Guild Wars 2

So… i just watched the live stream, and they mentioned AOE nerf. They said something about ELE’s but does that AOE nerf affect Necro’s? If so… Im seriously quitting my necro.

EDIT: Are you nerfing wells aswell!? How are the necro supposed to burst, give support or even survive without wells? wells are like the number one source for AOE, support and damage for a wellomancer like me… I tried condition build, its not for me… DONT TOUCH THE NECRO

What about the staff? Its going to be USELESS Absoloutely useless… I love the staff for its AOE, great for farming in orr etc. Staff is my primary weapon.

Seriously

In an ideal world, this nerf should not touch the Necromancer’s AOE as it has not been shown to be overpowered at all whatsover, as compared to Staff-Ele. I don’t agree that seige is overpowered but that’s a different discussion.

Seriously. Please don’t touch necromancer wells or staff A-Net.

Holy kitten, the wells aswell.. Oh god… My build is like… Staff + wells

Anet, if you do this… AHHH!!

The problem is the Elemental meteor shower; each “meteor” is an AoE in its own right, which means it can hit 5 targets. Lots of them are triggered which means it does pretty huge damage.

I doubt very much that they will touch wells. They’re on a long CD, require a trait to cast at range and aren’t as potent as most other utility AoE.

Chillax.

Also, siege is fine.

Get ready to get swept up in the Elementalist changes….

You know it’s going to happen…

Dissapointed.

Yep power build with wells is my WvW spec. Looks like I’ll need to re-evaluate that.

anet wants us to play only pure conditiomancer which is quite useless with guardians and eles in every map who have passive condi removes

Where are you seeing this info? if you have a link please post it.

Thanks

Preacher

I love how people make mass hysteria with just the tip of something that could or could not affect them.

Sirevanac.3178:

I love how people make mass hysteria with just the tip of something that could or could not affect them.

You mean something like “We need to do something with gun control.” The fact is we don’t know where it will lead and it could be much worse than you expect. People are just preparing themselves for what may be coming. Nothing wrong with being prepared.

Eviator.9746:

Sirevanac.3178:

I love how people make mass hysteria with just the tip of something that could or could not affect them.

You mean something like “We need to do something with gun control.” The fact is we don’t know where it will lead and it could be much worse than you expect. People are just preparing themselves for what may be coming. Nothing wrong with being prepared.

Getting ready is looking for alternative options. Here, I read “if they nerf them I quit Necro.”. :P

Thank goodness I got my Alt (possibly-soon-to-be-main) Mesmer at full level as I was waiting for these releases. But despite this worrying news, I’ll give ANet the benefit of the doubt, if I don’t like what they give the Necro, I’ll just shelve it and pretend it was never there.

APPARENTLY many have my mindset, I’m seldom seeing Necros in WvW nowdays.

Sirevanac.3178:

Eviator.9746:

Sirevanac.3178:

I love how people make mass hysteria with just the tip of something that could or could not affect them.

You mean something like “We need to do something with gun control.” The fact is we don’t know where it will lead and it could be much worse than you expect. People are just preparing themselves for what may be coming. Nothing wrong with being prepared.

Getting ready is looking for alternative options. Here, I read “if they nerf them I quit Necro.”. :P

Lucky i have 3 alts to chose from

I think people have been let down by most of the patches/changes released so far… once you get let down a few times, you start to get a negative vibe about the whole thing – it’s human nature to feel this way.

Just saying.

I still can’t believe minion AI hasn’t been fixed.. the flesh golem would be a great asset in WvW if it attacked.

Avigrus.2871:

Sirevanac.3178:

Eviator.9746:

Sirevanac.3178:

I love how people make mass hysteria with just the tip of something that could or could not affect them.

You mean something like “We need to do something with gun control.” The fact is we don’t know where it will lead and it could be much worse than you expect. People are just preparing themselves for what may be coming. Nothing wrong with being prepared.

