Guild Wars 2

potentially we could have a spot if spreading weakness and blinds around meant the rest of the group could be even more glassy… but right now they can go full zerk glass and just kill everything before they become a threat.

Godless.1857:

potentially we could have a spot if spreading weakness and blinds around meant the rest of the group could be even more glassy… but right now they can go full zerk glass and just kill everything before they become a threat.

Spreading tons of blinds around can mean this, for non-boss mobs and teams that don’t have enough cannon but still keep the glass. But the last time I executed a blindspam tactic, it was with a thief.

Necromancer isn’t the problem where PvE is concerned, the content itself is the problem. Damage is king and necromancer isn’t meant to do the most damage.

wiazabi.2549:

Still dont get why people claim aoe is great on necro when cleave is better in 99% of all situations.

This current event, Staff AoE bleed, Staff AoE Slow, Well of Suffering.
Auto Attack on Staff, hitting for about 750 per mob in a line.

Few seconds and LifeForce full, time to DShroud it up. Auto Attack Pice thru lines like staff, stacking Vuln, giving me might with 100% crit. Starting about 2.5k per mob, per hit, but quickly getting upto to the 4.5k with around might stacked 10 times and vuln stacks getting going.
So, vuln & might sitting on about half cap, say I only hit 5 mobs per attack in a row, (Can easily be more but let’s not talk perfect hit every time) That’s still 22k per 3/4th a sec.
Then, DS4, oohhh the AoE! I know it’s a ‘very rare super number’ but I had 1 of them today, hit for 28k per mob, my screen was just covered in 28k numbers with all the mobs AoE’ed…

Sure, it’s not as easy as standing still and having 1 button AoE the mobs on you… But the right place, standing in the right spot, our ranged AoE is kitten sexy indeed!

Bweaty.9187:

wiazabi.2549:

Still dont get why people claim aoe is great on necro when cleave is better in 99% of all situations.

This current event, Staff AoE bleed, Staff AoE Slow, Well of Suffering.
Auto Attack on Staff, hitting for about 750 per mob in a line.

Few seconds and LifeForce full, time to DShroud it up. Auto Attack Pice thru lines like staff, stacking Vuln, giving me might with 100% crit. Starting about 2.5k per mob, per hit, but quickly getting upto to the 4.5k with around might stacked 10 times and vuln stacks getting going.
So, vuln & might sitting on about half cap, say I only hit 5 mobs per attack in a row, (Can easily be more but let’s not talk perfect hit every time) That’s still 22k per 3/4th a sec.
Then, DS4, oohhh the AoE! I know it’s a ‘very rare super number’ but I had 1 of them today, hit for 28k per mob, my screen was just covered in 28k numbers with all the mobs AoE’ed…

Sure, it’s not as easy as standing still and having 1 button AoE the mobs on you… But the right place, standing in the right spot, our ranged AoE is kitten sexy indeed!

Staff #2 is condition dmg, you dont need slow when killing things, well of suffering is ok but only hits every 1 sec vs example melee cleave thats ½ sec, auto attack even at 750 dmg is low dmg.

DS #1 appears to be awesome but it have a cast time of 1sec so its still not that great but its okish.
Just cause you hit more mobs with pierce doesnt make the dps pr mob go up ( sadly the might doesnt apply pr hit like warrior greatsword.
Its still 1sec cast.

DS4 28k pr mob? 28k? well i guess nemesis is overrated with his 29k ghastly claws if you can hit 28k PER MOB with Deathshroud 4.

Well, necro’s an’t elitist jerks saying Necro only groups like some class’s ;-P

The intro bleeds are just ‘some aoe’ ticking away while things get going. No chill & poison anti-heal & more condi dam isn’t needed. Tho having slowed group in aoe vuln & ticking dam circle isn’t a terrible warmup.

We weren’t talking about per mob dam, we were talking AoE. Your cleave is only hitting mobs next to you. As soon as the mobs stand still and ranged attack…

As for the 28k… Im not sure how it happened! It’s usually 12-15k range. Felt awesome tho!

Anyway, not here to flame war. I’d soo love cleave, even if just on dagger. OMFG Might per mob hit with Plague Blast! Access to Vigor/Block oh yes!

Point I was trying to make, is. There’s AoE situations that an’t stacked on meele. Necro is no slacker in constant, sustained ranged/spread AoE.

(Note, I steal War banners and run off swiftly with them ;-)

power necro with zerk gear does OK dmg and has some great conditions. condi damage builds are just slow to apply dmg no matter what class.

necro doesn’t need vigor

necro needs something to be like it was before DS nerfanage. or at least have some survivability in decent level while using DS or elite polymorphs (lol no condiremoval while polymorphed oh gee).

looking at this liadri boss and other things they should really balance content in a way also some other than lol spvp metacondinecro can do it and be useful.

Bweaty.9187:

As for the 28k… Im not sure how it happened! It’s usually 12-15k range. Felt awesome tho!

Was the 28k hits on risen beserkers or something which uses frenzy? Thats the only explanation.

Anyway I did some vet giant dps tests yesterday on my zerker necro. Got on average 18-19 second kills. Which compared to the dps vids Brazil from DnT did, its faster than guard and mesmer but not quite as fast as ranger and thief. Can assume its slower than warrior due to warrior burst. Necro dps is pretty impressive, just not high enough to warrant taking in a group for only dps.

Terok.7315:

Necromancer isn’t the problem where PvE is concerned, the content itself is the problem. Damage is king and necromancer isn’t meant to do the most damage.

There is no problem with the content. Dealing damage and/or providing defense/healing, while dealing damage, is the basis of every action mmo in a dungeon/pve setting. Every mmo’s pve is about efficiency in farming/clearing content…taking forever to kill stuff is the opposite of that basic design. As it is now, we aren’t even as viable as other classes at taking forever to kill stuff while avoiding death. I would definitely say that the necromancer is the problem. When it gets to the point that there is reluctance to bring a particular class/profession into a dungeon run versus other options…in a game that is allegedly designed to avoid that problem…then there is a real problem with balance/design. The parts should be interchangeable without a noticeable loss in performance/survivability.

ODB.6891:

Terok.7315:

Necromancer isn’t the problem where PvE is concerned, the content itself is the problem. Damage is king and necromancer isn’t meant to do the most damage.

There is no problem with the content. Dealing damage and/or providing defense/healing, while dealing damage, is the basis of every action mmo in a dungeon/pve setting. Every mmo’s pve is about efficiency in farming/clearing content…taking forever to kill stuff is the opposite of that basic design. As it is now, we aren’t even as viable as other classes at taking forever to kill stuff while avoiding death. I would definitely say that the necromancer is the problem. When it gets to the point that there is reluctance to bring a particular class/profession into a dungeon run versus other options…in a game that is allegedly designed to avoid that problem…then there is a real problem with balance/design. The parts should be interchangeable without a noticeable loss in performance/survivability.

