Guild Wars 2

So I’ve played against this thief in WvW.
He just wasn’t able to kill me. At first he tried Basilisk a few times, then he reset the fight and tried twice with the Thieves Guild.
About ~10 min later some other guys joined the fight and interrupted the duel. After that I chatted with him a little. He immediately accused me of using “the new no-brain build”.
Lol wut? I used the exact same build I’ve been using pre-patch, nothing changed except the addition of Tainted Shackles.

Apparently, people aren’t used to losing against necros. So if they haven’t played against a good one before they blame it on the buffs we just got.

Btw I love Tainted Shackles, that skill is da bomb!
Combined with all the other improvments our skills and traits have received and the buffed lf regeneration… do you guys feel that we are overpowered now?
Or is it just the go-to excuse for opponents who can’t beat us? Because in case of that thief, I really used the same build as before so the outcome of the fight would have probably been the same.

On a sidenote: I’ve noticed that the lf-regen and Tainted Shackles’ aoe-immobilized really did slightly improve our attrition fighting against multiple opponents. But we still lose in the end… :/
So the question “op or not” really just pertains to 1v1s.

ok noob question: how did he chat with you if he was from another server and couldn’t see your name?

We’re stronger then we were before, big difference between that and OP – there are just loads of people running necro in WvW and PvP right now, people aren’t used to fighting them, so if people call you OP just laugh in their face.

ManCaptain.3154:

ok noob question: how did he chat with you if he was from another server and couldn’t see your name?

Target them and do /invite if they accept, you’re in a group and can now chat freely.

ManCaptain.3154:

ok noob question: how did he chat with you if he was from another server and couldn’t see your name?

You can invite them to a group by clicking on them and then just opening the party panel.

War Mourner.5168:

if people call you OP just laugh in their face.

I did

Think the Necro is now ok Not OP .
The New condition is cool but no bomb. I think the Thief wasn’t good enough and btw the New condition is buggy. It only ticks with 75% when the target is moving.

That thief probably jumped so many players in WvW, ganking them before they had a chance to do much of anything, because most players aren’t real aware of thief mechanics without having one, and in all that time he probably never once thought of his own profession as OP. But lose one time to a Necro and they become outraged.

Gonna take a lot more time to figure out where we stand, but I’m sure on one thing. We are much closer to balanced now than prior to the patch.

I’ll be waiting for this: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/necromancer/SOAC-NA-Prof-Tourn-Necromancer-Sign-Up/

I feel like necromancers are better now in pve with the new Dhuumfire trait etc. I’ve retraited to 30/30/0/10/0 and it seems a lot better than before killing trash mobs. Gotta do some dungeons and fractals though to investigate further.

Pendragon.8735:

That thief probably jumped so many players in WvW, ganking them before they had a chance to do much of anything, because most players aren’t real aware of thief mechanics without having one, and in all that time he probably never once thought of his own profession as OP. But lose one time to a Necro and they become outraged.

Gonna take a lot more time to figure out where we stand, but I’m sure on one thing. We are much closer to balanced now than prior to the patch.

That’s the ting about it, you hit it right on the nail. If you go to thief forums and call them OP, you’ll be barraged by a plethora of players claiming the non-op-ness of thieves. But get beat by anyone else, and they are OP. If someone manages to actually survive the braindead crit backstab builds, then they must surely be OP! Bah, I hate that mentality.

I’ve played necro since beta, and I can without a doubt say, we were lacking before the patch! We really had to make up for it. I could find two utilities that I would like to use, and the third was always kinda meh, cause lots of our utilities were bad. Now at least, I have a couple that I would like to use.
We’re on the level with other proff’s now, and they just have to learn that necro’s are no longer cannonfodder. They actually have to do other things than smash two buttons to kill us.

So no, I don’t believe we’re OP now, we’re just equal to some of the other proffs.