Getting ready is looking for alternative options. Here, I read “if they nerf them I quit Necro.”. :P

Lucky i have 3 alts to chose from

I think people have been let down by most of the patches/changes released so far… once you get let down a few times, you start to get a negative vibe about the whole thing – it’s human nature to feel this way.

Just saying.

I still can’t believe minion AI hasn’t been fixed.. the flesh golem would be a great asset in WvW if it attacked.

Never argued anything, i just said that i like to see people go into hysteria for things that don’t know and cant change at all!

So, before I go home this arvo and start actually investing some ‘xp time’ and cash into my Warrior in unwarranted shrieking panic.

Are there any hard facts gleaned from this?

Like many here, the necro is ‘all about the AOE’… mostly cause its got bugger all else, but hey we do what we can with what we’ve got, or may not have in the near future.

Sirevanac.3178:

Getting ready is looking for alternative options. Here, I read “if they nerf them I quit Necro.”. :P

Yeah, we could all go minion master as an alternative option!

Oh, wait…

Well, there’s always our powerful and effective lifesteal builds!

Oh, wait…

Well, I’m sure if we just dig deep enough, we can find an alternate build that no one has previously discovered. No, really!

P.S. Yeah, you talk all the dirt you want about “unwarranted shrieking panic”. Anet doesn’t CARE that the wells are already on a massive cooldown, just like they didn’t CARE that we have 1 freaking second of fear when they nerfed THAT.

There has been no identifiable pattern, EVER, of the change-makers thinking what happens to necro when they swing the nerfbat at the other classes. If we don’t get hit, it will be out of sheer dumb luck.

What’s actually unwarranted is thinking that anet will suddenly change it’s ways through the sheer power of your positive thinking.

Every other class gets weapon sets that passively hit everything, sword is a good example, Eng. pistol, etc. We have staff and only the wells.

Basically, they seem fine with hundred blades being a 1 shot ability, and thief 3 shot combo in under 2 secs as fine, but the fact that I dumped 4 marks and 3 wells on 5 people, and got some of them to half health is to kitten overpowered.

Well this wreks the necro to oblivion. Goodbye Necro.

They mentioned spreading the portal mechanic to other classes. Maybe you guys will get a portalling skill which=spots on teams.

“In PvP and WvW we see people using AOEs on enemy players rezzing other etc”

Thats part of an answer from anet in the transcripts which I like doing with my marks in pvp.

Manticore Five.9867:

P.S. Yeah, you talk all the dirt you want about “unwarranted shrieking panic”. Anet doesn’t CARE that the wells are already on a massive cooldown, just like they didn’t CARE that we have 1 freaking second of fear when they nerfed THAT.

There has been no identifiable pattern, EVER, of the change-makers thinking what happens to necro when they swing the nerfbat at the other classes. If we don’t get hit, it will be out of sheer dumb luck.

What’s actually unwarranted is thinking that anet will suddenly change it’s ways through the sheer power of your positive thinking.

Mate, we’re on the same side
As jaded as I am about this class having to suck hind teat for any kind of favourable attention and with over 1100hrs into ‘just’ my necro, I’m really worried. But before I go flying completely off the handle- there does need to be some kind of hard info before I can make any kind of judgement if the class will have any viability.

If its as bad as I think it will be, we’ll go almost completely extinct from WvW like the Engineer has in recent weeks.

Marks already have the smallest AoE circle in the game at 120 range. How much more can they nerf it? Sure you can trait it to be 240, but that’s beside the point.

Wells has super long recharge.

Epidemic has 5 target limit.

How much more can they nerf these?

Around 12:00 min into the video:

“We feel like right now AoE skills in WvW, as well as in PvP, is probably a little bit too strong across the board. So we’ll be doing a major update to all the AoE skills to kinda bring them back in line a little bit”

Hard to tell how impactful this would be. It’s hard to reconcile phrases like “major update” and “a little bit” in the same sentence.

