Guild Wars 2

Necro was a so strong and popular class it really needed a nerf -.-"
I can’t see any positive aspect of this change.
+ animation looks like it is form some Z category indie games alpha version. Terrible.
Also you didn’t fixed Lich form autoattack since release, but had time for this….
I want to play my necro. Why don’t you let me?

Axe blows smurfs

Cogbyrn.7283:

Lordrosicky.5813:

Bhawb.7408:

Mesmer GS wasn’t necessarily being talked about on a fairly popular podcast that the devs listen/have listened to in the past. It is actually very likely that this was changed primarily because we mentioned it quite a bit, and as long as it exists as a weird interaction they would probably be hesitant to buff Axe AA.

Lol, everyone knows about mesmer gs , more than about axe necro. If they didnt fix mesmer gs it means they hate necro. Further evidence to what we all knew

Infallible logic.

Also, I’m surprised so many people use Axe #1.

Its a huge boon to my mm build so my minions can chew through concrete walls.

It was also good for baiting dodges, removing boons and quickly stacking vuln before going into DS or casting wells to improve UB/Sufferings’ damage w/o depending on their own ‘ramp ups’. Also great for spiking Retal before DS against ‘zoo’ builds. Also great for sustaining damage vs ‘slippery’ builds like staff Mesmer or Slick Shoes Engine (not actual builds but staples of their respective builds). Not saying that Axe was good or for every situation, but it brought it’s own unique style/utility for Power Necros even with it’s pitfalls. Now it’s AA damage has been nerfed by 25%+ (+0.25 to the cast time AND less Vuln stacks as a consequence). This is not ok or justified in any sense of the word. In all the opinions I’ve ever seen concerning Necro Axe, “Necro Axe is OP and wrecks everything in it’s path!”, would be the most fundamentally wrong statement that could be made about any weapon since the games launch. :/

Tman.6349:

…In all the opinions I’ve ever seen concerning Necro Axe, “Necro Axe is OP and wrecks everything in it’s path!”, would be the most fundamentally wrong statement that could be made about any weapon since the games launch. :/

Like this?

how about increasing the number of Vulnerability stacks? this skill has low dps and single target. It is quite ridiculous when u compare it with other weapon skills #1 in game

https://youtu.be/2GNx-hh8v4M

just stop…STOP!!!

I’ve rolled some Asura toons mainly because I love the weapon animations they have. If anet is going to be changing weapon skill animations on a whim like this then I’m super discouraged to make new alts.

Tolas.2458:

https://youtu.be/2GNx-hh8v4M

just stop…STOP!!!

Hot weather ? Wave your fan !
An heavy one at that, making you sweat a lot, so wave faster and see who wins !

Tolas.2458:

https://youtu.be/2GNx-hh8v4M

just stop…STOP!!!

“Sorry team…I know I should be helping cap nodes, but this stupid fly is bothering me!”

Ok…Unfortunately I have to complain here. This new animation looks terrible. Old one was quite unique and looked really nice. This one…lame.

Tolas.2458:

https://youtu.be/2GNx-hh8v4M

just stop…STOP!!!

LOOOOL

Ugh, just took my necromancer into PvP so I saw the new animation(female sylvari). Looks like she’s trying to shoo flies away from her food on a picnic. I’d really love for the old animation to come back.

I found it odd as well but its just different, people will get used to it

I’d rather not ‘get used to’ a subpar/niche weapon being completely gutted with no compensation.

LMAO, nice to see their priories are in the right order for the necromancers list of bugs.

yeah, not like there are necros in the tournaments, and if so, they are not using axe. So, where did the wine so hard come from to get this nerfed? LOL. I just don’t get it.

It wasn’t meant to be a nerf to normal Axe use, it was meant to curb the ability to do really weird stuff by animation canceling, which doubled Axe’s effectiveness. I’m not saying it should have been done this way, but it wasn’t meant as a nerf, so let’s stop pretending like this validates the ridiculous notion that ANet hates Necros.

Bhawb.7408:

It wasn’t meant to be a nerf to normal Axe use, it was meant to curb the ability to do really weird stuff by animation canceling, which doubled Axe’s effectiveness. I’m not saying it should have been done this way, but it wasn’t meant as a nerf, so let’s stop pretending like this validates the ridiculous notion that ANet hates Necros.

