Guild Wars 2

Context
There is a lot of frustration in this forum. Part of it is simply the human nature of always thinking that the grass is greener elsewhere, but part of it is that the grass IS greener elsewhere (and if one class should be green, it’s necro!).

Now I won’t claim that the necro is low tier in all game mode, because this is not true. Necro is meta in WvW backline, and has an average place in competitive sPvP. But this “decent” place should not eclipsed the many problems the class has. To name a few: terrible scepter and axe, terrible condition application in general, hardly used corruptions, lack of scaling defenses which added to the lack of team support makes necro usually bad in group.

And the frustration is that most players feel that necro has just been abandoned by the devs.

My point
I really like how Roy has now started to be more transparent about the revenant. I am well aware that browsing through the forums is time consuming and that any post commented by a dev becomes suddenly assaulted by hundreds of messages. But if only there was a constructive discussion with Robert Gee, explaining some of the changes that most of us in the community do not understand, or explaining the lack of changes in things that all the community has been agreeing on for years.
We are not developers, we may miss sometimes the big picture. They have probably data for the build usage. So maybe we don’t see that some things needs to remain like they are, but at least they shoukd tell us!!! On the other hand, we are many necromancer players including high tier players, so we have also a big part of the understanding of the necro so the devs would (and probably do already) benefit from us.

So please Robert Gee, try to answer some of the exasperation of the community. As a mesmer main and necro second, I can say I love what you brought to the class, but we would all love constructive discussions to improve the class and the diversity of viable builds.

In reply to topic;

Only if we have Sue Storm with us.

I agree. I like the Roy’s interaction on Revenant forum.

Silverkey.2078:

So please Robert Gee, try to answer some of the exasperation of the community. As a mesmer main and necro second, I can say I love what you brought to the class, but we would all love constructive discussions to improve the class and the diversity of viable builds.

As somebody who mains a necro i can only say that my hope is that Mr Gee leaves his hands off the necro. I do not never ever want that he does the same thing he did to the mesmer also does to the necro. I want the necro at a reasonable level which fits in the overall class balance and not to be a class which is total out of control damage and utility wise like mesmers are at the moment.

Rym.1469:

I agree. I like the Roy’s interaction on Revenant forum.

draugris.9872:

Silverkey.2078:

So please Robert Gee, try to answer some of the exasperation of the community. As a mesmer main and necro second, I can say I love what you brought to the class, but we would all love constructive discussions to improve the class and the diversity of viable builds.

As somebody who mains a necro i can only say that my hope is that Mr Gee leaves his hands off the necro. I do not never ever want that he does the same thing he did to the mesmer also does to the necro. I want the necro at a reasonable level which fits in the overall class balance and not to be a class which is total out of control damage and utility wise like mesmers are at the moment.

You do know he made the changes to the necro and the mesmer at the same time.

Samhayn.2385:

draugris.9872:

Silverkey.2078:

So please Robert Gee, try to answer some of the exasperation of the community. As a mesmer main and necro second, I can say I love what you brought to the class, but we would all love constructive discussions to improve the class and the diversity of viable builds.

As somebody who mains a necro i can only say that my hope is that Mr Gee leaves his hands off the necro. I do not never ever want that he does the same thing he did to the mesmer also does to the necro. I want the necro at a reasonable level which fits in the overall class balance and not to be a class which is total out of control damage and utility wise like mesmers are at the moment.

You do know he made the changes to the necro and the mesmer at the same time.

I think that just reinforces his point.

gg this is real life, Robert Gee answered prayers

WhiteDeath.8067:

gg this is real life, Robert Gee answered prayers

Praise!

…..well than….I’m flabbergasted….speechless….stunned….every word I can think of right now. Can we get dranor, Bwawb, spoj or sagat in here? Or our forum specialist? They seem the most sensible of us right now.

And for the love of grenth, people, let’s not screw this up, we might have the ear of a dev for once. >_<

Thank you for taking the time to write out a response that hits on a few points we have had issues with for awhile. I’m really excited to play reaper this weekend and I hope that the community can come up with some solid feedback. I watched Grouch play it some today and the RS 2 actually seems to give some nice mobility, only wish we didn’t have to put our shroud on cooldown to close gaps.

