items that are used for the Legendary Armor collection – however, these items will not drop unless you've unlocked the collection by defeating the first boss of the Spirit Vale, the Vale Guardian.

If someone offers it for free, eh. It's still not that great, but it's a good opportunity to go in and see the raid area. Never bother paying money for it, though.

 

I see other people «Selling [name of raid boss]». Is this a good deal?

 

Depends, but probably not. In this case, you will join the party, and the team selling the boss will nine-man it (or eight-man it or what have you), and you will get any achievment or loot that they would have gotten. However, as this usually costs you a lot of money, it is not worth it for the loot alone. If you want to spend the gold for achievments, collection items or swag points, that's up to you.

Some people also sell the «Eternal title». Eternal means that you will defeat a specific raid boss with no members of the party dying. However, be aware! Anyone that does not enter the boss area will be killed, so if you are buying the Eternal title you will need to enter the fight area and stay alive, which can be challenging if you don't know what you are doing.

In general, I am skeptical of selling and buying raids, but it's not illegal and it is a choice you can make if you believe it's for you. Just don't try to do it for the loot alone, absolutely not worthwhile. Also, be aware that although most people are honest, there are scammers out there too, and ANet will not "interfere with group politics".

 

Is LFG raiding a thing?

 

Yes, but it's sometimes tricky. LFG raids often require their participants to be geared, experienced and so on. LFG raids can be quite nice, however, and sometimes you meet quite cool people – but it's a bit random what sort of people you'll get, and sometimes it's really hard to get into a group at all.

A lot of LFGs will ask you to «link Insights». This means they want you to link the Legendary Insights you have gotten from defeating raid bosses. If you ask me, this is a really stupid system and serves no real purpose, so feel free to cheat – this website lets you create chat links that will let you «link» any item you wish.

However, it is sensible to start with guild/community raids and try to learn from there. Finding a stable group to raid with can be difficult, but can be quite nice.

If you are looking for LFG raids, they seem to be most common on the days right after and right before raid reset, that is, Mondays, Saturdays and Sundays, but this isn't a hard and fast rule.

 

Are raids fun?

 

Yes. If you think that raids are for you – go out there! Explore! Have fun!

 

It is as Susimusta says. The main reason you want so many Jagged Horrors is that they bleed on hit anyways. You absolutely want at least one minion because transferring conditions is powerful, but the main reason you have a million bleed stacks is that those Jagged Horrors really do well even by themselves (also Blood is Power bleed stacks last ridiculously long).

An example of how condition transferring works, which you can easily test in the PvP lobby:

1. Equip the Necromantic Corruption trait, Blood is Power and Summon Bone Minions.
2. Use Summon Bone Minions; this summons two minions that don't normally cause conditions.
3. Use Blood is Power; the enemy gets two bleed stacks from this, and you get two bleed stacks from it.
4. Wait a bit. Minions won't instantly take conditions from you, it happens at regular intervals.
5. You will lose your conditions. The enemy will still have only two bleed stacks for a while (minions won't instantly transfer conditions from themselves).
6. Next time the minions attack, the enemy will have a total of four bleed stacks - two from the initial Blood is Power and two from the transfer. If your theory was right, they'd have six bleed stacks (two from initial Blood is Power + 2 for every minion). If you check your minions you'll notice only one has taken damage (from the two bleed stacks that it took from you).

However, make no mistake - condition transferring is still very strong (since the conditions from Corruptions last very long), it just doesn't matter if you have one or one million minions for the purpose of condition transferring. Having five Jagged Horrors is just to have a lot of DPS from all their normal attacks (which is great). As a side note, you don't want to stack all your Corruptions at the same time, as only one type of condition can be moved every ten seconds.

It's not complicated at all! You just step into an alternate timeline, do a truckload of things in a very short timeframe, collapse back into the original timeline and repeat the truckload with subtle yet essential variations while managing random moving walls of space-time and looking dang cool while doing it.