We are far from op, especially considering every class in the game other than warrior and ranger got buffed as well.
The new spectral wall thing is fun though to chain fear on people who don’t know how to avoid it. I was roaming alone in wvw #MagSWAG, and this thief jumped me and I beat him pretty easily. Naturally he invited me to party and we dueled for a bit, I won 4 out of 5 times. But what was funny is he got on his guard right after that. So, I started the fight with 2 and 3 in staff and he immediately popped his stand your ground which I corrupted then placed the wall in his path, then used ds 3 on him, then stakitten . 100 to 0 in about 6 seconds, I lol’d and left party…

so I guess for bad players necros are now a nightmare…

Maartac.9457:

Think the Necro is now ok Not OP .
The New condition is cool but no bomb. I think the Thief wasn’t good enough and btw the New condition is buggy. It only ticks with 75% when the target is moving.

Oh the thief was definitely a good one, otherwise he would have never survived that long against me. Also I didn’t have Spectral Wall equipped, that would have definitely given me the edge.

I agree that Torment is not that powerful, but Tainted Shackles really is. It’s aoe, untargeted, nice portion of direct damage + condition damage, and immobilized in the end… love it!
Btw Torment alwas ticks with 75%, but it ticks twice if the target is moving. Kinda hard to tell when all the numbers are flying around, but you do get that 150%.

wth, why does “staff skill number 5” turn into stakitten?

necros are op yes, many people are just in denial.

Symbolic.7910:

necros are op yes, many people are just in denial.

It is stupid to say this so early.

It is way better 1 on 1 now. But lets see how it does compared to an engi/mesmer/ele in team fights.

Symbolic.7910:

necros are op yes, many people are just in denial.

Perhaps, but could you explain why you think necromancer is overpowered now (or more overpowered than any other class that hasn’t been in beta for ten months)?

No they are not OP.
I play all classes at lvl 80 apart from Engineer, and Necro has now been brought on par with most classes.
Rangers took a beating, warriors stayed the same imo but the rest all got slight buffs.

Necromancer was definitely the least powerful class before these buffs. Now it might be the engineer who is the least powerful. Both share the property that they get hurt a lot by AoE condition removal.

relax folks, im pretty sure symbolic was being sarcastic

ManCaptain.3154:

Necromancer was definitely the least powerful class before these buffs. Now it might be the engineer who is the least powerful. Both share the property that they get hurt a lot by AoE condition removal.

Eng underpowered? are you for real? engs don’t get hurt by condi removal at all because if you remove it, they can just reapply all of it in 2 secs anyway. And they do a crap load of physical damage and cc on top of the condi. Believe me you don’t want to fight a good eng on any class.

“My class is balanced; it’s perfectly fine that i can run away and reset a fight whenever i want; someone who manages to actually kill me or doesnt die is OP!!”
typical thief-main-mentality…nothing new.

Have same problems we used to, only downed hp fixed (but i think that they managed to break ds since i lose way more life force pre hit from holos than i used to since “Champion risen space pirate ninjas for the future with sharks of jormag patch” and when downscaled (like in the bandit place near the dam in queensdale for chest) ds seems way more squishy; Axe is actually a good starting weapon and terror runners got a buff in damage/nerf in commitment (no more every necro can pick up terror for his build) and depending on how you look at it minions might be good (and i mean good good not meh good like before)

TheStarflyer.9641:

We are far from op, especially considering every class in the game other than warrior and ranger got buffed as well.

You know warriors got the strongest buffs this patch right (they can go solo now in pvp/lost the peeler requirement just with stance and phys changes)? Only true nerfs that happened were to immortal build mesmers and cantrip eles… and everyone saw it comming, just not in such a big pile.

I won’t go as far as to say OP.

That seems like a stretch considering there are some very viable Guardian and Mesmer builds that can be hard to combat.

Truth is for every build that is viable there is a counter build that will be problematic. Most of the time those problematic counter builds are situational or just weak in an area that players deem important and rarely used.

I was running 30, 0, 0, 10, 30, using DS as a key weapon and enjoying the build a great deal. I swapped the Grandmaster trait for the new burn as an experiment and changed some accessories around a bit to increase my crit % and voila my DPS improved noticeably.

I swapped out a couple of sigils to increase burning duration and vulnerability hoping to see additional results and I am pleased.

