Guild Wars 2

Necros asking for more conditions + dmg

Necro’s didn’t ask for more Condi/Dmg! We wanted/were promised more attrition.

Escape

Necro’s are happy with little/no escape. Win or Die. As it says on the tin.
The gap closer/stop them running away, immobilize after Terror, if in hug range didn’t help much. And the cook them before they run, extra damage pressure – glass cannon. Wasn’t the attrition we really had in mind.

They reduced the damage Necros take in Death Shroud.

They stopped direct damage doing more than conditions, and they stopped 10% life force being able to suck up a hit of any size. They take lots more damage, lots more often now.

Marks

Staff always requireing greater marks trait has been a issue for a long time. This fix has allowed staff to be useful without traiting, and the ‘unblockable’ feature being double the trait cost seems more fair.

There’s also been a huge change to staff #4, with it now only affecting a couple of conditions and no longer on allys in the mark circle, necro’s would love a dev reply on bug or big undocumented change.

Jonathan Sharp /Chaplan

As always, thanks for the reply! Really helps fix the no-love madbro vibe die down. As always, free beer for you if you come to Australia. (China’s closer than usual!)

dzindzinier.6138:

no more posts from TP members after they won the tourney ……….XD XD

The meta is still awful………..XD XD

Empathetic Fighter.2065:

Zenith.7301:

Archaon.6245:

…and as i said way before…why should someone run a condition mesmer if you can just bring a necro and spam aoe condis 24/7 with more survivability and effectiveness? Other classes can do far better than mesmer outside dps shatter…and dps shatter is useless atm…so…hotzerg, die or reroll…no other options aviable…

Because the condi mesmer has better survival outside conquest formats.

In case you haven’t come across PU mesmers in WvW winning 1v4’s. It’s an extremely potent attrition build. It just takes time that you don’t have in spvp, and the mobility/stealth of the build is not helpful when you need to stand in a point or kill people quickly to reclaim that point.

The problem is how the conquest format emphasizes the strengths of some classes and builds while leaving others out in the cold.

A format in which holding points is key, and to do so you need to stand on them, and aoe skills have the very same ratio or bigger of that point you need to stand on, that’s a problem. Because you’re forcing people to eat skills that in places like WvW they wouldn’t eat as there’s nothing compelling them to clump up in tight quarters.

Guardians also complain about condis in spvp because unlike wvw you have no 2-3 staff eles laying down healing rains while you run 6-7 guardians with shout condi removal and lemongrass food/melandru rune reducing condition uptime to sub 30%.

The format really dictates what is valuable. It’s not the build itself inherently that’s broken.

I also think that their design for the condition mesmer also had him spreading boons with the staff. So it’s more of a supportive shutdown conditions build but it just doesn’t do it effectively because the only conditions it has access to are damaging conditions.

The necro is supposed to be the master of conditions, the class whose offense comes mostly from conditions at the expense of lack of boons and mobility and burst (which was made pointless by terror fear chains).

But the condi mesmer was never defined. All that was said about mesmers is that they rely on their illusions, but the clones themselves are pretty lackluster outside shatter builds and phantasms are mostly single target and thus useless in teamfights. And clones have no survivability in team fights.

You pretty much have to trait your clones for on death traits to get some use out of them in team fights.

So first you say condition mesmer is viable, then talking about WvW (wtf?!) and in the last part you argument condition mesmer is not viable due to conquest. Rather confusing dude.

Oh, stop being obtuse. I never said it was viable in spvp. I said that you can’t go crying about the necro’s toolset when the condi mesmer toolset has its own strengths, just not strengths that are of use in a format that requires burst or sustained aoe on a point and devalues stealth.

The condi mesmer isn’t crap. He’s crap in spvp and so his tweaks should occur there instead of looking at what the necro has. You don’t clone classes.