This. Whilst I’m very unhappy with the animation change, lets keep feedback credible and constructive. This isn’t tied to “hating” necros. It was a legitimate reason for change, even if the change itself should have had a better design to it.

Can we have the old animation w/o the exploit? My necro looks kittened waving the axe sideways

True it was not a nerf, my apologies, I meant change. Nerf and necro is just sometimes synonymous in my head that it has become automatic to say nerf when a skil/tooltip/animations has changed

They do need to fix the axe animation though. It is beyond ugly and doesnt make sense. Why didn’t they just make the original two separate attacks instead so you can’t break the channel?

So like 1 hit is the first vulnerability, and the second hit is the second vulnerability. And just give the animation a 1/2 second cast time for each?

Yeah I don’t understand why Anet would make animations look awful on asura. Is there anyway Anet can fix the cancel channeling exploit and put the old animation and 2 separate attack back? What this guy Berullos’s post above me saying “So like 1 hit is the first vulnerability, and the second hit is the second vulnerability” sounds like a great idea to me. I really do hating twice attacks at the end of the delay doesnt give me confidences. This animation delay bleeds my eyes everytime i attack.

The animation change was to eliminate the aftercast and spread out the animation so the overall time was the same. I do wonder why it couldn’t have been done by just modifying the old cast though, spreading out the hits and then changing when the damage hit.

I really enjoy playing with axe, the animation for female sylvari looked to me deadly and harsh. Now the animation looks horrible and my necro just feels slow. The look of the animation looses (for me) the harshness necro has, the crude tough animations for skills and the “deadly” look and feel it has. I don’t understand why they changed the look of the skill, when for me, it was beautiful to watch. Most of the animations they have for classes feel right and help the player feel the casting and class/race they play with. For me this new animation does not work at all with what Necro represents. I hope they fix this, it makes me loose interest in this class :/

I hope they never change the animations back.

The tears of non-norn scum are fantastic.

Bhawb.7408:

So let’s stop pretending like this validates the ridiculous notion that ANet hates Necros.

They made the attack time longer, gave the axe an animation that doesn’t match the hit effect at all, the animation was rushed out in an unfinished state and still hasn’t been fixed to show the focus after almost a week. IDK, not showing a lot of love there.

why would anyone use axe autoattack for anything except semi-afking world bosses? I’m confused. But I have to admit the animation looks like utter kitten

Gryph.8237:

True it was not a nerf, my apologies, I meant change. Nerf and necro is just sometimes synonymous in my head that it has become automatic to say nerf when a skil/tooltip/animations has changed

No, not ‘true’. It has most definitely been nerfed (by more than 25% on the AA) and that doesn’t even include the future nerf to Axe Training.

I won’t add anything to the discussion (all have already been said, from what I’ve read), but I feel I need to give some feedback on this change. The more voice there is, the better.

I understand the reason behind the animation change, but then I don’t understand why mesmer GS hasn’t been treated equally. As for the animation itself, it feels clunky and like the beginning of a work in progress. Not even a work in progress. My guess would be that this wasn’t supposed to roll out when it did. The second hit is not a hit, simply. The whole animation is not smooth and does not make sense with the attack. And for the charr? I know they’re still a bit primitive, but I’m sure they know better than aiming their axe towards the ground to hit their enemy. That’s ridiculous.

As for axe being useless, well, given the change it received with the core specs, I won’t be using it too much anymore as it is already a subpar weapon, only good to have the #2 before going in shroud and the ability to equip a focus.

something i always wondered about and am still wondering is, why is it so hard for arenanet to make underused weapons better.

what’s so difficult about making axe 900 range, making the auto attack either faster or hitting harder, the skill 2 could also need the “rapidfire treatment” speeding up the whole skill by a bit.

about the animation.. oh well.. i won’t say it looks better.. but then again you won’t watch your own animation all the time anyway…

Kaleygh.1524:

Did they change the axe 1 animation ? I hope it is just a bug on my character because it looks crappy

the animation is beyond awful. Seriously ended any fun of playing my necro. I just cant stand watching her attack now.. The other animations look great but whomever did this new animation needs to get a new job mopping floors… seriously.

striker.3704:

They made the attack time longer, gave the axe an animation that doesn’t match the hit effect at all, the animation was rushed out in an unfinished state and still hasn’t been fixed to show the focus after almost a week. IDK, not showing a lot of love there.