I think you need to go trough the basic game design course, the core 3 elements thay may never clash (and with clash i mean contradict based on genre) are: enjoyment in gameplay/fun, challenge one must overcome/difficulty and Foundation in development/good pacing, story, mechancs that help the gameplay, controls, etc
In a mmo (and mugs that created the mmorpg genre) the point of PvE isnt to “make most dps in least amount of time” or farm for something, but to have a expirience that is difficult enough for you to say “Hell yeah, im kitten!” when you finish it, fun enough not to make you smash the controler/keyboard/mouse/whatever you use to play in a enviorment that allows for social interaction because of the chaos factor the play brings.
Great example of that was AQ40 in WoW, till you got to the last 2 bosses, everything all 40 people did was actually influencing the fight, because the bosses at their core were quite simple (help the person mind controlled/dont get yourself, dont stand in ooze, kite swarm till boss is invul for a phase so that you dont enrage him, etc) and how prepared the players were made fights harder/easier, but that didnt mean a actual gear check, instead having consumables up, chosing the right skills/build and rotations.

ODB.6891:

There is no problem with the content. Dealing damage and/or providing defense/healing, while dealing damage, is the basis of every action mmo in a dungeon/pve setting.

The problem isn’t that bosses deal damage. The problem is how they deal damage.

Bosses in this game are all pretty simple: dodge the attack that can one-shot you if it hits, apply DPS. The moves can strike differently and sometimes there’s some silly hoop you have to jump through to allow the DPS to happen or prevent the one-shot attacks from firing, but the vast majority of the time, the only difference between a character with a lot of EPH and a character with very little EPH is whether they have half a second or a quarter of a second to dodge or toss up an evasion effect. Either way, all tank and support specs do is slow down the run (unless your teammates suck at dodging, in which case support specs are great).

This makes things rough for the Necro, who lacks the ability to step outside the combat during fights the way every other profession does. Everyone else is expected to simply avoid being struck by million-point blasts, but the Necro was designed with the expectation that we would be taking those hits on occasion, yet our DSs aren’t capable of soaking them up (any more). And obviously we shouldn’t be getting a million EPH from our DSs, but that means we need some way of avoiding super-heavy blasts.

ODB.6891:

When it gets to the point that there is reluctance to bring a particular class/profession into a dungeon run versus other options…in a game that is allegedly designed to avoid that problem…then there is a real problem with balance/design. The parts should be interchangeable without a noticeable loss in performance/survivability.

When the content doesn’t change, there’s always going to be a group that can complete it in the least amount of time. There’s nothing anyone can do to stop that from happening.

That said, I do think GW2 has mostly achieved its goals on this count. I’ve run many dungeons with a wife variety of groups and not only have I almost never seen a Necro turned away for being a Necro, but in general I haven’t observed all that wide a variance in clear times either (and when I did, it was mostly due to lack of knowledge or twitch skill). Throw together a random team off gw2lfg.com of any 5 level 80s and they’ll clear CoF p1 is 7-10 minutes, depending on whether they are competent and know the route. I’ve heard of optimized teams dropping as low as 4.5 minutes, but that’s still only two minutes better than some of the (non-meta) pug teams I’ve gone with. I don’t know about you, but my time isn’t so valuable that it’s worth playing a character I don’t like just to shave two minutes off a 6-minute dungeon run, especially now that multi-runs just got mega-nerfed.

ODB.6891:

Terok.7315:

Necromancer isn’t the problem where PvE is concerned, the content itself is the problem. Damage is king and necromancer isn’t meant to do the most damage.

There is no problem with the content. Dealing damage and/or providing defense/healing, while dealing damage, is the basis of every action mmo in a dungeon/pve setting. Every mmo’s pve is about efficiency in farming/clearing content…taking forever to kill stuff is the opposite of that basic design. As it is now, we aren’t even as viable as other classes at taking forever to kill stuff while avoiding death. I would definitely say that the necromancer is the problem. When it gets to the point that there is reluctance to bring a particular class/profession into a dungeon run versus other options…in a game that is allegedly designed to avoid that problem…then there is a real problem with balance/design. The parts should be interchangeable without a noticeable loss in performance/survivability.

The problem lies most deffinitely with the game itself, because it’s not a problem with specifically the necromancer – it’s, to its basis, the same problem you’d face if you were to try playing as a healer elementalist or a tank guardian: the pve combat in GW2 is one-dimentional.
The game gives you a ton of very detailed options as to how you want to build your character, but then immediately innvalidates them because the enemies have only 2 types of attacks: attacks that will kill you regardless of how much health or toughness you have, and attacks that merely tickle you – no middle ground. There is no reason to invest in healing, because heals will not save you from the first and are not needed for the latter. Same thing for tankiness. Thus, the only viable option is to build as much damage as you can fit in your gear slots and put as many invulnerability skills as you can in your utility bar.
Necromancers are supposed to be crowd-controlling tanks – they have twice as much effective health as the next best class (warrior), rapidly regenerating at that, and enough conditions and controlling effects to play ping-pong with their enemies. But the game supports neither tanks (because of 1-hit K.O.) nor crowd control (because defiant). It only supports berserker glass cannons. And when a game only supports one build out of the 23 it offers to its players, and only gives them one viable way to effectively tackle encounters, then it’s the game that’s the problem, not the specific class that got left out.

Its your opinion that the problem lies with the game. But if ignore that factor the problem lies with the class. Necro doesnt contribute anything to group dps.

And theres no tanking in this game, saying necros are supposed to be tanks is just wrong. They are supposed to be more durable attrition based damage dealers. PvE is all about dps and currently necro’s dont have enough to contribute to that. In WvW and PvP they are fine.

spoj.9672:

Its your opinion that the problem lies with the game. But if ignore that factor the problem lies with the class. Necro doesnt contribute anything to group dps.

And theres no tanking in this game, saying necros are supposed to be tanks is just wrong. They are supposed to be more durable attrition based damage dealers. PvE is all about dps and currently necro’s dont have enough to contribute to that. In WvW and PvP they are fine.

I don’t think he’s saying Necros are supposed to be tanks, just that we’re supposed to use tanking dynamics (absorb the hit, heal back up, lock down the threat) as our way to survive, whereas other professions use some combination of blocks, evasions, invulnerabilities, mobility, clones, and stealth.