Things like removing the vulnerability out of staff auto and replacing it with poison or weakness or chill. Putting confusion back on scepter auto. Like, first auto is 1 stack of confusion, the next is a stack of torment, and the last part applies another stack of torment and the clones from the scepter cast confusion. The offhand torch’s The Prestige goes down to a base 20 sec cd, the phantasm applies 7 stacks of confusion bouncing across foes while granting retal to allies.

Instead of spreading conditions on clone death all over the traitlines, put it on the condition traitline. Make Cry of Frustration worthwhile.

Little tweaks that ramp up conditions a bit and give more cover so cleansing doesn’t gut the condi mesmer so much in spvp.

Zenith.7301:

I hope they do something about mesmer illusions and mesmer condi removal cost. Mesmer survival needs a bit of help, especially against s/d thieves it’s just dumb.

Right now the only thing you can play is shatter because in team fights it is impossible for illusions to last longer than a few seconds.

Mesmer condi builds are also largely lacking because the staff applies vulnerability, which is useless on a condi build, and then they don’t have any other secondary weapon that can sustain conditions because somehow they removed confusion from the scepter autoattack in beta. The scepter does a long cd channel confusion stack spike and that’s as far as it goes.

The torch phantasm is still terrible. It should be like 7 stacks of confusion for 7 seconds and bounce among targets.

Condi mesmer just has a lot of ramp up.

Cry of Confusion is not rather good as a shatter. It was supposed to be revamped in the BWE, shortly after release we got Peters asking for suggestions for it, but nothing ever happened.

I disagree, there are other viable builds for mesmer other than shatter. Personally I just don’t think other players, top players and casual alike have ventured in and explored all the options. I currently have a mesmer condi build that I play in tourne, and it does quite well. It’s capable of putting out every condition except for fear and torment. Although I do agree that scepter still needs work. If I had to make some constructive feedback on the matter I would say Torment needs to be on scepter 3 replacing the confusion. Also I believe the waiting time to apply the condi on scepter 3 is also very lacking. Futhermore I would make every other scepter auto attack apply confusion “Every other attack to prevent scepter 1 confusion spam”.

Its sad to admit but spvp is just not fun. Its too much of a zergfest with no thought on gameplay. Its toxic. There has got to be ideas to improve this like a better point allocation ect. The problem with all of Pvp besides balance is the attitude of the general pvper. There is no cooperation, no incentive to play smart. This lack of cordination translates to Tpvp when noobs are rolling kids in spvp running with a zerg and they decide to try tourneys out. The end result is a shallow pvp experience for most of the population that plays and puts many people off. PvP needs not only a mathematical rework but also a conceptual/attitude rework.

Sunni.2948:

Its sad to admit but spvp is just not fun. Its too much of a zergfest with no thought on gameplay. Its toxic. There has got to be ideas to improve this like a better point allocation ect. The problem with all of Pvp besides balance is the attitude of the general pvper. There is no cooperation, no incentive to play smart. This lack of cordination translates to Tpvp when noobs are rolling kids in spvp running with a zerg and they decide to try tourneys out. The end result is a shallow pvp experience for most of the population that plays and puts many people off. PvP needs not only a mathematical rework but also a conceptual/attitude rework.

Points to consider regarding spvp:

1. Not everyone wants to be competitive
2. Not everyone is going to be good
3. Being associated with 1 and 2 does not mean you don’t want to play the game and have fun.

Spvp zergs are fine for where they are at in hotjoins. I do agree that there needs to be a smoother education process for those wanting to transition into ranked play.

Sunni.2948:

Its sad to admit but spvp is just not fun. Its too much of a zergfest with no thought on gameplay. Its toxic. There has got to be ideas to improve this like a better point allocation ect. The problem with all of Pvp besides balance is the attitude of the general pvper. There is no cooperation, no incentive to play smart. This lack of cordination translates to Tpvp when noobs are rolling kids in spvp running with a zerg and they decide to try tourneys out. The end result is a shallow pvp experience for most of the population that plays and puts many people off. PvP needs not only a mathematical rework but also a conceptual/attitude rework.

