Guild Wars 2

Shar.3402:

http://www.twitch.tv/symbollix/c/2622702

this is the state of the necromancer after the patch. Balanced. Not.

He went from 50% to 25% + 3×8% spectral trigered – 3×4% decay
Meaning the ele did 25+24-12 =37% LF dmg

He is rabid + protection + un-bugged DS (direct dmg)
Without protection 37 * 1,5 = 55,5 ~55%
Spectral bonus 24% in 2-3s

Damage taken normaly would be then 55+24= 79% raw dmg + 12% decay = 91%

I dont like it. Well still melt in focus fire, while winning even more 1v1, causing even more complains.

JonathanSharp.7094:

People keep asking for mobility on the Necro, and again, by design, this is something we’re going to keep to a minimum. We will continue to make sure they get more attrition tools (Deathshroud is a main point here), the ability to manipulate boons/conditions, and the ability to control opponents.

There’s a difference between minimum movement skills and none at all. The closest we have is dark path and the wurm teleport.

Dark path is good for catching/holding people, but isn’t terribly good as a movement skill since it needs to be targeted.
The wurm has to be pre-positioned, limiting it’s usefulness, but can still be useful in the right situations.
Also I guess we have the somewhat nerfed spectral walk, but that’s even more niche as a movement skill.

Now we don’t need blink or swoop or something, but even just a heartseeker range movement skill (replacing dagger 2, for example…) can make a big difference for positioning. If you’re absolutely set on not giving us any movement however, then we have to be able to withstand focused attacks. That means a way to temporarily negate the damage of multiple people (which is why I found the change to Sarmor and the outright nerf to Swalk rather vexing) and a way to avoid being horrifically cc chained.

All the damage in the world isn’t useful if any co-ordinated team can blap you without any way to counter them. Also someone suggested aegis on entering DS instead of the jagged horror trait, which would be neato.

JonathanSharp.7094:

People keep asking for mobility on the Necro, and again, by design, this is something we’re going to keep to a minimum. We will continue to make sure they get more attrition tools (Deathshroud is a main point here), the ability to manipulate boons/conditions, and the ability to control opponents.

The current patch is an attempt to do small “shavings” to bring the class into line with these goals, in the same way we tried to “shave” the Ele numerous times, rather than “nerfing it from orbit”. Are all Ele specs equally viable in all game types? No. Is this ok? Yes. Staff can see play in one game type while D/D or S/D see play in others. As we’ve said, we’ll split skills/weapons more and more in the variuos game types, but each time we split a skill, it gives us more update work down the road. We have to be very prudent when we split skills.

Same thing with the Necro. They have a few different viable builds in different types of content, and we’re trying to make sure they continue to see play in various roles spread throughout the various gametypes.

But seriously, OP, wait until you play the patch and THEN update this. I’d love to know what you think….but as Allie posted theorycrafting is pretty hard for us to make informed decisions with. Let us know how they feel in game.

With much love from Chinajoy,

Chap

Do you think you’ve overshot a little with the Ride the Lightning nerfs? Especially in PVE/WVW? With bunker ele in the state they are now, don’t you think a 20 seconds base cooldown and 1200 range would be balanced, without the double cooldown thingy? Or maybe 900 range 20 seconds cd, moves less with cripple, moves more with swiftness, like the new engineer rocket boots?
I’d love to have a dev’s opinion on the current RTL, because what you did to the skill over the last few month was the most severe nerfs to a single skill I’ve ever seen in any MMO, and I think especially the double cooldown was too much, because it takes away so much fun from ele roaming when out of combat. Also it really feels like RTL was “nerfed from orbit”

where you want to get with the necro?
make him the king of the conditions? = Eni grenades and bomb exceeds the actual conditions of any damage and control.
the necro is the class, the more time you put in to fight him, and have more chances of winning (TRUE) OR (FALSE)?
what you will give to the necro in the future, so that it can really be the true king of condizzioni?

So now I have played with the new patch for a while, went with 30/20/0/0/20 build with dhuumfire, terror, master of terror, staff / scepter*dagger, also used spectral armor. Overall in my opinion the reduction of damage is not that noticeable, but the increase is survivability will be noticed if people retrait to SR tree. Now an update in things I mentioned after playing for a while:

About DS and LF generation: I still think that putting an internal cooldown was not a good move – now necromancer is stronger in 1×1 scenario, since you can generate more life force, because of the increase in LF gen. But 1×1 you had other ways to reduce incoming damage without relying on DS to soak up damage so it was not a problem, while it mostly mandatory to use it in fighting 2 or more opponents. And now you have an overflow of damage to hp pool, which make a necro die even faster in first battle of the map, thus creating it a certain first target in stealth rush or just plain focus fire.

The increase in mark size – I actually like it a lot, but it may be for the wrong reasons. I like it because finally jagged horrors are gone and it is not mandatory to go into death magic tree if you want to use staff. Also it make marks less spammable and creates a more skillful use, more skill and less spam is truly a right direction.