In PvE, tanking doesn’t work when everything one-shots you anyway and lock-down doesn’t work because of Defiant.

spoj.9672:

PvE is all about dps and currently necro’s dont have enough to contribute to that

Exactly, the content itself is the problem. If the game had a little more depth and mechanics like defiant didn’t discourage support oriented roles, other classes (not just necromancer) would become more desirable to group compositions. Necromancer is not meant to deal the most damage just as guardian or engineer isn’t meant to deal the most damage. We all have specific mechanics and designs that let us excel at different areas of the game.

The problem is outside of PvP these unique class traits aren’t required and very rarely add a convenience factor to group fights. Time to kill is the primary idea people have in mind when forming groups for speedruns or when they want to clear content with as few hiccups as possible. Tanks, debuffers and healers are the real liability, not glassy zerkers. It’s because survivability it ultimately dependent on how fast the mobs die.

I get the feeling that people are reading “Necromancer is completely fine, it’s just the game that’s the problem”. I’m not saying that, necromancer could use a few quality of life changes (especially our poor pve minion masters). Though the core of the problem lies in the design of the instances themselves. If they want to ignore that and just buff necromancers so that they’re as good as warriors in pve (i.e. moar damage), they’ll end up breaking necromancers original design. We’ll end up just like warriors, facerolling content while trying to keep ourselves from falling asleep during a boss fight.

Terok.7315:

spoj.9672:

PvE is all about dps and currently necro’s dont have enough to contribute to that

Exactly, the content itself is the problem. If the game had a little more depth and mechanics like defiant didn’t discourage support oriented roles, other classes (not just necromancer) would become more desirable to group compositions. Necromancer is not meant to deal the most damage just as guardian or engineer isn’t meant to deal the most damage. We all have specific mechanics and designs that let us excel at different areas of the game.

I dont agree with this. Support and control are both heavily used in speedruns. Players that are skilled enough should be able to run full beserker and do the content much faster. You dont need to build supporty or build control to use it. The problem is necro doesnt really do any support or control worth taking into dungeons. Other classes that do more damage and can contribute to buffing the team can do everything the necro brings. Even if and when they make the mechanics far more in depth and interesting, necro’s still wont be taken because they dont provide anything worthwhile. It will still be a dps game and thats fine aslong as different types of dps roles are encouraged. But frankly the necro wont ever see some love until we get something that makes us a good pick in dungeons (unique team buff, maybe aura skills).

Andele.1306:

I think you need to go trough the basic game design course, the core 3 elements thay may never clash (and with clash i mean contradict based on genre) are: enjoyment in gameplay/fun, challenge one must overcome/difficulty and Foundation in development/good pacing, story, mechancs that help the gameplay, controls, etc
In a mmo (and mugs that created the mmorpg genre) the point of PvE isnt to “make most dps in least amount of time” or farm for something, but to have a expirience that is difficult enough for you to say “Hell yeah, im kitten!” when you finish it, fun enough not to make you smash the controler/keyboard/mouse/whatever you use to play in a enviorment that allows for social interaction because of the chaos factor the play brings.
Great example of that was AQ40 in WoW, till you got to the last 2 bosses, everything all 40 people did was actually influencing the fight, because the bosses at their core were quite simple (help the person mind controlled/dont get yourself, dont stand in ooze, kite swarm till boss is invul for a phase so that you dont enrage him, etc) and how prepared the players were made fights harder/easier, but that didnt mean a actual gear check, instead having consumables up, chosing the right skills/build and rotations.

You managed to miss the whole point of what I was talking about. My post wasn’t about the subjective and fluff factors of any game. That stuff is a given in any type of game. My post was about performance factors in what makes players want a particular class/profession in challenging pve content versus other possible classes/professions. This game makes those factors decidedly different from a game like wow (your AQ40 reference) because wow revolved around the mmo trinity (tank/healing/dps)…in which you actually wanted dedicated healers and tanks…both of which did minimal to no dps. GW2 does not reward groups that carry members doing minimal to no dps as the content is cleared much faster and efficiently if all group members provide a significant amount of damage. Yes, you can and yes people do clear the content with suboptimal damage output…but it is slower. You can’t help but acknowledge that players, in general, tend to gravitate towards the path of least resistance…faster runs…so they can move on and do something else as soon as possible. That’s why you see those posts and gw2lfg.com requesting specific classes. Everyone isn’t like that, but it happen enough.

All I’m trying to say is that currently the necromancer seems to be less of a benefit to a party than the majority of other options. If you had options on which class to fill your 5th group spot..would you really choose a necromancer over a guardian, warrior, mesmer, elementalist, etc? This is of course assuming you have your choice of available classes waiting to fill out your last spot. If you want condition damage/aoe…you can choose an engi, mesmer, or ele. All three have higher survivability/mobility. Choosing and elementalist will also gain you significant group healing as an option…you don’t get that from a necromancer. If you want direct damage, you can choose a dps guard or a warrior…both of which can give significantly more direct damage while also buffing your group…both of which also have more mobility and survivability than a necromancer. Both of which also have significant group healing options. I don’t mention ranger or thief as I have never played either.

My post was also not about gear checks or consumables. It was only about the way people play the game..based on the way a mmo is designed for players to clear the content. No one “wants” to clear a dungeon slower…they want to clear it faster, and with fewer player deaths to slow them down.

I just don’t feel that the necromancer, in its current state, is helping to achieve that goal as effectively as other classes. Someone in a different thread pointed out that boons are more effective than conditions in terms of extending survival (that’s a con in the necro’s corner). Necromancers have the hardest time evading attacks out of all classes in this game due to having the least amount of dodges in a short time span (another con in the necro’s corner). Most (maybe all) other classes have something they can do to avoid a death blow…ours just got removed (another con on the necro’s corner). We can remove conditions from our team, which is great (pro in the necro’s corner), but so can most if not all of the other classes.

The gist of what I’m trying to say is that necromancers need to stand out as doing something really well, receive a minimum of basic survival tools, and our survival conditions need to be at least as good as their equivalent or pseudo equivalent boons. I’m saying that the game doesn’t need to redesigned or tweaked to fix the necromancer…its the necromancer that needs the tweaking.

spoj.9672:

Terok.7315:

spoj.9672:

PvE is all about dps and currently necro’s dont have enough to contribute to that

Exactly, the content itself is the problem. If the game had a little more depth and mechanics like defiant didn’t discourage support oriented roles, other classes (not just necromancer) would become more desirable to group compositions. Necromancer is not meant to deal the most damage just as guardian or engineer isn’t meant to deal the most damage. We all have specific mechanics and designs that let us excel at different areas of the game.