Making a bad change due to incompetence or ignorance (and I really can’t attribute this to anything other than one or both of those) is not the same as a purposeful change out of spite. The idea that ANet would actually hate something they spent and still spend hundreds of hours working on is just stupid. They were trying to fix an unintended interaction, had the right idea on how to fix it, but screwed up. This is proof of a lot of things for ANet, like bad QA, poorly thought out changes, and lack of transparency for what should have gone by the community first, but not proof that they hate us.

I’ve been playing necro axe since day one…and now you’ve ruined it. I’m so disappointed with this animation. There is nothing, nothing that even looks like a slash. Bug fixing, fine. But replacing the animation? With this? My main character is now painful to watch, cuz yes, I do look at my own character in battle. Can you please give back the old animation because it’s just ruining GW for me at the moment. I don’t want to ‘fan’ my enemy.

It’s a downgrade in every aspect, I haven’t seen power necro with scepter yet or maybe I didn’t notice I could see why but I do see the staves transition, thanks for showing us your priorities.

Current animation is like a joke. An extremely bad one. This is issue is so simple to be ruined like that. Let alone the core problems. I really wonder who came up with this ugly animation. I can’t see any tiny bit of sense of aesthetics. Please do something Anet! Do something good for god’s sake…

Gave it a week and, nope, still hate this new animation with a passion. It takes too much away from the feel of the class without giving anything in return, it’s slapdash, it is inferior to the former in every way.

http://i.imgur.com/KEdCs.jpg

This is from the second GW2 beta. Sylvari were playable for the first time and I decided to roll with Necro. The class was neither here nor there, but I highly enjoyed the look and feel of axe. I thought it was novel how a spellcaster was using a melee weapon to channel their power and how the skills represented the weapon and the class itself.

I got attached to that axe skin, in fact, such that I sought it out in the release version of the game in spite of its relative obscurity.

Well, I salvaged that axe now because while the weapon’s skills were mediocre in comparison to others in the Necromancer’s repertoire, at least it felt good. Now it doesn’t even do that. Thanks ANet.

Hopefully we can get some further feedback from Anet about whether further plans for improving this are in the works

I can understand people missing the great animation on an Asuran or Norn, but on Charr, Human, and Sylvari, the animation was god awful. Crazy flailing of the arm and what not.

Now the animation is worse for Asura and Norn, much better of Charr, and no idea bout Humans and Sylvari because, well, those two races are lame anyways. ;P

a lot of reading comprehension fails here…. dps hasn’t changed. Mesmer GS and Ele lightning whip have already had skill cancel nerfs.

when did the mesmer gs nerf happen….. pretty sure I was just doing it the other day.

scerevisiae.1972:

a lot of reading comprehension fails here…. dps hasn’t changed. Mesmer GS and Ele lightning whip have already had skill cancel nerfs.

DPS has changed, unfortunately. The aftercast is the same as it was before (.2 seconds) and the cast time was increased to 1 second from 3/4 seconds.

Worst weapon in our repitoire of semi decent to abysmal weapons, and aside from the animation change and slight dis drop can anyone explain why axe mastery is taking a further hit in the new trait lines? Nail in the coffin to the crud weapon?

I’m guessing it will now be staying as is, since no additional feedback is being provided to the community.

Or they are internally determining what to do, and won’t mention anything until they’ve figured it out and know what to do.

Bhawb.7408:

Or they are internally determining what to do, and won’t mention anything until they’ve figured it out and know what to do.

Probably, but they could at least say “Yeah, we’re trying to figure something out to improve the situation.”

They never have before, I wouldn’t expect them to now.

Have they no honor?

Any update we can have that would sort this horrid thing out?

Why can’t Anet fix the cancel channeling exploit on axe and bring 3/4 sec delay and old animations back? I’ve been enjoying playing with my axe but now after 3 weeks with this stupid 1 sec delay and animations are horid. I worked so hard to get frost fang cause axe is one of my favorite on necromancer. Does anyone really like 1 sec delay with 2 hit at the end of the delay at all? I don’t, 3/4 with 1 hit when you hit and 2 hit at the end of the delay are the best.