TheAgedGnome.7520:

Around 12:00 min into the video:

“We feel like right now AoE skills in WvW, as well as in PvP, is probably a little bit too strong across the board. So we’ll be doing a major update to all the AoE skills to kinda bring them back in line a little bit”

If Anet seriously think our AOEs are “a little bit too strong” (well since we don’t know if its gonna be a nerf on our side) then it’s LOLtastic. On the other hand, it could be they are nerfing other classes AOEs to bring it on par with ours.

wouldn’t be surprised to see well of suffering be nerfed. Honestly, any AOE nerfs will probably be the last nail in the coffin for my necro unless they get some serious buffs in other places.

I didn’t realize tinfoil hats were coming back in season. I always saw them as summer apparel, you know, to help keep the heat off your noogan. Don’t see the benefits of tinfoil winter apparel, but hey, when you gotta be fashionable you gotta be fashionable.

In other words, you’re all making mountains out of molehills. You don’t know how this update will effect us, so step on a chillblains and chill out. Save the QQing for after the update like you all usually do. It makes life slightly more pleasant on these boards.

Doubt much will happen to Necros tbh. non of their AoE skills really hit harder then their ST ones. Putrid Mark got so long CD that it really can’t be nerfed. Life Transfer max out at at like 2500 dmg while Channeling Axe can hit for 4000 in the same build.
Epedemic doesn’t even do any dmg on it’s own.

If they really nerf the hell out of all AoE skills then WvWvW will be unplableyble. It will go from 15-20 man groups to 2 full warbands running together to compensate for the loss of damage. It will just make WvWvW a living nightmare were the zerg wins everything. They still do, but it’s manageble to take on greater numbers with AoE damage. This shouldn’t be a blanket nerf to all AoE abillties. they should focus on specific abillties and bring those with very high AoE dmg capabillity in line with the other AoE’s. I’ve seen what a blanket nerf to all AoE’s done to games in the past and it isn’t pretty.

I would be alarmed if the AOE nerf was the only balance mentioned in the Livestream. If by “nerf” they only mean damage, then while it will be very annoying as Necro has poor single target damage and weapon choice in general, it can’t do much since our AOE doesn’t do much (direct) damage to start with. If it is increased cooldown or something then I’d be more saddened…

I’m hoping that any downward adjustments to our AOE will be balanced out by two other items they mentioned:
We want to bring up all the weak weapons/traits on par with strong weapons/builds/traits in addition to reduce AoE effectiveness.
A lot of classes have 1-2 good builds while some have 5-6 builds , we want to bring up all the classes to 5-6 good and viable builds.

If they do that, I’d gladly lose some AOE effectiveness for a few more build options and more weapons to choose from aside from Staff and…….well staff is good, right (yes I know dagger is ok, etc…but really the only must have Necro weapon is staff due to it being our only real combo field/aoe damage/utility weapon)?

I swear the devs must all play thieves, THIS IS ANOTHER HUGE BUFF FOR THEM again.

Kyton.3815:

We want to bring up all the weak weapons/traits on par with strong weapons/builds/traits in addition to reduce AoE effectiveness.
A lot of classes have 1-2 good builds while some have 5-6 builds , we want to bring up all the classes to 5-6 good and viable builds.

I will be pretty interested to see how our attrition basis will work with reduced AoE. AoE/wells/marks are the only way we can survive multiple mobs while “wearing them down” attrition style. Maybe we will get some abilities less focused on attrition to compensate…in other words a rethink of our profession’s very foundation…get ready for the roller coaster fellas (fellas notionally includes girls in this case)…I think it will a big fast downhill first before any slow rise. I just don’t have a good feeling about this especially as my favorite build (shoehorned into it as the only viable one I like) is condition/wells/marks/epidemic based…a true attrition build.

PS I will just add here that builds that require super fast reaction/dodge requirements are out because as an Oceanic player I have a base latency over 150 before our local ISP/Internet’s overheads. Normal latency around the 250-330 mark. I hope ANet factor these type of issues into their “viability” criteria.

Well, after 6 months of “Ele AOEs are too strong” they are finally looking at it.. but as said hope it doesn’t hit my necro too

Hope they do not nerf Necro AoEs any further. The fear nerf was tough and the terror buff did not make up for it. Anyway, the best thing about AoEs in WvW is that they can still irritate opponents even after I’ve been ganked.