I dont agree with this. Support and control are both heavily used in speedruns. Players that are skilled enough should be able to run full beserker and do the content much faster. You dont need to build supporty or build control to use it. The problem is necro doesnt really do any support or control worth taking into dungeons. Other classes that do more damage and can contribute to buffing the team can do everything the necro brings. Even if and when they make the mechanics far more in depth and interesting, necro’s still wont be taken because they dont provide anything worthwhile. It will still be a dps game and thats fine aslong as different types of dps roles are encouraged. But frankly the necro wont ever see some love until we get something that makes us a good pick in dungeons (unique team buff, maybe aura skills).

I agree with all of the above.

Blaine Tog.8304:

spoj.9672:

Its your opinion that the problem lies with the game. But if ignore that factor the problem lies with the class. Necro doesnt contribute anything to group dps.

And theres no tanking in this game, saying necros are supposed to be tanks is just wrong. They are supposed to be more durable attrition based damage dealers. PvE is all about dps and currently necro’s dont have enough to contribute to that. In WvW and PvP they are fine.

I don’t think he’s saying Necros are supposed to be tanks, just that we’re supposed to use tanking dynamics (absorb the hit, heal back up, lock down the threat) as our way to survive, whereas other professions use some combination of blocks, evasions, invulnerabilities, mobility, clones, and stealth.

In PvE, tanking doesn’t work when everything one-shots you anyway and lock-down doesn’t work because of Defiant.

This is supporting that the problem is with the necromancer, not the game. It is an issue with the mechanics of the necromancer as far as how the necromancer has to try and accomplish this “tanking dynamic”. DS is supposed to be our tanking dynamic, but ANET is consistently gimping DS. Currently trying to pull a jedi mind trick on us about the % of hp that DS should have. Players have consistently tested it apparently to be anywhere from 100% to 120% of base hp and now we have a red post, after all this time, saying its 60%. Couple that with the damage overflow nerf….effectively removing our only block/invulnerability move.

Our control is similarly ineffective due to our mechanics. Fear has always been a poor control mechanism in the mmo genre…at least in a pve dungeon environment. It tends to spread mobs out, when they are not immune (hello defiant). Spreading mobs out is the opposite of what you want when you are trying to aoe stuff down. Effective control mechanics are barriers that block a mob’s ability to reach you or trap them in a certain area. Projectile reflects are also an extremely effective control mechanism. We have cripple and immobilize just like most other classes, but i’d take reflect any day over spectral wall’s fear. I can see where fear is valuable in pvp, but for pve…gimme relfect.

ODB.6891:

This is supporting that the problem is with the necromancer, not the game.

No, it’s not.

Tanking doesn’t work, so all specs that rely on tanking don’t work. This includes, but crucially isn’t limited to, the Necromancer. You can’t run tanky Warriors either, yet I would argue that a tanky DPS warrior fits the archytype far better than the glass cannons you see across the board. Tanky Guardians kinda work, but mostly because they have long block and invulnerability moves easily mixed into all of their builds to allow them to handle the serious spikes. Necros don’t have any block moves so it’s just more obvious with them how flawed tanking is right now.

Few things that people mix up:
Reflects and exploiting/ignoring game mechanics with unintended use is not control
All zerkers that ever fought in AR with the same tactics as normally died, no full zerker group that wasnt using true techniquies (kiting, ranged/sub optimal dps combat) of the encounter survived.
Control is chill, cripple, immobilize and hard cc
Support (healing being part of it) is mostly boon spam and actually reviving downed people (thats why there are runes and traits for that)
Necro tanks kinda worked pre nerf, they were mostly just walls in case a idiot died to a obvious aoe, but it worked.
Fear is a good control mechanism, especially with the ability to permachill a enemy as a necro, they wont run out of the 130~150 cleave range of most skills.

its just encounters, perception vs reality and lazy devs that are kitten ing it up. Core system idea is good.

ODB.6891:

Andele.1306:

I think you need to go trough the basic game design course, the core 3 elements thay may never clash (and with clash i mean contradict based on genre) are: enjoyment in gameplay/fun, challenge one must overcome/difficulty and Foundation in development/good pacing, story, mechancs that help the gameplay, controls, etc
In a mmo (and mugs that created the mmorpg genre) the point of PvE isnt to “make most dps in least amount of time” or farm for something, but to have a expirience that is difficult enough for you to say “Hell yeah, im kitten!” when you finish it, fun enough not to make you smash the controler/keyboard/mouse/whatever you use to play in a enviorment that allows for social interaction because of the chaos factor the play brings.
Great example of that was AQ40 in WoW, till you got to the last 2 bosses, everything all 40 people did was actually influencing the fight, because the bosses at their core were quite simple (help the person mind controlled/dont get yourself, dont stand in ooze, kite swarm till boss is invul for a phase so that you dont enrage him, etc) and how prepared the players were made fights harder/easier, but that didnt mean a actual gear check, instead having consumables up, chosing the right skills/build and rotations.

My post was about performance factors in what makes players want a particular class/profession in challenging pve content versus other possible classes/professions. This game makes those factors decidedly different from a game like wow (your AQ40 reference) because wow revolved around the mmo trinity (tank/healing/dps)…in which you actually wanted dedicated healers and tanks…both of which did minimal to no dps. GW2 does not reward groups that carry members doing minimal to no dps as the content is cleared much faster and efficiently if all group members provide a significant amount of damage. Yes, you can and yes people do clear the content with suboptimal damage output…but it is slower.

This is exactly what we’ve been saying, the content is the problem. High damage classes are given special preference over any other build because the content doesn’t necessitate anything beyond “moar damage”. More niche and specific builds aren’t needed because the best way to add support, survivability and debuffs is to kill as quickly as humanly possible.

The content itself is the problem. :/

All I’m trying to say is that currently the necromancer seems to be less of a benefit to a party than the majority of other options. If you had options on which class to fill your 5th group spot..would you really choose a necromancer over a guardian, warrior, mesmer, elementalist, etc?

Necromancer isn’t a special case, it’s not being singled out. All classes with the exception of warrior (a soldier armor class designed for damage) are undesirable. Given the choice to fill the fifth team slot with either a healing guardian or a support necromancer I’d choose neither, both pale in comparison to a zerker warrior (to answer this question seriously, I wouldn’t have any special preference if we already had 4 zerker warriors. What does it matter? We could probably 4 man it.). This is the stale meta of which the boss mechanics created.

Necro could use some quality of life adjustments, but it will only ever really shine when the problem with the content itself is addressed.

Edit: Read some of these comments. You can find more examples by using google. https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/guardian/Guardian-PVT-or-Zerker/page/3#post2603984

Thank God anet didn’t introduce any gear checks yet.

