Guild Wars 2

It’s kind of weird to go around complaining about mesmer stealth and a 3 minute cooldown elite instead of what a mesmer actually uses to dump on a necro:

Interrupts (mantra of distraction, illusionary wave, diversion, magic bullet) with power block on a class with long cast times and slow animations.

By the same token a mesmer would go around whining that when you dump a well or pop lich his entire class mechanic (illusions) evaporates from cleave. Guess why no mesmers use the phantasm utilities such as iDisenchanter and iDefender.

Erasmus.1624:

Conncept.7638:

So far as math is concerned . . .

Look, I can admire one’s dedication to analysis, but are we seriously obsessing over the effectiveness of a player mashing 1? Is that the pinnacle of the game? It really feels like it (especially with condition builds). Is this what people had in mind with a rework? Is this what people had in mind when “dynamic gameplay” was the buzzword several years ago? It’s really a shame that “more passive damage” and “longer range for your attacks that are already aimed for you and potentially don’t even have projectiles to mitigate” is the “rework” that devs shove out nowadays.

Well I can’t admire someone who quips a single sentence out of every post they respond to instead of reading the post in full, so you can feel free to shut the kitten up until you actually take anything from the conversation before attempting to add anything to it.

Now then. I went over all three of the scepter skills and I’m going to paraphrase for you since I’m a nice guy and all that nonsense.

These changes are an incredibly slight but overall nerf to the scepter, not the auto attack. The auto-attack was in fact buffed, not nerfed, but not as much as the second skill was nerfed, leading to an overall decrease of about 40 DPS if both skills are used at their maximum uptime. And this is excluding whatever changes they are about to make to the third skill. So overall, this change has done nothing but changed what was a scepter trait in to a Feast of Corruption Trait since that is really all it buffs beyond what we have now, while the gap between no FoC and FoC dependent builds has been significantly closed, decreasing the overall effectiveness of the trait.

Your over-simpilification of the changes attempting to vilify the use of an auto attack as simple thick headed gameplay has not only totally ignored the majority of my post but completely missed the mark concerning the end goal of these changes.

The purpose of these changes are to give the weapon a consistent increase to DPS to compete with the similarly consistent DPS of other condition weapons. A simple DPS increase can be done through any single skill, but my point if you had read to the end, was that with no other buffs pending, what insane amount of power is going to have to be invested in to that single skill? And would the amount of risk involved in investing power in to one source really provide any consistency at all? The answer is most likely no, it would not. I’m all for adding risky rewarding play, but not until there is a reasonable baseline established to where one decision or one action doesn’t completely define every play experience.

Conncept.7638:

Erasmus.1624:

Conncept.7638:

So far as math is concerned . . .

Look, I can admire one’s dedication to analysis, but are we seriously obsessing over the effectiveness of a player mashing 1? Is that the pinnacle of the game? It really feels like it (especially with condition builds). Is this what people had in mind with a rework? Is this what people had in mind when “dynamic gameplay” was the buzzword several years ago? It’s really a shame that “more passive damage” and “longer range for your attacks that are already aimed for you and potentially don’t even have projectiles to mitigate” is the “rework” that devs shove out nowadays.

Well I can’t admire someone who quips a single sentence out of every post they respond to instead of reading the post in full, so you can feel free to shut the kitten up until you actually take anything from the conversation before attempting to add anything to it.

Now then. I went over all three of the scepter skills and I’m going to paraphrase for you since I’m a nice guy and all that nonsense.

These changes are an incredibly slight but overall nerf to the scepter, not the auto attack. The auto-attack was in fact buffed, not nerfed, but not as much as the second skill was nerfed, leading to an overall decrease of about 40 DPS if both skills are used at their maximum uptime. And this is excluding whatever changes they are about to make to the third skill. So overall, this change has done nothing but changed what was a scepter trait in to a Feast of Corruption Trait since that is really all it buffs beyond what we have now, while the gap between no FoC and FoC dependent builds has been significantly closed, decreasing the overall effectiveness of the trait.

Your over-simpilification of the changes attempting to vilify the use of an auto attack as simple thick headed gameplay has not only totally ignored the majority of my post but completely missed the mark concerning the end goal of these changes.