So yes, I basically just run around and press buttons too. Glorious! \o/

The problem is that the reward/time spent ratio is, surprisingly, fine as it is. So if they remove Swamplands, they'd need to up rewards. In general, Fractals need another rebalancing... so I guess I'd like to remove Fractals as they are right now. And most of the instabilities. Most Fractals are fun, though, so I'd like to see them in a spot where they'd be run more, and ideally not the exact same ones every day.

The Swampland fractal. My poor soul just can't handle Swamplands of the Mists...

Where I'm from, you don't survive unless you're a cool kid with a warm soul.

It took a lot of courage to finally reveal my face to the community, but here goes:

 

 

Please don't use this to stalk me in real life and steal my fish, I need my fish for the long winter...

Another thing I'd like to suggest is that if you're using Warhorn as your second offhand, you can use Sigil of Geomancy on it instead of Earth/Bursting; Geomancy is very strong if you're constantly swapping weapon sets and are close enough to get the effect off. You can then also use Geomancy on your offhand Dagger, and just weaponswap whenever it's available. Only issue with that is that you may have to "save" the weaponswap if you're going to need to do CC soon.

Awesome. I'd just like to throw in that Epidemic's strength rises exponentially when you have a second Condi Necro in your party - one of you uses Epidemic on the main target, then the second one uses Epidemic on one of the enemies that got affected by Epidemic -> Conditions go back to the main boss! Amazing combo. You can even have three or more Condi Necros do this for absolute ridiculousness!

On Sabetha you don't even have to do that, mind, since you can just bounce conditions from whatever Champion you're currently fighting over to Sabetha herself.

If there's anything I'd like to question, it's how good Berserker runes are. They provide a lot of Power as well as a +5% damage boost, but these stats aren't that useful as honestly the Power-type damage this build does is quite pitiful from what I can gather... I feel like there has to be a better alternative, but I still like the Viper setup as you waste less Precision (since you're probably going to overcap on Precision even with Viper's due to the crazy amount of crit chance you get from traits).

The Sigil of Malice makes you overcap Bleeding and Chill to get a +10% duration increase on Torment and Poison (the only two other relevant conditions I can see that you are inflicting with this build, although Fear could be a factor in some situations too I guess). Since these two conditions had +80% bonus duration without the Sigil of Malice, you're going from 180% base duration to 190% base duration, which is increasing damage done by a factor of 190/180 = 1.0555..., that is, you get a 5.55...% damage increase on those two conditions.

Assuming those two conditions together do even 25% of your total DPS (which I find completely unbelievable), then the actual damage increase to your total DPS by having a Sigil of Malice is somewhere in the area of 1-2%. Realistically I think we're talking less than a 1% DPS gain.

Even if Earth is somewhat mediocre, it's not unreasonable to assume that it's a bigger DPS gain than that. Geomancy (if used with Warhorn as Otretas is arguing for) would be significantly more as it's a very strong sigil.

As a side note, if I'm not much mistaken, "One condition" (when we're talking about condition transferring) refers to "every stack of one type of condition", right? So if you had 200 stacks of Bleeding and 3 stacks of Poison then if you "transferred one conditon" then you'd either transfer 3 stacks of Poison or 200 stacks of Bleeding (depending on which was placed on you last).

I'm aware of how Lingering Curse works. You still overcap 10% on Bleed and Chill duration, just from Viper's gear + runes + Malice + the two traits that give +20% bleed and chill duration, respectively (not Lingering Curse)  

 

And yes, Lich Form has high cooldown. It's still amazing, and I still think removing it would be a massive dps loss.

 

Incidentally, I'm leaning more and more towards recommending Druids to skip the DPS gear and go full heal-stuff with Rune of the Monk and full Healing Power. The DPS gained from maintaining the Necromancers' minions should far outstrip any DPS gain earned from the Druid having an offensive gearing.