Just so that we’re clear, when I say “tank” I do not mean the person that will hold all the aggro – I mean a character whose primary defence mechanism is “facetank everything”. Which is exactly what necromancers are – they tons of health, dozens of ways to rapidly regenerate it and 2 elite skills (Lich Form and Plague Form) that make them even tankier and let them ignore any CC. Which is the same way, more or less, as a tank warrior or guardian works. The problem is again, we only have either slight tickling or 1-hit kills as far as damage is concerned. We need something in between. Say, some spammable boss AoEs or a persistant damaging aura, that hit for a decent (but manageable) amount of damage and are mostly unavoidable. Suddenly, it’s worth bringing some good healing or some toughness with you, rather than going all-out berserker – or at least have a dedicated healer/tank along the damage dealers. And we also need defiant to be a CC reduction rather than a CC immunity – something like turning hard CC into slows/interrupts, so that you can’t just stunlock them, and greatly reducing the duration of softer CC. That of course could – and should – be done in a boss by boss basis, thus allowing not only the avoidance of potential abuse cases, but also making each boss usinque (say, one boss can be slowed but not interrupted, but another is the opposite).
Ultimately, the game encounters need to be re-balanced to offer more variety as to the way you approach them, or at least more than just “full-glass cannon gear, full dodge/invulnerability utilities”.

ps. In the meantime, there can be a “hotfix” for necromancers without breaking the feel of the class, adjusting a few effects here and there (say, Spectral walk grants us damage invincibility but breaks if we attack, or a trait that lets us sacrifice all our minions every minute or two to ignore a killing blow), but it will only be that – a hotfix to make up for broken stuff within the game itself.

@PMilkos.9103
No we do not have dozens of ways to regenerate hp.
Yes lich / plague makes us abit more tanky ( pointless with the oneshot mechanic though ) plague = huge dps sink for the grp to gain?

No it is not the same way a warrior or guardian works at all, aegis, vigor, block, invulnerability, endurance regen, weaponskills that make you immune to dmg.

Fear used to be useable on bosses :<.

They cant hotfix the necro when its entire design(Death shroud) is flawed,

Morbridae.8607:

Is there any posibility that Necro isn’t the best in anything, but is a good second place overall?

I mean, it may not do as much dps as a warrior, but does more than other classes? And may not have as much defense as a guardian, but have more than other classes? Something like this… (1: best, 3: worse, and please remember that this table is only provided as a quick example: the numbers probably are wrong)

Warrior: DPS: 1; Defense: 2; Conditions: 3; Buffs: 3 = Overall: 2.25
Guardian: DPS: 3; Defense: 1; Conditions: 3; Buffs: 2 = Overall: 2.25
Mesmer: DPS: 3; Defense: 3; Conditions: 2; Buffs: 1 = Overall: 2.25
Necro: DPS: 2; Defense: 2; Conditions: 2; Buffs: 3 = Overall: 2.25

Maybe we are wishing/fighting for the necro to be the best at something, when it really is a good second place (something like the Bard class in D&D), something that doesn’t shines in anything, but can help in most places, unlike some others more especialized classes… What do you think?

You are correct those numbers are way off. Its always a matter of situation and whats needed/given. Guardian can stack might just as well as any other. In pvp it provides the most important buff out of them all. And so on and so forth. Same as warrior that can pop that liadri boss in 5 seconds. Lol. You can’t be second to that if you can’t come anywhere even remotely close. Its more like warrior has 1st+2nd+3rd place at once. Trolling class in general but you get the idea.

One thing that is not subject to situation is necro defense. What… there is none. Don’t confuse people. And don’t even try to bring some stupid nonsense like plague form into this. That belong in pve and no where else. I pick out necros that use those elites myself too… simply because out of the flood they are the easiest targets to demolish. Strip stability and then its just a pinata. And how many classes out there that are popular for pvp that can’t strip 1 misrable boon? Yeah… And while you sit perma stunned in that idiotic transformation you just removed your own access to everything else. Pfft ridiculous. Its about as useful as willingly being moa polymorphed.

Andele.1306:

Few things that people mix up:
Reflects and exploiting/ignoring game mechanics with unintended use is not control
All zerkers that ever fought in AR with the same tactics as normally died, no full zerker group that wasnt using true techniquies (kiting, ranged/sub optimal dps combat) of the encounter survived.
Control is chill, cripple, immobilize and hard cc
Support (healing being part of it) is mostly boon spam and actually reviving downed people (thats why there are runes and traits for that)
Necro tanks kinda worked pre nerf, they were mostly just walls in case a idiot died to a obvious aoe, but it worked.
Fear is a good control mechanism, especially with the ability to permachill a enemy as a necro, they wont run out of the 130~150 cleave range of most skills.

its just encounters, perception vs reality and lazy devs that are kitten ing it up. Core system idea is good.

Why do you consistantly claim to think zerker groups exploit to win. I told you before, my group cleared AR full beserker with our usual tactics, only difference was we took traits and utilities more specialised for the final fight (extra condi removal). Infact every person I know who completed AR quickly and with little difficulty did it in a full zerker or atleast 4 zerker group.

You are only grasping the very basics of support and control. Positioning mobs into tightly packed groups and chain interrupting them is control, so is perma blinding them to prevent them damaging the party. Support comes from utilities like condi removal or boon stripping, blocks, invulns, boons and even reflects. You can consider ressing as support, but a good group doesnt need to res people. If its trash you can simply rally each other quickly enough, for bosses its not hard for the whole group to quick res 1 downed person. You dont need traits to do that.

wiazabi.2549:

@PMilkos.9103
No we do not have dozens of ways to regenerate hp.
Yes lich / plague makes us abit more tanky ( pointless with the oneshot mechanic though ) plague = huge dps sink for the grp to gain?

No it is not the same way a warrior or guardian works at all, aegis, vigor, block, invulnerability, endurance regen, weaponskills that make you immune to dmg.

Fear used to be useable on bosses :<.

They cant hotfix the necro when its entire design(Death shroud) is flawed,

We can siphon health on hits, on crits, on well pulses, we have a few sources of regen, we can be healed by minions, and then we have our healing skills. As to the other half of our health (ie lifeforce) we regenerate it on most of our skills, on enemy deaths, on ally deaths, with spectral armor, spectral walk etc. If you count all the individual skills and passives and methods that we have to regenerate our 2 health bars, I’m sure you will find them to be quite numerous.

Plague is a huge dps sink if you are only facing a handful of enemies. Which is why you use Lich vs bosses and Plague vs crowds of lesser enemies. Also, plage lets you protect your allies by crippling/blinding the enemies. As for the one-hit attacks, thanks for repeating my point.

Aegis, vigor, invincibility etc are limited in usefulness and duration. Against something like a persistant damaging aura, aegis and vigor are useless, and you’ll eventually run out of blocks and invinsibility (much like a necromancer will eventually run out of lifeforce) and have to facetank the damage if you want to get anywhere. This is where guardians will have to rely on their armor and healing, and warriors on their armor and big health pool. The differences between the survivability tools of warriors/guardians and necromancers come in play when you’re dealing with 1-hit K.Os, not with consistent damage.