Stop playing hotjoin.

It seems people want to nerf necros back to the point of irrelevance.

Pyriall.5027:

Sunni.2948:

Its sad to admit but spvp is just not fun. Its too much of a zergfest with no thought on gameplay. Its toxic. There has got to be ideas to improve this like a better point allocation ect. The problem with all of Pvp besides balance is the attitude of the general pvper. There is no cooperation, no incentive to play smart. This lack of cordination translates to Tpvp when noobs are rolling kids in spvp running with a zerg and they decide to try tourneys out. The end result is a shallow pvp experience for most of the population that plays and puts many people off. PvP needs not only a mathematical rework but also a conceptual/attitude rework.

Points to consider regarding spvp:

1. Not everyone wants to be competitive
2. Not everyone is going to be good
3. Being associated with 1 and 2 does not mean you don’t want to play the game and have fun.

Spvp zergs are fine for where they are at in hotjoins. I do agree that there needs to be a smoother education process for those wanting to transition into ranked play.

Where I can understand what your saying I disagree with the attitude taken fundementally. People and players (in and out of game) should always be tryin to improve. Game types like hotjoin promote senseless play which is the opposite direction games in 2013 and on should be going.

Another point to consider is that you have a vastly more fun experience fundementally as humans when you cooperate and succeed against heavy odds. It’s programmed into our biology. The mmo genre as a whole is hemmoraging popularity because of its now senseless play. You shouldn’t WANT to say you dont need to improve. That’s the antithesis of progress.

Right now the only way to counter condi spam is with better condi spam and control. Necros have condi spam, boon ripping, and CC without even having to trait.

Even in tpvp if you want to be safe you just roll condition build with CC. Why roll raw damage if you’re just going to get weaken , or blind spammed on you? IMO torment just needs to be dealt with. Crippled needs to be more effective than chill in movement speed effect.

Boons and condition has been the meta of tpvp and spvp. Is this bad? NO. What is bad is that raw damage cannot compete with it.

Chewablesleeptablet.3185:

Right now the only way to counter condi spam is with better condi spam and control. Necros have condi spam, boon ripping, and CC without even having to trait.

Even in tpvp if you want to be safe you just roll condition build with CC. Why roll raw damage if you’re just going to get weaken , or blind spammed on you? IMO torment just needs to be dealt with. Crippled needs to be more effective than chill in movement speed effect.

Boons and condition has been the meta of tpvp and spvp. Is this bad? NO. What is bad is that raw damage cannot compete with it.

This is false. A statement made purely by the fear mongering of the current player base. While I agree necro’s are in a stupid place right now both in offense and defense but tpvp teams are absolutely not required to take these heavy condi classes. People get this idea cemented in their head because x amount of people are crying wolf. The balance of the game is in a terrible place granted. That’s the situation because of both players with no imagination and some very questionable game mechanics.

I have not read through all the posts but I agree this meta has been the worst we have had so far due to some low-risk/high-reward builds which sadly dominate.
This should not be the case for the highest level in competitive games, especially since they lock the meta into a few builds again.

So what we need are more builds and viable comps.

I guess I can agree that some builds are basically run almost exclusively with the exception of some variation between the builds. What can be vastly different Is team composition.

Sunni.2948:

I guess I can agree that some builds are basically run almost exclusively with the exception of some variation between the builds. What can be vastly different Is team composition.

Yeah but the thing is, on highest level, the comp is not so different for most teams. This is not good, this is not balance.
Balance means there are various comps with different playstyles and a fair chance on winning. (Can include certain comps which counter each other too, but not others)

Lady Sara Goldheart.2764:

Sunni.2948:

I guess I can agree that some builds are basically run almost exclusively with the exception of some variation between the builds. What can be vastly different Is team composition.