The purpose of these changes are to give the weapon a consistent increase to DPS to compete with the similarly consistent DPS of other condition weapons. A simple DPS increase can be done through any single skill, but my point if you had read to the end, was that with no other buffs pending, what insane amount of power is going to have to be invested in to that single skill? And would the amount of risk involved in investing power in to one source really provide any consistency at all? The answer is most likely no, it would not. I’m all for adding risky rewarding play, but not until there is a reasonable baseline established to where one decision or one action doesn’t completely define every play experience.

The end changes are a huge buff. You may look at the numbers all you want, nobody cares about 50% more duration, they get cleansed anyway. The current buff as to AA and skill 3 causes conditions to be applied more frequent on the AA and a burst of condi application on skill 3 are far more worth then the trait nerf. The base weapon will be in a far more reliable and consistent spot DPS wise, id rather take that and a weaker trait, then a bad base weapon, with a trait that looks strong, but in real battle scenarios is just bad.

Furthermore, yes it was a small nerf to skill 2, but if thats the case they can still buff it, for what its worth after the patch the weapon without trait, and the weapon with trait are better then before.

Zenith.7301:

Well, yeah. You may prefer gimmicks that are hardly ever balanced, but we prefer the hard and practical results.

Playstyles emerge from the restraints imposed on players by properly balanced mechanics. A playstyle is what happens when a player circumvents the natural restraints or drawbacks of an ability. Your hard practicality is just easy damage without a proper hard counter; nothing gets changed and no playstyle exists outside of what a tooltip says a player can do.

I’m pushing soft counterplay through multiple synergy conduits and high variety. You’re pushing what might as well be borderline runescape-tier combat in which damage is so easy to hit that it might as well be a given unless someone just decides to stand out of line of sight or chain invulnerability periods.

Zenith.7301:

In PvE, if a class is to ever be considered for a position, it needs to be competitive with the alternatives. Currently, numberswise, they’re not.

PvE and PvP only see drastic segregation when a game lacks a fundamental, coherent and inclusive design concept. PvE (especially in GW2) is going to be dominated by DPS, but the DPS doesn’t need to be so overtuned that it locks out certain classes by virtue of their lower numbers (and not by virtue of specific playstyles or execution). Anet continues to rely on HP sponges and boss invulnerability to artificially drag out boring combat when they could easily just divide up huge health pools among multiple, dangerous enemies in order to create more engaging and threatening PvE encounters.

Ah, nice to see that little preview!

First, Blinding Ashes got nurf, bois. That’s great, less random blinds vs. Ele will help us out. And their burns got nerfed, too.

Now, as for Necro preview of changes (I hope it’s not everything major yet!):

• As much as I loved 75% uptime on Poison Field with CPC alone, I think it’s a good change which adds some utility. Interesting thing is that from Dulfy’s summary, I can’t see nerf to duration of Weakness + Poison applied with each tick which are now every 2s. Are they still 3s each? Needs some clarification.

• I expected a little bit more for Axe. But it might not be everything yet. Range increase was obvious, but this weapon is still rather subpar.

• I see no Shroud degeneration reduction (basically, part of VP baselined) yet. It’d be strong buff indeed, but it means that we’re still going for SR in every non-minion viable build.

• No Life Force generation buff to either Scepter or Dagger off-hand. That’s a big concern. I hope there’s some Life Force generation buff somewhere.

• Lingering Curse going down with duration. The missing 50% doesn’t seem like getting baselined. Doesn’t affect PvP, but does PvE I guess.

• Minor nerf to Grasping Dead for some reason. This skill needs a buff, not nerfs.

• Scepter auto buffs. Nice. Could we get new sound for Scepter AA? Please? I dislike playing tennis with Necromancer.

• Feast of Corruption applying Torment. Finally some better reason to use it. It’s LF gain still sucks.

• Lich/Plague not destroying minions – Awesome change. Now, make Moa not destroy minions, too.

Waiting for more changes on Tuesday! So far so good!

Erasmus.1624:

Zenith.7301:

Well, yeah. You may prefer gimmicks that are hardly ever balanced, but we prefer the hard and practical results.