Bosses being immune to fear is actually a good thing (and we shouldn’t be asking the devs to just revert it, that would result in an even more broken game than we have in our hands right now). Bosses being immune to any controlling effect whatsoever is the problem.

For the last time: when the combat is designed in such a way that only one combination of stats/mechanics is efficient, the problem lies with the combat itself and not with the other 95% of stats and mechanics that are not efficient.

Because its fact that you cannot.

Andele.1306:

Because its fact that you cannot.

Its not a fact. Because I and countless other people have done it. You dont have a clue.

@Terok

Okay, I think I see where the disconnect in this conversation is coming from now. Correct me if I’m wrong, but you seem to think this game is supposed to require specs that focus on things other than doing damage with some control/support side effects? As far as I can tell, that just isn’t the intent of this game design. What they appear to be shooting for…at least what they achieved…is a game that focuses on killing stuff fast, with added perks of control/support as a by product. That seems like the design intent to me, especially considering the intentional divergence from the trinity (which would facilitate pure support, tanking, healing roles). I personally like and purchased this game because the trinity was not present. After years of wow, I was pretty sick of dealing with spoiled, entitled, and arrogant tanks/healers…who expected the game to revolve around them because you could not play the game without them. This game model works on self reliance of each player, since everyone is capable of keeping themselves alive and killing stuff them selves. There are no healers in this game who’s sole purpose is to stand around keeping others alive…while not being able to kill things themselves. I think this self reliance model is a good thing. It allows you to build a group regardless of who you already have in your group.

I agree with you on the choice of a healing guardian or a support necromancer…I would choose neither of those. I will say that the healing guardian still brings more to the table by default than support necromancer though. That is due to boons being better than conditions and better all around design of the guardian class than the necromancer class. The guardian just has more/stronger/well rounded stuff baseline than the necromancer.

What it comes down to is a round peg in a square hole. This game seems to be currently designed around boons and ANET seems to be determined to make the necro work off of conditions instead. I applaud the intent/creativity/effort but our support-ish conditions need improvement before that actually works in the eyes of the general player base. Until DS is the equivalent of the block/invulnerability/evade options of other classes…the same applies.

I understand wanting all builds to be equally viable/wanted, but that’s unlikely to ever be the case due to the whole path of least resistance principle. Players are always going to want to get stuff done faster and easier. Having support/control does facilitate that..but having damage does it a little better…at least in the context of this game. I’m not saying there are not other classes (your healing guardian example) that aren’t a perfect fit for this game model..but the necromancer just stands out as the worst current culprit to me. This is largely due to its baseline inadequacies from the balancing perspective currently.

I think the damage is king approach is intentional in this game because it syncs so well with the dodge system. That’s ANET’s way of implementing a skill cap. You don’t need as much support/control when you are avoiding the incoming damage. This then allows you to focus on killing faster and getting your rewards faster as a direct result. That leads right back a short coming of the necromancer…lack of sufficient dodges. I was repeating what some previous poster said about “tanking dynamics” and believe a subsequent poster thought I was trying to say that necro’s should tank. That is the opposite of what I think. I wan’t zero tanking in this game. I don’t want anyone trying to “hold aggro”. I was just referring to the necro’s version of block/invul/evade. Necros had found a way to force themselves into the increase skill cap model with DS dancing..but the overflow nerf removed that. Now they are left with no way to participate in the skill cap meta. Every other class can still participate in that. I don’t think the answer to necro issues is “moar damage”, I just think we need to stand out as being exceptional at something (support conditions would work if improved) and have the block/invul/evade issue fixed.

More dps is not the way I would prefer. What I have noticed in pugs and zergs is insufficient group healing. Too many players are focused on dps instead of group support so I often see players going down when they should not have to. One pug I was in recently was all “heal and buff yourself because I’m not helping and if you go down, well, tough.” In good groups, players cooperate to heal, buff, and remove conditions from each other. Last night, I played water and air Elementalist in the pavillion and was honestly shocked that I could not find another running the same setup.

@ODB If the game’s intention was doing as much damage as possible, as you seem to suggest, then stats like healing power, tougness and vitality would not exist. Healing/Tanking forcused traits would not exist. Purely defensive runes would not exist. Full glass cannon berserker would be the only available spec.

Yet it’s not. It’s just one out of dozens, and yet it’s the only one out of dozens of specs that is trully efficient.

The game may have set out to “demolish the holy trinity” (though I personally prefer to refer to it as the “holy quartet” of Damage/Tank/Support/Control) but they ultimately ended up with supporting just Damage with a slight bit of support. And more to the point, the role distinction between classes still exists in the game – the classes are more flexible than in your average MMORPG, but that’s nothing new. You still have your support tank (guardian), your controlling tank (necromancer), your damage support (elementalist), your pure damage dealer (thief) etc – the only difference is that they all have to build glass cannon, regardless of class, because the broken combat system overrides any and all class synergies.

TL;DR If damage was supposed to be king, then Anet would not bother coding in gear other than Berserker or mechanics other that invulnerability/raw damage. Yet they very much did. And that says something…

PMilkos, I did not suggest the game’s design was strictly for dps or that there should be a holy trinity, merely that I do not see as many players as I would like brining a mix of dps and party heals and buffs. This morning I noticed that only myself and another Necromancer were chewing at Boom Boom’s defiant with Fears. With all the Warriors running around in the pavilion zerg, I would think we could get rid of Defiant altogether before the boss dies.

Fear and blind; those were two conditions that did not seem to be applied to champions very often. I had Well of Darkness, Well of Suffering, and Epidemic on my utility bar. When I ran my Elementalist the night before, I ran mostly water skills and utilities. Why, with so many others around working on the champion and adds, should I not run water staff and carry Glyph of Renewal and Ice Bow?

I just think Arenanet rewards dps more than group support. If that is true, it should show in both behavior and skill usage. Necromancer’s group support capability is lower than average, I think, despite the great skills it has. I wish Arenanet would better reward support builds for all jobs, not just Necromancer, and continue reexamining conditions.

@Anchoku My post was directed towards ODB, not you. Sorry, my bad, I should have made that clear.

PS. You can indeed get rid of all the Defiant stacks on the Pavilion bosses (and you certainly will, as long as there are enough people in the zerg). Unfortunately, they fully reset within about a second of the last stack going off, so it makes no difference anyway

PMilkos.9103:

@ODB If the game’s intention was doing as much damage as possible, as you seem to suggest, then stats like healing power, tougness and vitality would not exist. Healing/Tanking forcused traits would not exist. Purely defensive runes would not exist. Full glass cannon berserker would be the only available spec.