The existence of easy condition removal still gives a life line to some classes, but the burning trait can be reapplied fairly quickly and obviously a Necro can smear vulnerability with ease.

Prolonged fights are less worrisome now for me.

I thought I would fall in love with tainted shackles more than I have, but that has more to do with my play style than it does the skill. I am still trying to adjust from my normal rotation of using DS1 as often as I can and fear as an interrupt.

My Necro does not feel OP, but he certainly feels viable in more situations now.

No. We are not OP. And there are some simple reasons for that.

Nothing we got is in any way something other classes did not have. Each and every class had atleast one ability to peel and get some space to breathe, only necromancer had to stay infight for ever. Thief were not used to necromancers being able to keep them stationary once they showed up, and hitting them hard with conditions. Tainted Shackles hurt, and they are one thing we needed. We can force someone, atleast who’s melee range, to get off of us and pop that heal. Or, get rooted and we just move a millimeter to the side.

Another thing was, noone ever cared that we had the shroud, because we couldn’t sustain it in any way. Even with 30 in Soul Reaping, our class mechanic was something we used once, and then basically never again in a fight. It was near impossible to sustain shroud without 30 in soulreaping and using soul marks (if you use staff).

But now? With the patches, I atleast, can sustain shroud much longer. It’s getting to the point, where I can really begin to play for attrition and not just burst, Spray (Epidemic) & Pray. And that is something that is not OP, but what we were meant to do. Also, I like the new conditions for us. Burning people, tormenting them, bleeding and poisoniong them feels very necromancer like.

I didn’t get the feeling that I was overpowered last night when I ran WvW with my Necro. I’ve always set up my Necro as a zerg-buster, so I’m focused on as much AoE damage as I can do – staff/wells/epidemic/plague/DS #4 – and now the addition of DS #5 to the mix certainly helps. Perhaps the longer I play around with it the more powerful I’ll feel. Mostly I’m looking forward to being able to prevent people from fleeing.

friend of mine did a power build and claimed to get 6k crits auto attack in death shroud and nearly 100% crits. i would say, this is kind of op.

Ya Eng are still really good and didnt they get a buff this patch to some of their Elixers?

As for Necro, I played a bunch yesterday and it really invigorated me! We can hold our own now against other classes and dont just curl up and die to Mesmers, I think like any large change in a game like this it will take a couple weeks to really tell if we are OP or balanced about right. My gut tells me that we are in a pretty good spot and that people just need to learn how to fight an actual class not whatever we were before yesterday.

knyy.6427:

friend of mine did a power build and claimed to get 6k crits auto attack in death shroud and nearly 100% crits. i would say, this is kind of op.

You could do 6k crits with DS1 forever. The damage on that skill didnt change just the way it calcs it did. Also to get damage like that you have to be in all Zerker and suffer just like other Zerker builds; you are a piece of paper to incoming damage.

We’re no more OP than mesmers, and if mesmers aren’t OP, then neither are we.

I play mainly WvW. I actually never thought of necromancers as underpowered before patch. It’s funny though, when I saw another Necor, I thought: yeah, easy target, I’ll kill him first. Never myself did I feel weak and I could in 1v1 allways stand my ground (and I won more fights, than I lost them). Now after the patch I feel much stronger. Didn’t losse a single fight since then, but then again, I didn’t have many yet. So maybe we are OP now. But it’s too early to say yet.

What I liked and still like about necro is the fact, that necor builds follow different mentalities than other profession’s builds. Once you understand that, you can be really strong as necro, pre- and post-patch. And thiefes allways gave me the least trouble as necro anyway.

Well, the no brain build is KIND of true IMO.. Sucks to say it, but the 30/0/10/0/30 thing or something along that is kind of skilless…

You just fear down and auto attack in DS to do like 10k DPS…

Well, even if this is the new no-brainer. This comming from a thief, where like 80% of them use the no brainer backstab build, is funny. I will stay with my condition build for I feel that has been buffed enough^^

We just got some offensive buffs a few of which are kind of weird and some DS sustain with spectral armor and spectral walk. Other than that the situation is still kind of the same for sPVP, the core problems didn’t get addressed for most of the possible builds.