Playstyles emerge from the restraints imposed on players by properly balanced mechanics. A playstyle is what happens when a player circumvents the natural restraints or drawbacks of an ability. Your hard practicality is just easy damage without a proper hard counter; nothing gets changed and no playstyle exists outside of what a tooltip says a player can do.

I’m pushing soft counterplay through multiple synergy conduits and high variety. You’re pushing what might as well be borderline runescape-tier combat in which damage is so easy to hit that it might as well be a given unless someone just decides to stand out of line of sight or chain invulnerability periods.

Zenith.7301:

In PvE, if a class is to ever be considered for a position, it needs to be competitive with the alternatives. Currently, numberswise, they’re not.

PvE and PvP only see drastic segregation when a game lacks a fundamental, coherent and inclusive design concept. PvE (especially in GW2) is going to be dominated by DPS, but the DPS doesn’t need to be so overtuned that it locks out certain classes by virtue of their lower numbers (and not by virtue of specific playstyles or execution). Anet continues to rely on HP sponges and boss invulnerability to artificially drag out boring combat when they could easily just divide up huge health pools among multiple, dangerous enemies in order to create more engaging and threatening PvE encounters.

You do realize splitting bosses would only make the engineer stronger by comparison, right? His damage is consistently cleaved and has no ramp up compared to the necromancer.

By all means suggest me a single game whose PvE combat design you approve of and I’ll see if we’re even on the same galaxy of mutual understanding.

Conncept.7638:

These changes are an incredibly slight but overall nerf to the scepter,

And still my point stands about how absolutely nothing has changed regarding scepter usage. Even if you ran the calculations over all 3 skills, it’s the same weapon, and those skills are exactly the same. They changed some numbers and called it a rework. This is the design that anet pushes, and players are willing to watch the numbers go up and down in delight instead of actually imagining playstyles that don’t rely on DPS generated from letting an autoattack run while the relatively massive cooldowns on any other skill tick back down to zero.

The combat relies on passive bonuses and triggers instead of active player maintenance and decision making. It’s not that the use of the autoattack is thickheaded, it’s that the use of the autoattack is overemphasized in GW2 and nobody who plays the game seems to care that the easiest thing to do is often the most important thing to do in combat (or at the very least it comprises the majority of player action given how fast any other skill activates compared to how fast it recharges; it does nothing but create massive wait times between act). That design does nothing but frontload massive wait times onto players and promote passive, skittering play which is only broken when someone has a readied button which negates incoming enemy effects; in the meantime, players are forced to rely on an autoattack and how much it can do passively (base damage, passive trait procs/bonuses, sigil procs, rune procs) while it effortlessly recasts itself on a target. It’s a bit of a farce.

Conncept.7638:

I’m all for adding risky rewarding play, but not until there is a reasonable baseline established to where one decision or one action doesn’t completely define every play experience.

The only thing that separates this game from straight rock, paper, scissors is the mess of particle effects. That’s why I propose the high variety of skill purpose, multiple niche abilities and multiple, small instances of synergy (nothing hamfistedly obvious like “capitalize on the synergy between equipping scepter and then taking the passive bonus that doubles the duration of your scepter-inflicted conditions”).

Robert Gee.9246:

Warcry.1596:

We keep our minions when transformed!!!

I want to quickly clarify something about this note. The change is that specifically Plague form and Lich form will not destroy your minions. We can’t do this universally for all transforms because it can cause problems with the balance of events or story steps that transform you.

Rob we don’t need this to work for story steps and open world we need to not have our chosen spec 100% shut down because of an engi or mesmer moa. No other class in the game gets to throw every utility on a bar on cooldown with a single ability.

Zenith.7301:

You do realize splitting bosses would only make the engineer stronger by comparison, right? His damage is consistently cleaved and has no ramp up compared to the necromancer.

Even in the Molten Duo fight, one of the bosses is focused while the other is ignored. The trick, however, is that the two are both attacking and spaced out enough that grenades have no effect on but a single one at a time. There’s also the two examples of guild missions which require simultaneous kills: although the crystal one requires a special gimmick bundle in order to damage the special gimmick object, both missions have the target objects/creatures spaced far out enough that grenades would never deal damage but to a single one at a time (the ogre and the devourers are also on different elevations in addition to being very far apart laterally). Just because there could be multiple enemies doesn’t mean that they all have to always attack the same target or even attack at the same range. That’d be silly.