Yet it’s not. It’s just one out of dozens, and yet it’s the only one out of dozens of specs that is trully efficient.

The game may have set out to “demolish the holy trinity” (though I personally prefer to refer to it as the “holy quartet” of Damage/Tank/Support/Control) but they ultimately ended up with supporting just Damage with a slight bit of support. And more to the point, the role distinction between classes still exists in the game – the classes are more flexible than in your average MMORPG, but that’s nothing new. You still have your support tank (guardian), your controlling tank (necromancer), your damage support (elementalist), your pure damage dealer (thief) etc – the only difference is that they all have to build glass cannon, regardless of class, because the broken combat system overrides any and all class synergies.

TL;DR If damage was supposed to be king, then Anet would not bother coding in gear other than Berserker or mechanics other that invulnerability/raw damage. Yet they very much did. And that says something…

That’s flawed logic when you take it to the extreme…saying that stats like toughness, healing power, and vitality would not exist in a game where the pve focus is high damage. Any extreme statement like that is bound to be wrong. I can’t even see how you would say that about vitality with a straight (virtual) face. Its common knowledge that dead players do no dps. That being the case, until players reach a skill level that allows them to cut back on survival stats…then they and their teammates…are better off with them investing some in survival. That does not negate the reality that a player more skilled at dodging and tactics would do a better/more efficient job if they invested more in damage output.

For any mmo to be successful…there has to be at least the illusion of player choice and customization. There are also stats that support various builds such as condition damage. That makes your argument about berserker gear only not make much sense. There are also the pvp environments where those survival stats absolutely make sense and the entire damage first idea gets flipped upside down.

I have to disagree with you as well on the existence of “tanks” to any degree in pve. There has to be a consistent and even noticeable aggro system for “tanking” to actually occur/work. I also have to disagree with you on the absence of class synergies. Classes in this game do a decent job of working together. Some classes have tons of boons they share with others. Most classes have healing effects they share with others. Some classes provide projectile reflection, aoe cripples, etc. Even the necromancer provides synergies with other classes in the form of conditions like chill and cripple. The only issues I have with the necromancer’s synergies is the effectiveness of them.

ODB.6891:

I was repeating what some previous poster said about “tanking dynamics” and believe a subsequent poster thought I was trying to say that necro’s should tank. That is the opposite of what I think. I wan’t zero tanking in this game. I don’t want anyone trying to “hold aggro”. I was just referring to the necro’s version of block/invul/evade.

You’re probably thinking of me for the first part.

To be precise, I should’ve said that Necros are intended to be use DS soak and CC/dubuffing as their methods of defense. DS is supposed to let us take the hits that other professions would’ve blocked or dodged with their vigor, and/or we can use Fear and Weaknesses to soften our foe’s attacks before they happen. To me, that means “tanking hits;” though I never played WoW, I understand that it has a more expansive meaning there and I did not intend to tap into those connotations.

GW2 was explicitly designed to break away from the trinity, but that doesn’t mean it wants everyone in berserker armor. It certainly doesn’t mean that zerker builds are the ultimate gaming experience which GW2 has delivered to us from on high. Playing tanky bruiser characters is fun. Playing supporty characters is fun. I’ve nothing against full zerker parties (and I think the difference between a full zerk and a balanced party is rather overstated in general), but there should be other options at higher levels.

Running the same dungeon paths over and over again with the same teamcomp is going to get really dull really fast. If this game has aspirations of longevity, it needs to facilitate different kinds of play.

ODB.6891:

I have to disagree with you as well on the existence of “tanks” to any degree in pve. There has to be a consistent and even noticeable aggro system for “tanking” to actually occur/work.

There actually is a distinct aggro system, most players just don’t know it very well. Like, I remember this one time when I was running Arah p3 with my Gurdian specced for support, and I was able to draw the Crusher’s aggro, keep it while my teammates DPSed, and consistently get him to fire his cone of death away from my teammates by dodging behind him as he fired it and then circling back around. It gotta say, it was a lot of fun, particularly considering how hard pugs often find that encounter.

That was just a specific situation, though, and I wasn’t actually soaking the boss’s damage. If I screwed up a dodge, I was as much down as anyone else. The problem with the Necro is that we’re intended to be a “stand your ground” sort of profession but when everything either does nothing or one-shots you, that type of spec doesn’t work. If PvE were designed so that there were more of a middle ground, so that there were merits to being able to take a few hits without letting up the assault, that would open up the game to so many other specs without shifting us back into a trinity-type system.

The problem is the selfishness isn’t selfish enough. There is no “power” behind it even if you stack it. Necros just need an across the board damage increase. My level 4 warrior scaled up to 80 does more overall damage than my power necro, something is wrong here.

I thought this game wasn’t suppose to have any specific way to build a character, as is some kinda “play as you want to build it”, but when you really dig into the mechanics you can see that this is flawed and each class -was- in fact designed around a specific idea.

ODB.6891:

@Terok

Okay, I think I see where the disconnect in this conversation is coming from now. Correct me if I’m wrong, but you seem to think this game is supposed to require specs that focus on things other than doing damage with some control/support side effects? As far as I can tell, that just isn’t the intent of this game design. What they appear to be shooting for…at least what they achieved…is a game that focuses on killing stuff fast, with added perks of control/support as a by product.

Yes, I believe they intended to replace the trinity system with a system that could offer the same types of tactical gameplay without making any class a requirement for certain content. I believe it is unintended that the hardest boss in the game can be killed in 17.5 seconds with a group of zerker warriors, utterly skipping the different phases and mechanics designed into the boss.. The problem, as I keep stating, is that what the developers intended and what we have are two polar opposites.

If you believe that the current system is intended, I strongly disagree.

All gear has atleast one offensive stat on it. Which suggests what ODB mentioned about the intended design of the game. There is no full defensive gear but there are 2 full offensive sets.

@Blaine
There is no proven aggro system. It may have seemed to work for you but I can guarantee that is just RNG/chance. When I was getting used to guardian I was playing in knights with an AH build, rest of the group were full zerkers. Id never take aggro, it would always be a warrior. Theres speculation that some bosses prefer squishy targets and some prefer tanky targets. But theres no proof as it seems to be different each time you fight them. The factors people generally acknowledge has having an effect on aggro are proximity, dps, ressing, armour and first to attack. But even if we could work it out perfectly, you will never be able to 100% guarantee that you can hold aggro.

When i run fractals and we get the harpy fractal I attack the ettin and make sure my group doesnt hit it. I kite it around the other end of the room while they dps the other champs. Even though im the only one hitting it and near it, it still seems to wander off and go for my party on occasion until i leap at it and smack it a few times to regain its attention.