Homonavn.6348:

Well, the no brain build is KIND of true IMO.. Sucks to say it, but the 30/0/10/0/30 thing or something along that is kind of skilless…

You just fear down and auto attack in DS to do like 10k DPS…

I did not use this build. And I don’t think “just fear down” works with thieves that well since they have a million stun breakers.

i was killing thieves before the patch unless they stealth and run away
i kille them after patch too, i don’t see whats op in that ?

It’s funny how in the Necro forum people are actually worried whether the buffs they (finally) received made them OP or not while every Thief and Mesmer never worried to be insanely OP for months saying “L2P” to everyone who made them notice that.

That’s probably because people who used to play Necromancer are used to have it 10x harder, while people who played against Necromancers used to think “uh, easy kill there” each time they see one.

Now they received the deserved nerfs while Necro the deserved buffs.
Justice is done.

Kravick.4906:

We’re no more OP than mesmers, and if mesmers aren’t OP, then neither are we.

This. Mesmers have ridiculous abilities. Guardians are just as strong as ever. D/d eles are now seemingly mortal, down from nigh unkillable.

We seem to be much stronger, but it doesn’t mean I still can’t get on my thief and still come out of tough situations with a win where my necro never would stand a chance.

It seems to me like we are where we should be. Hopefully with the offensive buffs and spectral buffs we can kill faster and live longer which is what we needed.

unfortunately with all the pre-patch hype people ‘heard’ Necros were becoming “OP” and had already decided to re-roll one beforehand, IMO Necromancers got a buff yes, but arnt OP.

PvP builds got really hit with the Terror jump forcing Terror or Master of Corruption plus Corrupt Boons nurf.

WvW Necromancers got buffed with more AoE offensive power (Well CD & Torment) with a slight buff in survivability for people using any kind of LF spectral on hit skill.

I wouldnt call us OP, were just balanced now is all. Sure our damage is great but we still dont have the healing and mobility of alot of the other classes.

The necromancer got what it was told it would – we are great fighters who have nice survival tools (DS sustain, CC, etc), but have to stay in the “pocket”. We do not have the mobility of other classes and can not disengage at will, but in a straigth up fight, we are really strong.

Necro should be a really strong piece in WvW and PvE now, but in tPvP they are certainly not OP.

Counter for necro is still as it has always been. See Necro, focus Necro, stomp Necro. Now it takes a few more seconds to accomplish this, but it is certainly do-able. Furthermore it seems that the strongest 1v1 builds are generally the magnets for QQ and nerf, and Necro, while now capable in 1v1’s is still not the apex predator of 1v1.

Honestly this patch feels like a little bit of a power creep to me. Other classes got more DPS through direct buffs and/or compression from shorter casts and reduced after-casts, Warrior got some of their glaring weaknesses addressed. I think even Ranger is in a better place, because even though they gave BM the nerf it needed there are more and better tools available to Ranger now. I suppose we will see after the meta settles.

TheStarflyer.9641:

wth, why does “staff skill number 5” turn into stakitten?

I have no idea but now I wish that is what it was called

Homonavn.6348:

Well, the no brain build is KIND of true IMO.. Sucks to say it, but the 30/0/10/0/30 thing or something along that is kind of skilless…

You just fear down and auto attack in DS to do like 10k DPS…

And before that the nobrainer was fear -> pop lich and focus down. Not much has changed for powermancer, except they now can use golem too.

The only thing changes, is that powermancer is now a constant threat and not only every 5 minutes. People now actually have to think to bring us down.

Guys Guys! We have been so underpowered for so long, that now, that we can kill a thief with one or two fearlocks and force them to get off of us, we think we are overpowered! I am still getting shredded by CC in pvp. So not too much on that front. I feel “balanced” now, because I can finally punish people for making mistakes. Like they punished me for so long.