Yeah but the thing is, on highest level, the comp is not so different for most teams. This is not good, this is not balance.
Balance means there are various comps with different playstyles and a fair chance on winning. (Can include certain comps which counter each other too, but not others)

I completely agree but! Like 99% of players don’t play at the level where you need to min-max to the degree that the highest level of players need. For the majority of teams interesting comps not only are possible but can be insanely effective. With my team we run unusual comps all the time and almost hit a 40-50 game win streak against some high ranked/ recognizible teams. The thing that wins more games than fotm builds and comps is proper communication/skill. If people reading this thread take anything away from it it should be this: yes there are some weird class imbalances in this meta but! I you play what you want and devote yourself to a positive group of players great things are possible. Don’t fall prey to the fear mongering of the forums

Problem is a lot of “teams” are getting carried by the meta. 2 necros + spirit ranger or 1 necro + 2 rangers is VERY common.

The current AOE condi meta is just unfair…you either go with it, or have a extremely hard time otherwise.

If AOE condi is to stay this strong, there should definitely be a stat that reduces condi dmg, like toughness for physical damage.

^Vitality (having atleast 20k) will help you a lot. The problem is that the boon stripping and attack power that comes from necros likewise is an agonizing venture.

I play hot join. I have found no issue with the “chaos”, there are definitely some chaotic games. But there are some competitive games there too where you learn a lot about team dynamics on the spot (little communication involved except player animations and boons—-Which to me is enough). I don’t like tournys for the fact that there are a lot of players who are very serious about their comp and tell you what they want you to run.

Fair enough. There should be a strategy, and I dont mean to knock it. But the meta isn’t broken because some people are flavoring up their comps with post patch considerations. ANET has pushed an initiative from the past update and for PAX this will be a big re-think for your comp.

Is that a bad thing? do you want to keep running what you have? do you despise a challenge against “No Names”? ask yourself those questions. Hopefully you’ve already got a sure answer that you can stick up for yourself and not bother others with some insecurities about a “condi spam” meta. Yeah Ive been chain feared. ive been powered out 1v1, even on my warrior in full zerker which i play not so kitten bad at, by some light armor necro in a 30/30/… build. It was shameful. but I’ve learned what to slot since those encounters, and pace the fight out.

All the best to competitive teams out there, like paradigm, enjoy watching u play.

edit; I want to see you crush this new zombie meta, not give in to it

Necros are not that bad, cc and stab are good counters to them. Spirit Rangers though are so stupid. Why even give rangers signets when they can roll spirits? Why does every AI in the game have the cd start on death except spirits which start on summon? Why does every AI in the game not have a passive buff while having an active skill?

Through that in with the stupid protection + healing + evade + condi sustain + condi removal + annoying pet = most broken meta I’ve ever seen. Let’s have the ranger 1v1. Let’s have him 2v1. Let’s have him go to mid and buff everyone while applying condis and having a super awesome elite res.

Let’s take a look at other AI summons.

Minions – No passive buff, cd starts when dead
Spirit Weapons – No passive buffs, cd starts when dead

Let’s give the class with an AI already MORE AIs with BETTER STUFF so we can make Rangers even more ez. I want to give rangers a variety of viable builds not OP ones. And to think rangers qq’d about the BM nerf which is still viable but not as worth it as spirits.

JonathanSharp.7094:

But overall, we try to make it so that all classes have choices, and teams have choices in which classes they bring.

I mostly play PvP and I can tell that choices are very limited. Except for Warriors, builds have almost no flexibility because players rely on traits to play for them and not the opposite (traits helping players to reach a goal by enhancing a specific part). In the end, you can’t blame them for grabbing traits that are more powerful than others, right?
> What would you choose between damage when you interrupt and passive 20% damage on your main damaging skill? Is there any engie that do not have Incendiary Power but something else from the same tier? Some traits fall under the “situational” side of the game, not the “always on”. Hence, I believe professions should have innate traits separated from the current trait tree. Giving mesmers their clone on dodge would free them a real choice because I don’t know a single who does not play that trait as I don’t know an Ele who does not grab Evasive Arcana.