Zenith.7301:

By all means suggest me a single game whose PvE combat design you approve of and I’ll see if we’re even on the same galaxy of mutual understanding.

I’d disagree about GW1 PvE and PvP not being split significantly when it mattered. Unfortunately yours is an example I’ve lobbied for and hoped/expected to get when I bought the sequel, but it’s just obvious now they are abandoning all that split balancing that made GW1 great and have moved to an esports spvp/wvw centric market with pve as a side market that’s incidental extra revenue but not invested to seriously.

In fact, with this patch they’re only removing more PvE/PvP splits, not adding more that should have existed long ago.

On the lingering curse nerf. I can understand it because of how it works. With how it worked, it increased the base duration of condi on scepter so you could double dip duration, before you could get 400% duration on scepter skills. Now its only 300% but you stack condis faster and have a completely new one to work with.

2×10 = 20 ticks of bleed from one auto chain
3 × 6.75 = 20.25 ticks of bleed from one auto chain.
So looking at nothing but bleed dps, the change compared to live is an unnoticeably small buff

the difference in pve wont be big but in pvp where you wont really see the condis last their full duration it makes a difference on how quickly you can apply them so they can do more damage.

Corrosive Poison Cloud: Duration decrease from 12s to 8s. It will now destroy all projectiles that pass through it. It will also now pulse every 2 seconds instead of every 3s.

That’s something I was against but well… that’s free buff…

Axe skills (Rending Claws/Ghastly Claws) going up to 900 radius.

Pointless.

Scepter – Scepter 1 and 2 skill bleed duration going down from 5s to kitten . Scepter 3 get a poison duration increase to 6s and kitten bleed.

I wonder what to say… It feel like no change at all.

Feast of Corruption – It apply a base 2 stack of Torment and a max of 5 more stacks of Torment, one for every condition for the target.

I really hope this doesn’t come with a damage nerf.

Lingering Curse – Condition duration effect is now 50% instead of 100%

Make this unattractive trait even less attarctive.

Lich and Plague forms will no longer destroy your minions. Other transforms (i..e Moa) will still destroy them.

Again, pointless.

Robert Gee.9246:

Lich and Plague form was more of a clear cut issue of “hey, let’s not punish minion masters for pressing their elite”.

Thanks, it took 3 years but thanks for this!

Zenith.7301:

I’d disagree about GW1 PvE and PvP not being split significantly when it mattered. Unfortunately yours is an example I’ve lobbied for and hoped/expected to get when I bought the sequel, but it’s just obvious now they are abandoning all that split balancing that made GW1 great and have moved to an esports spvp/wvw centric market with pve as a side market that’s incidental extra revenue but not invested to seriously.

In fact, with this patch they’re only removing more PvE/PvP splits, not adding more that should have existed long ago.

^ PvE and PvP skills need to be separated. I said that few times, they made huge step back by not designing the game with split skills from the start…

Well after sleeping on this I have decided these changes aren’t that great. Condition users in PvE do only 60% of the dps of direct power users in ideal circumstances and usually 40-50% of the dps due to cleanses, and ramp up time.

This “buff” increases our overall dps by less than 10%. The only way I can see this weapon being competitive in PvE is if the following happens:

1. add an additional bleed to the scepter
2. Increase bleed back to 0.075 scaling, it is just pathetic at 0.06.

This is probably the last balance change before raids, and right now condition users have no place.

The only way I can see this weapon being competitive in PvE is if the following happens:
1. add an additional bleed to the scepter
2. Increase bleed back to 0.075 scaling, it is just pathetic at 0.06.

3. Mobs have extremely high toughness
4. Mobs have phases that they are immune to physical damage all together/reflect physical damage.
5. Damage is less readily available because of the need for other stats so you dont get blown up as “zerk meta wont cut it anymore”. Condi damage takes 1 stat and physical damage takes 3.