Edit: Actually, if AoEs get nerfed for Necro, I also hope condition mitigation for other jobs gets limited, too. Otherwise, I doubt Necormancers will be useful at all in WvW and PvE play may get more difficult, too.

Why can’t ANet actually fix broken stuff instead of focusing on “nerfing” stuff. Are they just trying to kill their own game…..they talk about all these “great” things coming yet all i’m seeing is “nerf this, nerf that”. Do something useful like removing DR, fixing the issues with 600g+ precursors, Arah P1 and P4 bugs not to mention all the other bugs in other dungeons, broken skills for all the classes. The list can go on so get your priorities straight……/rant off.

StugLyfe.2134:

I swear the devs must all play thieves, THIS IS ANOTHER HUGE BUFF FOR THEM again.

This will be interesting. Now its even harder to AoE guess where the thief is at.

If they touch our AOE at all, they better buff our single target damage in the process. Because sadly we have to use our AOE to have any chance in single target fights with condition builds.

They would be pretty stupid to nerf the necromancers AOE, they are underpowered as it is. If they nerf the necro at this point i quit the game, maybe if they fixed some bugs first…

i just watched http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hByqoWsnz-I at about 18mins you are talking about rez and aoe, i think AOE is fine, rezzing should be risky, it’s part of the deal, wanna get that guy up? sure, but watch out for the AOE

If they bring our AoE damage in line with our single target damage then we’re completely stuffed. As a casual player) I’ve spent ages kitting out my Necro to play with staff AoE in WvW. I enjoy it, especially as it avoids much of the culling/FPS issues you get in the middle of zergs. I don’t have the time or inclination to re-gear or indeed level an alt, This news gives me a sad.

well OP uses wells on single target so thats what anet wants to prevent. So yeah, they will touch the Necro as well as ALL classes who use aoes. gg

Considering how staff is probably the most versatile and best weapon the Necromancer has, an AoE nerf to it would hurt really hard. I can maybe see why meteor shower would be nerfed, as i’ve seen some hit for 4-5k per shower blast, and as there are many meteors in the shower thats a fair chunk. But a Necro hits that amount like, never, and only once with any individual aoe skill, not multiple parts to the aoe.

I can’t see why any aoe aside meteor shower would need any nerf, and even meteor shower ain’t so bad.

Knox.3748:

well OP uses wells on single target so thats what anet wants to prevent. So yeah, they will touch the Necro as well as ALL classes who use aoes. gg

No i dont? I use dagger for single target… No wells

But tbh… the only thing that keeps me from playing on my necro over my warrior, is that i LOVE the AOE necro have. Orr farming, dungeons etc. The AOE is so funny. It doesnt even hit that hard, i just love numbers!

But if they nerf it, i will know for sure it will become usueless. Aoe damage is so much fun, atleast with wells + marks combined when alot of risen attack.

Think about it, how are necro’s doing to deal damage after the nerf? Using a dagger mainhand? Nothing wrong about it, but this is a “mage” class, so it shouldnt be needed to use dagger.

Scepter? Terrible damage, only good for bleed. But condition build is the worst thing i know… Its so boring and in dungeons the enemies will always have the bleed limit anyways.

Axe? No… Just noo… the axe auto attack is the worst kitten i have ever seen when it comes to DPS

Staff? No. Its getting nerfed…

So, the necro will be dead, all other classes will be better

Im rolling a thief IF this patch nerf the AOE’s on necro. Since i KNOW the thief will only get buffed, not nerfed

Ideally they would make axe, dagger and scepter better and not nerf staff. I am a staff necro and I see zero appeal in axe, dagger and scepter at the moment. At the same time it takes me horribly long to actually kill anything.

As it is I only play my necro when I farm. I don’t see this significantly changing until Necro becomes even close to effectiveness of my mesmer or guardian which are by far my most powerful characters (I’ve necro, guardian, ele, ranger and mesmer sitting at level 80).