Things like “burn on crit every 10sec” or “perma vigor” are passive plays while things like “Movement skills break immobilize” are active plays and they are PvP gems : they are such great ideas and very healthy to PvP but they are in the shadows of the passive traits. So keep situational traits away from others directly related to boons/conditions system or always-on effect and you may see various builds.

Zenith.7301:

But the condi mesmer was never defined. All that was said about mesmers is that they rely on their illusions, but the clones themselves are pretty lackluster outside shatter builds and phantasms are mostly single target and thus useless in teamfights. And clones have no survivability in team fights.

You’d think condi mesmer would be confusion focused, but Anet never tweaked confusion quite right and just slapped a 50% damage nerf on it and called it a day (and destroyed traits like blinding befuddlement). But at least condition on mesmer is more viable than say, condition guardians/elementalists. A nice change to confusion might be to have it scale with the number of target opponents inflicted with it hit (i.e., enemy throws down AoE and gets extra ticks of confusion)

Bweaty.9187:

Necros asking for more conditions + dmg

Necro’s didn’t ask for more Condi/Dmg! We wanted/were promised more attrition.

Escape

Necro’s are happy with little/no escape. Win or Die. As it says on the tin.
The gap closer/stop them running away, immobilize after Terror, if in hug range didn’t help much. And the cook them before they run, extra damage pressure – glass cannon. Wasn’t the attrition we really had in mind.

Don’t speak on behalf of all Necro’s. I am not happy with little/no escape, as I am sure are all the necros in the EU tournament that got insta-gibbed by assist trains.

As far as Mesmers are concerned, I felt that ArenaNet was trying to drop a big hint with the set of changes that came with the first round of Necro buffs – interrupts/stuns were going to be big for Mesmers.

However, I don’t feel that kind of build is really viable. I feel that the game is too fast paced with abilities with too short a cast time and teeny tiny characters with animations that are too small for an interrupt-type build to really work well.

Thedenofsin.7340:

Bweaty.9187:

Necros asking for more conditions + dmg

Necro’s didn’t ask for more Condi/Dmg! We wanted/were promised more attrition.

Escape

Necro’s are happy with little/no escape. Win or Die. As it says on the tin.
The gap closer/stop them running away, immobilize after Terror, if in hug range didn’t help much. And the cook them before they run, extra damage pressure – glass cannon. Wasn’t the attrition we really had in mind.

Don’t speak on behalf of all Necro’s. I am not happy with little/no escape, as I am sure are all the necros in the EU tournament that got insta-gibbed by assist trains.

As far as Mesmers are concerned, I felt that ArenaNet was trying to drop a big hint with the set of changes that came with the first round of Necro buffs – interrupts/stuns were going to be big for Mesmers.

However, I don’t feel that kind of build is really viable. I feel that the game is too fast paced with abilities with too short a cast time and teeny tiny characters with animations that are too small for an interrupt-type build to really work well.

Warrior and engineer is a much better interrupt class since CC’s fill the same puprose of interrupts and Diversion with non-stacking daze depending on clone count or it no longer being aoe as in beta makes the mesmer class as a whole a pretty poor interrupt class.

You’ve got a 600 range knockback on greatsword, diversion, and either offhand pistol or sword 1 sec daze. Neither of which outside the pistol last more than 1 second and all of which have much longer cd’s than warrior/guardian/engineer CC.

The mesmer lost all its tools from GW1 as a disabling class and was instead made a nuking class with mindrwack and illusionary berserker. Except every class can nuke and the only advantage mesmer had in aoe nuking has long been overshadowed by the cleaving capabilities of eles and necros and s/d thieves and engineers.