Besides CPC, it’s number tweaks only, I can understand that with the limited amount of time. But:
- Axe 1 slow vulnerability stacking is useless: it’s cleansed before it reaches a relevant level. There’s already 3 traits that put weaknesses. Replace/remove it, but significantly buff damage.
- Scepter is slightly better in PvP, but it still lacks sizable LF generation. Torment is a welcome addition but I don’t like its “win more / harder countered” form: it’s bad against a cleanse-heavy comp.
- No focus cast time reduction ?
- No life blast hitting twice ?

Also, please consider 2% LF degeneration baseline.

Sigmoid.7082:

The only way I can see this weapon being competitive in PvE is if the following happens:
1. add an additional bleed to the scepter
2. Increase bleed back to 0.075 scaling, it is just pathetic at 0.06.

3. Mobs have extremely high toughness
4. Mobs have phases that they are immune to physical damage all together/reflect physical damage.
5. Damage is less readily available because of the need for other stats so you dont get blown up as “zerk meta wont cut it anymore”. Condi damage takes 1 stat and physical damage takes 3.

Forced gimmicks and incorrect information don’t help anyone.

Condition damage takes 3 stats, condition damage, condition duration, and precision. It is worse than direct damage in that it scales more slowly, takes longer to apply, and can be removed before the damage is applied.

Sigmoid.7082:

The only way I can see this weapon being competitive in PvE is if the following happens:
1. add an additional bleed to the scepter
2. Increase bleed back to 0.075 scaling, it is just pathetic at 0.06.

3. Mobs have extremely high toughness
4. Mobs have phases that they are immune to physical damage all together/reflect physical damage.
5. Damage is less readily available because of the need for other stats so you dont get blown up as “zerk meta wont cut it anymore”. Condi damage takes 1 stat and physical damage takes 3.

Huh?

If I move my rampagers/sinister gear over from my necro to my ele and run my usual lazy-mode signet build I can do an easy 5-7k burn dmg/sec with spikes around 12k with almost no ramp up time. If i change to a Glyph build i can get spikes around 17k. Thats w/o food or stacks. The tooltip on my Fire signet ALL BY ITSELF shows 12k burn dmg with its 16 sec (traited) cooldown… Necro condi damage doesnt compete (and mesmer is even worse). The bleed damage nerf was excessive and burn damage is just plain oppressive right now…. both need an adjustment.

Pst. Arena net. Lingering curse is currently a bad trait and I don’t take it with 100% duration and people have suggested dropping it down to master with the full 100% duration with how bad it was. And it still wouldn’t be taken. Adding a bit of torment doesn’t make this trait suddenly good. If you gave us a flat 50% to all outgoing conditions its great. But since its just a nerf to a bad trait in a horrible trait line I’m still just going to take Withering shroud in all game modes.

sigh

I really just want back that flat 30% condition duration I lost from the transition to the mastery system.

Oh holy Robert Gee,

Thankyou for the transform fix.
Please make Flesh Golem work underwater. Let’s not punish minion masters for stepping in waist deep water.

Amen.

The guy was short on time when he was going over the patch notes and had to skip a few changes to stay on schedule. I am hopeful that we will expect more changes in Tuesdays patch notes.

That being said, I am happy to see scepter becoming a more condition oriented weapon but (like many above) worry that the nerf to lingering curse will simply put this weapon back into it’s current state.

The buff to axe was needed but I was also expecting a new auto attack chain to follow suit. This weapon still needs more help.

I really think some people underestimate how big of a buff it is to be able to use axe from 900 range instead of 600 range.
Many dismiss it as something that is pointless, but it’s one of the major things that we asked for in the “axe discussion” thread that has been around.

I’m assuming that these are just a few of the things we’ll be seeing. But axe range increase puts axe back from a semi-melee weapon into finally having a ranged power weapon.
Also with range being 900 range it gives it a reason to not have as much dps as dagger or upcoming greatsword. Not that it doesn’t need buffs (god we all know it will need to have damage buffs on TOP of this), but at least it will stop competing with 2 other weapons the necro has/will get access to.

Nyth.3492:

I really think some people underestimate how big of a buff it is to be able to use axe from 900 range instead of 600 range.
Many dismiss it as something that is pointless, but it’s one of the major things that we asked for in the “axe discussion” thread that has been around.