I’m a bit confused about this AoE change. I already think that for example veteran mobs have way too much hp. I hope they also change the PvE environment to match these changes. It looks to me like this change is once more caused by PvP (or in this case WvWvW).

Homonavn.6348:

Im rolling a thief IF this patch nerf the AOE’s on necro. Since i KNOW the thief will only get buffed, not nerfed

Thief and warrior both most likely because everyone knows these are the weakest professions!

Come on now, you really think they could make necro’s AoE damage any lower? You’ll be lucky to see 1000 with our AoE. I believe they will simply subject the other classes to the same standards as the necromancer’s AoE.

I use the staff more so for the effects (chill, poison, fear, regeneration) than the damage, because the damage output is laughable. You can’t possibly take away from what isn’t there in the first place.

I mean the base damage of about 100 for all the skills other than Putrid Mark is really going to scare away a zerg.

I dont see why direct damage needs more buffing, its the best damage right now.

AOE is also good damage but its very difficult to spam it in a way that gets kills. The only problem is when you get multiple people spamming an area creating instant (or near instant) death zones, perhaps this is the issue?

Maybe the trick is to limit the amount of AOE damage a person recieves per second, rather than limiting the AOE damage a class can do.

Also I’m kind of curious what this means to melee classes. Their basic attacks are AoEs. They hit multiple targets. It would be seriously wrong if necros, elementalists and others received a nerf even to our staff basic attacks (which are AoE too) while melee classes could still keep those.

I don’t recall any of the necro axe, dagger or sceptre basic attacks hitting multiple foes. Not so with melee classes where the attacks are actually AoEs. It would be somewhat ironic if the best single target professions would also become the best AoE professions – well arguably they are already.

When Anet says “AoE” I keep hearing “ranged targetted AoE only”

If it’s just a dip in damage on all AoE skills Organized guilds will just just change their builds from static damage to might gain builds and AoE vournabillity debuffs for damage. I doubt we see less AoE dmg numbers. It will seperate organzied groups from pug zergs more wich i think is a good thing.

If they do more drastic reductions like limit the amount of players being hit by AoE’s to 3, increase cooldowns, reduce tha radius and nerf the damage on all skills rather then ones causing the issues, then WvWvW will be totally unplayeble for attackers. And they might aswell remove WvWvW from the game.

However i do agree with some of the points that they were making, NO AoE skills should be more effective then a ST skills that does the same thing. They should have longer CD’s and be ateast 25% less effective.

I must admit I am slightly concerned on what is going to happen regarding this. We have alot of AOE abilities from DS4 to Wells to Staff to Epidemic etc.

I actually find the rezzing example a strange one and its more likely they are concerned with the burst damage of AOE skills. If anything that tells me that Epidemic is probably going to be safe, I would be surprised if Well’s get hit by it considering its damage over pulse and not full direct damage in one go. Staff for me only the number 4 skill does any proper damage, so if anything and worst case scenario DS4 and Staff 4 may get hit hardest.

But at the end of the day its all speculation and until the change happens no-one is going to know how bad or good its going to be. So I shall wait and see what the change brings and then make my decision from there.

I have 3100 power and my hardest hitting AoE is staff 4, the highest number I’ve seen is 1200. I get hit that hard by thieves just spamming short bow 1. I would almost bet they won’t address Hundred Blades being able to down me with 25k health or the thief 7k backstab.

Also, what are the odds they will look at the AoE of swords?

pretty sure Staff wouldn’t get touched since it’s not a conventional ranged weapon. Marks don’t hit hard except for Putrid Mark and is fashioned more for controlling geography around the necro as opposed to straight forward ranged dmg.

The wells on the other hand, specifically WoS, could take a slight a nerf (cd increase or dmg reduction), as well as epidemic (CD increase, limits on condition transfer, or max target reduction).

Honestly though, this is all speculation. There’s no possible way to know their intentions for the class since we haven’t seen a red post since “about a month ago”.