Now about the class state overall and what I mean by giving us what we lack. If I understand correctly while developing classes you made integral weaknesses to support team-play and increase the variety of teambuilds. So necromancer is lacking mobility, warrior was lacking condition cleansing abilities, but other classes got less weaknesses because you thought that lower hp pool is a weakness on its own.

But as the players got better most of them understood that having a lot of HP is not that useful for survival purposes, its all about regenerating it fast or reducing the possibility to get hit from evade spamming or blocking or stealth. Best examples to illustrate my point would be cantrip elementalist, a class that has lowest HP pool but still managed to survive a lot longer then any other “healthier” class. And lets not forget that 2 patches ago classes like warriors or necromancers were not the best choice in tpvp, even considered lowest tier by most, because other classes could do the same or more dmg/support with more survivability just because they had access to evades, stealth, teleports, so they did not need covering (or babysitting as it is called in forums) from teammates.

So what necromancer truly lacks is the ability to get out of the fight, it does not really need to be from mobility, but it should be some kind of disengage (not from DS). I know we have a teleport from worm, but lets be honest it is like rolling the dice – you sometimes get the teleport, sometimes move 2 meters from your spot, sometimes don’t move at all. So we lack a reliable way to avoid being destroyed from focus fire. People who still think that necromancer has a great way to survive via “2 hp bars” should think why seeing a bunker necro in tpvp very rare?

There are many, many good topics with great ideas how to change up state of the necromancer so I do not want to steal them as my own, will add a link in my original post to them.

P.S. I have to thank you for being more vocal in the forums, I think it brings hope and reassurance not only to me but to all spvp community when you start to see a lot of red topics in main page.

Shar.3402:

http://www.twitch.tv/symbollix/c/2622702

this is the state of the necromancer after the patch. Balanced. Not.

lol. Its a 60 second cd utility dude. Just dont burst someone when they use it and are in death shroud. It really isnt hard. Would you go and burst someone who is in mist form and blow everything you have?

I didn’t want to post yesterday because I was confused about some of the changes and I didn’t have the time to do much testing, which I’m still going through, but so far it seems like it was a small step in the right direction.

I still believe it should have been burning the one affected by the changes, but either way you can feel that the damage got lower, the survivability got somewhat higher, and the aoe pressure is slightly lower due to the smaller/block-able marks (if you don’t trait for it, obviously). I’m also finding it a bit harder to pick what utilities I’d want to use, which is good (means quite a few of them are worthy of a spot on our bars). I’m yet to check how it affected profession stacking for necromancers, which I believe is what makes people “scream” the most, but I’m guessing it didn’t do much in that regard.

I find the posted video comical to say the least. You can tell that it’s just an immature attempt to try to prove something, as we’ve previously seen from the same source.

Also, as some people said before, thank you devs for being more vocal on the forums.

I like these changes, that is all.

Second…. WHAT?

The current patch is an attempt to do small “shavings” to bring the class into line with these goals, in the same way we tried to “shave” the Ele numerous times, rather than “nerfing it from orbit”. Are all Ele specs equally viable in all game types? No. Is this ok? Yes. Staff can see play in one game type while D/D or S/D see play in others. As we’ve said, we’ll split skills/weapons more and more in the variuos game types, but each time we split a skill, it gives us more update work down the road. We have to be very prudent when we split skills.

Seriously, are you kidding me?
ArenaNet promised to make several VIABLE builds for every class in all parts of the game, not one kitten build you have to go for in the single parts of the game. Do you – s e r i o u s l y – want to force every profession, especially the elementalist, to have a completly different build for pvp, WvW and pve because otherwise you can’t do a kitten?

That explains definitly how you managed to scrue up the balance in the entire game. You should get some competent people.

Peter Buch.8071:

Second…. WHAT?

The current patch is an attempt to do small “shavings” to bring the class into line with these goals, in the same way we tried to “shave” the Ele numerous times, rather than “nerfing it from orbit”. Are all Ele specs equally viable in all game types? No. Is this ok? Yes. Staff can see play in one game type while D/D or S/D see play in others. As we’ve said, we’ll split skills/weapons more and more in the variuos game types, but each time we split a skill, it gives us more update work down the road. We have to be very prudent when we split skills.

Seriously, are you kidding me?
ArenaNet promised to make several VIABLE builds for every class in all parts of the game, not one kitten build you have to go for in the single parts of the game. Do you – s e r i o u s l y – want to force every profession, especially the elementalist, to have a completly different build for pvp, WvW and pve because otherwise you can’t do a kitten?

That explains definitly how you managed to scrue up the balance in the entire game. You should get some competent people.

Yeah it’s actually a completely ridiculous answer. Every weapon and build should be equally viable in any gametype. Or at least that should be the goal the balancing team strifes towards. But now it’s actually “Well this class has 1 viable weapon and spec in pve, and another weapon and spec in pvp, this class is COMPLETELY BALANCED!”