ODB.6891:

That’s flawed logic when you take it to the extreme…saying that stats like toughness, healing power, and vitality would not exist in a game where the pve focus is high damage. Any extreme statement like that is bound to be wrong. I can’t even see how you would say that about vitality with a straight (virtual) face. Its common knowledge that dead players do no dps. That being the case, until players reach a skill level that allows them to cut back on survival stats…then they and their teammates…are better off with them investing some in survival. That does not negate the reality that a player more skilled at dodging and tactics would do a better/more efficient job if they invested more in damage output.

For any mmo to be successful…there has to be at least the illusion of player choice and customization. There are also stats that support various builds such as condition damage. That makes your argument about berserker gear only not make much sense. There are also the pvp environments where those survival stats absolutely make sense and the entire damage first idea gets flipped upside down.

I have to disagree with you as well on the existence of “tanks” to any degree in pve. There has to be a consistent and even noticeable aggro system for “tanking” to actually occur/work. I also have to disagree with you on the absence of class synergies. Classes in this game do a decent job of working together. Some classes have tons of boons they share with others. Most classes have healing effects they share with others. Some classes provide projectile reflection, aoe cripples, etc. Even the necromancer provides synergies with other classes in the form of conditions like chill and cripple. The only issues I have with the necromancer’s synergies is the effectiveness of them.

It has nothing to do with skill (and even if that wasn’t the case, saying “This set is what you should be wearing, thsese sets are if you’re bad and these sets are if you’re really bad” is a pretty kittened up way to balance a game). Vitality, tougness and healing do nothing against one-hit attacks. Thus, having as much health and toughness and regeneration as possible makes you no less likely to die than any glass cannon character. Consequently, you don’t stay alive for longer to deal more damage, you stay alive for the same time and you do less damage. As a result, regardless of your dodging skills, it only makes sense to go full berserker, since that may allow you to kill the boss before you even need to dodge.

And I’m not talking about synergies between different classes – I’m talking synergies between a certain class and certain stats. Like the fact that a power/tougness/healing Defender makes much more sense, kit-wise, than a berserker defender, but when you factor in what pve is about it ends up being useless. And that a condition/tougness/vitality necromancer makes more sense than a berserker one, kit-wise, but when you factor in the messed-up way that conditions stack and the way pve works, it ends up being useless. In short, regardless of what stats synergise best with your individual class’s abilities and traits, the correct answer is ALWAYS full berserker, because PVE is messed up like that.

Tanking is not just “grab aggro”. It’s actively trying to keep the boss on you instead of your teammates, using controlling skills to force it to attack you and not them. Think how tanking works in PVP games, like in LoL. But it’s of course impossible, because of defiant and one-hit kills.

And don’t bring PVP into this. I do not give a Skritt’s rear end about PVP, most people don’t give a Skritt’s rear end about it either, and if they wanted certain skills and stats to be viable only in PVP they could have easily made them available only on PVP. Yet they’re also in PVE, which tells me that the intended them to be just as viable, but then completely messed it up.

@Spoj: There are 2 sets with fully offensive stats, and over twenty that are partly or mostly defensive. What does that tell you about how offence and defence were supposed to be balanced?

PMilkos.9103:

@Spoj: There are 2 sets with fully offensive stats, and over twenty that are partly or mostly defensive. What does that tell you about how offence and defence were supposed to be balanced?

And they all have power or condition damage on them. I stand by my point.

spoj.9672:

PMilkos.9103:

@Spoj: There are 2 sets with fully offensive stats, and over twenty that are partly or mostly defensive. What does that tell you about how offence and defence were supposed to be balanced?

And they all have power or condition damage on them. I stand by my point.

And I completely agree with you that they did not for intend people to just stand there healing/tanking doing no damage. Besides, most skills/traits that have a healing component also have a damaging component, which is more often than not the primary component as well. Same with controlling skills.

What I do insist on however is that they never intented for damage to be the only thing that matters. And even when it comes to damage, I’m pretty sure they did not intend condition damage to be utterly useless in any situation that involves more than 2 people.

Generalized Aggro system: highest toughness target within 600 range > highest dps currently attacking > highest toughness within 1200 > lowest hp target > target that just used heal

Andele.1306:

Generalized Aggro system: highest toughness target within 600 range > highest dps currently attacking > highest toughness within 1200 > lowest hp target > target that just used heal

Purely speculation though. It can act completely differently on different bosses.

spoj.9672:

Andele.1306:

Generalized Aggro system: highest toughness target within 600 range > highest dps currently attacking > highest toughness within 1200 > lowest hp target > target that just used heal

Purely speculation though. It can act completely differently on different bosses.

That is so far every melee boss in game (from Lt Kholer to Bjarl and Mossman), Quasi ranged got the lowest hp and toughness ranges increased (so King A to Ashym) and object bosses that aint scripted/not aoe (since they just target everyone/pure rng with warning) just ignore range to take dps as a priority (how many times has the grawl flame shammy killed or chased that one guy who did a 30~40k 100b till he was finally dead).
But seriously what game has identical aggro on all bosses? Like in WoW just Marrowgar has a way different aggro setup than Putricide, despite them being used for the same thing (check if the raid is good enough and has the items needed to advance) and essencially same normal attack and aoe patterns (but obviously different mechanics but that applies to every boss in every game). .

spoj.9672:

PMilkos.9103:

@Spoj: There are 2 sets with fully offensive stats, and over twenty that are partly or mostly defensive. What does that tell you about how offence and defence were supposed to be balanced?

And they all have power or condition damage on them. I stand by my point.

Magi has prec,vit,healing :p

Targuil.3741:

spoj.9672:

PMilkos.9103:

@Spoj: There are 2 sets with fully offensive stats, and over twenty that are partly or mostly defensive. What does that tell you about how offence and defence were supposed to be balanced?

And they all have power or condition damage on them. I stand by my point.

Magi has prec,vit,healing :p

rofl didnt even know such a useless stat combo could exist.

spoj.9672:

rofl didnt even know such a useless stat combo could exist.

Guardian and Ranger highly disagree.

Andele.1306:

spoj.9672:

rofl didnt even know such a useless stat combo could exist.

Guardian and Ranger highly disagree.

If they are using that in pve then they are just baddies. Dont know much about WvW, but I cant see it being good there either….

Zerroth.2401:

Even just outside of that, necros have fear to scare away bosses that are attacking a char trying to revive, and chill that can give a healer more time, stop a boss from slamming your “tank”, or sticking a boss in place ie. important in fractals, or shutting down thieves in pvp.

Do you even play a necromancer? That is absolute nonsense. Everyone knows that all bosses have Defiant.