I’m assuming that these are just a few of the things we’ll be seeing. But axe range increase puts axe back from a semi-melee weapon into finally having a ranged power weapon.
Also with range being 900 range it gives it a reason to not have as much dps as dagger or upcoming greatsword. Not that it doesn’t need buffs (god we all know it will need to have damage buffs on TOP of this), but at least it will stop competing with 2 other weapons the necro has/will get access to.

MEH, keep the 600 range and make the axe better, I can bet you 90% of us prefer similar option

Erasmus.1624:

Silverkey.2078:

• axe : range 900
• scepter condi buff, torment on scepter 3 (2 stacks + 1 stack/condition on enemy up to 5)

Direct upgrades are the least creative and interesting ways to “improve the quality of life” of an ability. The playstyle is utterly unchanged and these sort of changes are on par with “reduced rapid fire activation time from kitten to 2.5 s.” I already called this sort of stuff long before. Anet doesn’t do anything but raise and lower numbers. It doesn’t actually generate playstyles or soft counter opportunities.

I’ve been reading most of your posts, and they all sound fancy. But your arguments are kinda shallow.
You talk as if ANet just tweaks number, and yet the scepter #3 is a clear example of them going slightly beyond that point. Adding torment to, what was up to now mostly a power-move, the scepter is a major gameplay change that might allow condimancer to actually be a thing again.
Not so glad with Lingering Curse change, but it’s very unclear at this point in time what it exactly entails, so I’ll hold my opinion on that until tuesday. If it now includes every condition, I might like the change. If it’s just a flat nerf than I’m disappointed as it doesn’t get us anywhere.

If there is anything I learned from 20 years of theorycrafting and playing MMOs though. It’s that often the little tweaks can have the biggest impacts and open up new playstyles.
That’s why I think your whole argumentation of ANet just doing dull number tweaks not leading to anything is ignorant; no offense.

Corrossive poison cloud changes changes are all round fantastic, better then I could imagine. Now I can finaly have a champion fight where I have full weakness for the duration of the skill and a projectile destruction.

Scepter and lingering curse changes scream one thing: “What about scepter #2?”. You make the auto attack a slight upgrade when using lingering curse compared to the old one but scepter #2 seems to fall behind on this front. I will reserve my final judgement for the cap at scepter #3 when I see the durations. Also no duration decrease anywhere (in lingering curse or baseline)? :-(

Axe changes make no sense to me and bad at 900 is not (much) better as bad at 600 range.

Also still no moa fix???? This one is more dire then the plague or lich fixes.

Nyth.3492:

I really think some people underestimate how big of a buff it is to be able to use axe from 900 range instead of 600 range.
Many dismiss it as something that is pointless, but it’s one of the major things that we asked for in the “axe discussion” thread that has been around.

I’m assuming that these are just a few of the things we’ll be seeing. But axe range increase puts axe back from a semi-melee weapon into finally having a ranged power weapon.
Also with range being 900 range it gives it a reason to not have as much dps as dagger or upcoming greatsword. Not that it doesn’t need buffs (god we all know it will need to have damage buffs on TOP of this), but at least it will stop competing with 2 other weapons the necro has/will get access to.

Why should I take axe over the staff? In any situation. 900 range isn’t anywhere near enough to justify this weapon over a staff. Staff is the necromancer’s best weapon and axe was already losing an uphill battle with the staff and even scepter as it was. At 900 range is barely beats out scepter for power although scepter’s previous version I’d still take over the axe with 900 range for power, and can’t come close to touching the staff. Staff is just so much better at the moment and axe doesn’t fill a real niche that can’t be done far better elsewhere.

Do anyone consider Death Nova and Minions?

Can we please have Corrosive Poison Cloud buff (destroying projectiles) on Death Nova’s poison fields? Or at least applying stacks of vulnerability…

Atm Death Magic and Minions are just a “selfish defense buff”, it brings no utility to your party, so essentially being a Minionmancer in PVE equals sacrifying Damage and team Utility slots, both if you’re Condi or Power specced (to max DPS in power you need both Spite and/or Curses and SoulReaping, to max it in Condi you need at least Curses and SR).
Being Minionmancer requires Death Magic, a Blood Magic mandatory for team utility, thus leaving just 1 spec to increase DPS.