What I really do not like about this game (which this meta only reaffirmed) are four things;

• Rerollers,Fotms
• X Teams Copying Y Team Comp (i.e latest double rangers)
• Players exiting and/or quitting their classes without reason (i.e elementalists are not viable)
• Generally ignorance from experience – either from their own class (i.e D/P is not viable i.e Engineers will be replaced by Necromancers)

Meta is not the issue, it will always be a side effect .
.
For example,

if we didn’t see S/D + Shortbow Thief we would still be talking about S/D + S/D Thief being Godmode even though I broke the class enough on my previous post that it lacks ALOT in comparison with other classes/weapon set, to seeing it right now with Shortbow as offhand was the smartest decision

• if Caed didn’t go to the finals as D/P we would still be talking about how D/P Thief is not viable
• if Defektive didn’t participate as a CC Warrior we would still be talking about how Warriors are not viable
• if Mogwow didn’t play a Glass Cannon Elementalist we would still be talking about how Elementalists are not viable
• if Teldo didn’t play as a close-far-pointer bunker Engineer we would still be talking about how Engineers are not viable

So basically if you always need a build-hero to make you see the potential of your class then clearly you don’t know your class as well as you think you do (including my self).

This game lacks pride which is ironical considering its unreal elitism. Pride leads to risks, and pride itself is different than ego. I hope in the future we get to see more players taking risks with their classes.

I can’t say I hate this meta because this meta brought some characters with exceptionally strong will power. Different Meta won’t address class uniqueness or revamping ALL classes. Meta might as well switch to more balance but that does not matter.Game is bleeding from far other too many important issues. Meta is just the first side-point of discussion in a TPvP environment.

Anyway, I think I have said what there is to say.

PS1: This is not directed at TC. They took a great risk having two of their players re-rolling to new classes a week before qualifiers but still pull it off.
PS2: Names above were randomly mentioned as a reference for nailing a point.
PS3: If you took my words personally then that means you belong to the list above and you are skipping the purpose of my post.

zhi.3918:

ArenaNet’s development doesn’t work that way. Sorry that your day to day and life can’t be made to work efficiently.

Being able to recognize how to increase work flow and productivity isn’t easy, suggesting it is diminishes the value of thoughtful organization and development. Companies pay people quite a bit of money to improve their organization and development times not to mention optimize their groups dynamics, raise morale and of course find the right people to hire in the first place.

No one said it was easy. The process Sharp described is quite broken, they should do something about that. They should of done something about this years ago.

Who said anything about a whim?
It is seems to me their process is hindering the games design instead of assisting it. This is costing them hundreds of thousands or millions on labor costs alone, not to mention lost profits of having a better product. So we are talking about millions and millions of dollars by not reworking the company to give the designers a reasonable development process.

Their process now is utter chaos, I speak of improving it. Months of planning to release a patch completely destroys someone’s ability to design around feedback they are getting on their recent one. Some designers are quit capable of understanding the systemic effect of their changes and can account for emergent behavior. The PvP team (and maybe other teams) for whatever reason has not been able to do so, so they need to find out why and fix it. If you don’t believe it can be done or don’t know how to do it they wouldn’t be hiring you to assist them with it anyway.

That is actually part of what I do as an ergonomist. There are definitely a lot of possible changes often overlooked in designing a process. It is kind of like the medical system, the traditional model for return to work programs is slow to say the least, where each person involved acts independently while the others are just waiting for them to pass on their results before they can begin their part. The system Anet seems to follow reminds me of this model. Newer models though can have people back to work the next day because the communication processes is that much more streamlined.

Now if I was organizing their teams it would be more ad hock with the team being based around a goal so there is readily available animators, designers, QA, programers etc as part of a single team. With the content of the team being based on the project being undertaken. Now this type of approach is highly skill based and requires everyone to be quite well rounded in each of their jobs. I am willing to bet this is the approach league of legends uses as well.

But it is quite inefficient to say all the animators belong to their own team and all the pvp developers are their own team. Just creates inefficient communication between groups and unnecessary steps. But can’t say I know exactly how they have things organized or what they have available so I could make realistic suggestions.

So basically the meta is still the same kitten as before…
I don’t think i can force myself to play this crap for much longer…