I did some hot joins today, and I definitely was OP. Then again, I’ve always been :P

Seriously speaking, a thief whining about 1v1 balance in WvW? WvW was never supposed to be balanced, the game isn’t balanced around 1v1 and thieves are beasts in WvW. If he couldn’t kill you, it’s because you were the better player.

Anyway, I must say I like the changes as I now have way more AoE (+50% crit chance in DS and a new aoe skill as well? Yes please – I even traited life blast for piercing. The beautiful numbers.. ) and my wells recharge faster, but in the end the fact remains we still have long cooldowns and cast times and hardly any mobility. We’re nothing gamebreaking.

If your necro even approaches the competence of a guardian, he’s op. At least to all non-necro players.

Stating that Necromancer’s are now “OP” is a real shame. We are now nearing “balanced”.

The Necromancer’s build variety was non-existent for almost 9 months, and now we get a few more options at our disposal, we are now considered as OP. Playing Necromancer takes a lot of skill, in terms of well/wall/mark placements and chaining. Cooldowns are a problems too, but if you spec into DS and manage skill usage, you can be just fine. Necromancer’s still lack sufficient mobility and probably always will due to the nature of the class, but we gain it through other ways.

Once we get permanent stealth, ill consider us OP. Until then, this patch addressed the fundamental issues that affected the usage of Necromancer in various formats of the game.

I tested a couple builds on my Necro (which I’ve played more than any other profession) yesterday in the Mists and it felt much better but not amazing. I was still more interested in playing my Engineer so I took him to WvW for a few hours to check out the changes.

I beat all the Necros I played against except one. He was clearly much more skilled than the others I played against. I had trouble getting near him because of how he placed his marks and when I did get near him I ended up feared repeatedly. On top of that, he used staff and an offhand dagger so all my conditions were getting thrown right back at me (and my build doesn’t have nearly enough cleansing for that). But the other Necros I fought, not much different. I assume a lot were out of practice.

I think what happened is there’s now an actual skill ceiling for Necros. Mine didn’t feel that much stronger even on NPCs because I’m out of practice but my builds got much stronger even without changing any traits. Necros had basically all their condition durations increased, they have way more life force generation, they have access to two skills with protection on them which are actually worth using now, they can have almost 50% uptime on stability OR pretty much a 100% crit chance in Death Shroud, and a whole new condition that every build has access to and that can be fired and forgotten about while you do other things.

This is a huge list but there will still be people who don’t know how to take advantage of it and it still leaves Necros with one main weakness: they’re punching bags. If someone is out maneuvering you, they’re still gonna win, it’ll just take a while. Necros still won’t be able to face down multiple opponents without being very good. But these things just make the class like any other.

flow.6043:

So I’ve played against this thief in WvW.
He just wasn’t able to kill me. At first he tried Basilisk a few times, then he reset the fight and tried twice with the Thieves Guild.
About ~10 min later some other guys joined the fight and interrupted the duel. After that I chatted with him a little. He immediately accused me of using “the new no-brain build”.
Lol wut? I used the exact same build I’ve been using pre-patch, nothing changed except the addition of Tainted Shackles.

Apparently, people aren’t used to losing against necros. So if they haven’t played against a good one before they blame it on the buffs we just got.

Btw I love Tainted Shackles, that skill is da bomb!
Combined with all the other improvments our skills and traits have received and the buffed lf regeneration… do you guys feel that we are overpowered now?
Or is it just the go-to excuse for opponents who can’t beat us? Because in case of that thief, I really used the same build as before so the outcome of the fight would have probably been the same.

On a sidenote: I’ve noticed that the lf-regen and Tainted Shackles’ aoe-immobilized really did slightly improve our attrition fighting against multiple opponents. But we still lose in the end… :/
So the question “op or not” really just pertains to 1v1s.

Power, Terror, Condi?

Necros definitely got more viability since the patch. OP? way too early to tell. My mesmer took some significant nerfs but some of the buffs/changes are opening up new builds that seem very promising, some of which will likely also get the attention of the OP trolls in the near future.

edit: Chasing someone underwater in DS with stacked might and chaining massive crits non-stop did seem very OP last night though. Great fun.