I realize Minions deal damage on their own with no scaling, thus representing anyway a small DPS increase on their own.
I realize there are combos like Necromantic Corruption + Unholy Martyr, but there are more reliable, effective and versatile utilities for team condition dispel which don’t require you building 2 specializations which are detrimental to DPS.

Can we have a little of attention on this?

I just hope some of the hidden notes include life force on something other than #3 added to scepter. Or/and OH dagger. I can see some good in this stuff, I’m not glooming, but still hope they hit some of our bigger concerns as well.

About axe hopefully increase of range wasn’t the only change since they were in hurry and it’s just a preview I’m quiet until tuesday. LF gain on OH dagger…make it happen.

Angel de Lyssa.4716:

And so, why not inflict bleeding instead of torment, indeed they do not like? because you know that torment automatically take advantage of their extra damage with fear, and with condition bleed you get bored, it is a rather dull condition. The difference with the Mesmer is that you can only maintain confusion and torment limited, but the enemy quickly cleaned (because is only two perma condition), however, the necro can cover perfectly x7 torment, and not only that, but it can take advantage and take better advantage torment with the fear condition, something that cant do mesmer, on the other hand, the necro be thoroughly cleaned conditions, or, return it to its enemies. Truth does not like to inflict x7 bleed?

why not inflict x7 bleed instead of torment? because with x7 torment I do double damage with fear, and with the condition bleed i dont many dps

With Necro right now, you can easily inflict over 10 bleeds. Grasping Dead —> Weakening Shroud --> Dark Path —> Swap weapons for Geomancy --> Mark of Blood. The problem is… a single condi clear removes everything. Every single bleed you stacked with however many skills gets removed. Pasting 7 more bleeds on top of that would be kind of useless. Even if you got to 17 bleeds, a single condi clear would just remove all of it. Torment is a really good condi to add to Feast of Corruption cuz Necro has barely any access to it, it’s a unique condi and can be used as a “cover condi”, and it’s a damaging condi. Think of the scenario earlier: you do 10 bleeds, and 7 torment on top of it. Here comes a condi clear, and removes the bleed… but you still have the Torment ticking. That’s not OP, it’s balanced. I don’t want random condi clears to completely shut down all damage I do, especially since condi Necros already rely so heavily on bleeds…

@methanegas, I wouldn’t take his posts too seriously, having a quick look at his previous posts in all forums he’s crying OP here and whining on the Mesmer threads that their ability to apply torment isn’t as potent…and that was just at a glance at the top few. From a spvp perspective I’m quite looking forward to the changes and eager to try them out on Tuesday. on a side note does anyone know when the next BWE is? I’m interested in how these changes will work with reaper.

I hope axe skill 1 gets more damage on tuesday. Ranger axe is also 900 range, but it’s auto attack hits 3 ppl, hits faster, does more damage over time to each target and stacks might.

I’m wondering if the nerf to Lingering Curses means that it will once again affect all condis applied while wielding Scepter. Otherwise, I’m just not sure the changes are all good. However, since I do not use Lingering Curse, it doesn’t actually impact me. The speed of Scepter/Offhand Dagger wasn’t improved, which concerns me. The CPC change is great albeit overdue. It will probably be somewhat mandatory in Ranger duels. That can’t be the only Axe change. There will be many moderately annoyed discussions if it is. The transforms change was overdue. No staff changes is also concerning.

The axe change is nice but doesnt fix the issues. Axe 2 still easy to interrupt in pvp due to the capture point design of close combat

Loki.9412:

@methanegas, I wouldn’t take his posts too seriously, having a quick look at his previous posts in all forums he’s crying OP here and whining on the Mesmer threads that their ability to apply torment isn’t as potent…and that was just at a glance at the top few. From a spvp perspective I’m quite looking forward to the changes and eager to try them out on Tuesday. on a side note does anyone know when the next BWE is? I’m interested in how these changes will work with reaper.

I’m not crying, and I take very seriously the post, another thing is that you do not want to nerf x7 torment, but quiet, I the day of the update, i will spamming in pvp x7 torment + fear spamming until they nerf

Angel de Lyssa.4716:

Loki.9412:

@methanegas, I wouldn’t take his posts too seriously, having a quick look at his previous posts in all forums he’s crying OP here and whining on the Mesmer threads that their ability to apply torment isn’t as potent…and that was just at a glance at the top few. From a spvp perspective I’m quite looking forward to the changes and eager to try them out on Tuesday. on a side note does anyone know when the next BWE is? I’m interested in how these changes will work with reaper.

I’m not crying, and I take very seriously the post, another thing is that you do not want to nerf x7 torment, but quiet, I the day of the update, i will spamming in pvp x7 torment + fear spamming until they nerf

dont you need 5 conditions on target to stack 7 torment. necro got bleed poison weakness cripple and torment so it make you be predictable with your rotation.

so far condi necro were left behind cause all of the burning flying around . maybe the torment will bring it back

Silverkey.2078:

Wow so much negative reactions…

Necromancer has been worst class for 3 years. Some stuff (axe) was broken at release and is still broken.

We even got the whole pvp and reddit communities to agree with us & help us shame anet on this constantly since May.

If something is a “buff” that doesn’t result in a useable skill it doesn’t count.

Axe: Still the worst weapon in the game

Scepter: Still one of the three worst weapons in the game

Corrosive Pouson Cloud: Still not good enough to take in a build. Wolnt be good solo (cooldown too long) wolnt be good team (other classes do the same thing better)

Focus: not even looked at

Minions still hard countered by moa.

None of these changes result in anything that will be used by anybody in the actual game.

And reapers will be hard countered by anybody with a ranged weapon.

It would be great if they removed that stupid self weakness from poison cloud now.

In fact, just scrap the self corrupt design, being forced to take offhand dagger or plague signet just to make MY utility not HURT ME is horrible.

Yeah im still not happy about the self conditions on corruptions. Especially the double self condi when traited. The skills still arent strong enough to justify that self harm. And it IS self harm because you have to give up a slot for a cleanse/transfer or just suck it up and suffer through it.

I wouldnt mind so much if the self condies didnt last so long. But 6 seconds of self weakness is ridiculously painful. And its almost the full duration of the field now.

Also hope there is more being done to axe, especially after that huge thread on the problems caused when they changed the animation from extremely good, to bland and boring. There were lots of constructive ideas buried in there which would assist axe improvements.

I’m pretty sure they said #1 and #2 skills were getting dmg buff on axe too, can anyone help me confirm this? They were flying through the discussion because time was limited and they kept getting sidetracked so it was hard to catch everything they said. I distinctly remember him saying rending claws was getting buffed.

Forget this, I re-watched what they said on dulfy’s site, no mention of dmg buff, only range

Let’s chill, everyone, and just wait for complete patch notes on Tuesday. And THEN we can complain.

Elena.3642:

Let’s chill, everyone, and just wait for complete patch notes on Tuesday. And THEN we can complain.

But what if the actual changes are good and we don’t need to complain? We can’t afford to take that risk, and need to complain right now, just in case.

Captain Unusual.9163:

Elena.3642:

Let’s chill, everyone, and just wait for complete patch notes on Tuesday. And THEN we can complain.

But what if the actual changes are good and we don’t need to complain? We can’t afford to take that risk, and need to complain right now, just in case.

There is always something to complain about.

Guys,

The scepter max dps stays same (not considering torment) but the ramp up time is lower aka you reach that max dps faster.

Great changes,
I predict us being top3 class in pvp. I also hope we forever stay in that great but just not OP tier

Really the only criticism i have left over 3 years is
Zero lifeforce at start and -23% every respawn
And the healing and seeing CDs while in shroud

Really all parts, weapons, traits, mechanics, utilitys, everything is super solid

Edit:
The old axe animation was cooler

Hey can you change Grasping dead’s crippling to chill? That’d be great, thanks.

Also. while I’m at it. Wail of doom. Can we get the alpha version of this skill? Were it feared instead of dazed?

Lily.1935:

Also. while I’m at it. Wail of doom. Can we get the alpha version of this skill? Were it feared instead of dazed?

No thank you.

spoj.9672:

Lily.1935:

Also. while I’m at it. Wail of doom. Can we get the alpha version of this skill? Were it feared instead of dazed?

No thank you.

Same.