Shouts actually looked pretty awesome in the demo as well; really loving the stability on “You Are All Weaklings”. The one change I found problematic (and it might feel fine when I play it) is the greatsword 2 losing its full cooldown refresh and only getting ~80%. Just seems like it will be clunky trying to cleave if you can only fit in around 1 auto between spins, especially in PvE.

Thanks again for responding Robert, can’t wait to see your ideas for giving scepter and axe some love.

I was going to be the forum specialist before the profession specialists were scrapped, but this is a very welcome post.

Thank you, Robert. In particular, thank you for also explaining the reason for being comparatively silent. Didn’t know you were also doing the Warrior elite spec, but you do sound quite busy. I know we Necros can be a salty bunch, but we really do appreciate the work you do.

I was actually compiling a short document of seemingly unanimously agreed upon issues with the Necromancer, in the form of specific skills and traits with a short explanation on why each of these were considered “bad.” Any chance I could send it to you?

This does not seem like a one time opportunity.
I’d say we play the Reaper on the coming beta weekend to get hands on experience with the entire class and then organize some constructive feedback.

please help us change the necro minion AI to be more aggressive and pro-active.
thanks!

If anything, I hope we can get all the current bug on live fixed as soon as possible.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/support/bugs/Necromancer-Bugs-7-28-15-Post-here
I was hopping to try Lingering Curse but due to the trait bug in pvp I can’t even test it.

Robert Gee.9246:

snip

Really curious about axe and scepter. What kinds of things are you considering for them?

Thank you for the notice we expected the attention to be entirely on reaper during and after beta but mentioning base necro especially axe couldn’t be more appreciated I shall not bring doom for the next 3 years because of this at least I’ll try to. We’re looking forward to the results.

Very cool to get a response on things that have needed looking at from the player perspective. Other than thank you all I ask is you look at even just TESTING the use of utilities in shroud. Thanks!

Robert Gee.9246:

Regarding general silence, it’s mostly due to how busy everything is at the moment, but also due to how a company as large as ArenaNet works. I’ll see if I can explain a few things to put the situation into context.

Right now I’m waiting to get feedback from the upcoming beta weekend on Chronomancer and Reaper, but I haven’t worked on either of them specifically for several weeks. Many of the changes you’ve seen from Gamescom were locked down weeks ago in order to assure the stability of the floor demo and the upcoming beta weekend. With a game as big as Guild Wars 2 it takes a long time (and a lot of QA effort) to make sure big events like Gamescom go smoothly. My work over the last few weeks hasn’t been for Necromancer or Mesmer and is actually been for the Warrior elite specialization (which I probably can’t say anything else about). I’m also fixing bugs on live for ALL professions this week and next which has kept me pretty busy.

Now this isn’t to say that I’m not paying attention to what’s being said or what’s been said in the past. I take notes on threads I think are relevant for when I have time to work on them. I have notes on things to improve with both axe and scepter as well as a note about skills that we could add projectile blocking to (incidentally RS 2 blocks projectiles because of a suggestion I read here). These are changes I’d like to get to and see happen, but right now iteration on Reaper and Chronomancer are probably going to take priority over that once the beta finishes.

I hope that clears up a few things. I’m not really as talkative as Roy or Karl, but I’ll see if I can show up now and then to answer the occasional polite question.

Woah… Woah! You’re blowing my mind. Really? I don’t know what to say to this… I guess thank you will do. Yeah, thank you!

If Flesh Golem’s inconsistent AI (frequently doesn’t attack anything in combat) is fixed, I will love you forever. And I can’t wait to hear more about your plans on axe and scepter. <3

I can stop being bitter and start to hope!? Am I dreaming?

@Robert Gee: Even if your work on reaper/necro is delayed, please keep writing on this sub forum. A long silence may generate a huge backlash. Thank you, keep our hopes alive.

Oh my god, a Dev post in the necro forums that isn’t just clarifying that our condition damage will scale from condition damage?

I understand that you can’t say much, but I do appreciate letting us know that a few of our suggestions have been heard and implemented, and our other concerns are being noted and considered.

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

I was going to be the forum specialist before the profession specialists were scrapped, but this is a very welcome post.

Thank you, Robert. In particular, thank you for also explaining the reason for being comparatively silent. Didn’t know you were also doing the Warrior elite spec, but you do sound quite busy. I know we Necros can be a salty bunch, but we really do appreciate the work you do.

I was actually compiling a short document of seemingly unanimously agreed upon issues with the Necromancer, in the form of specific skills and traits with a short explanation on why each of these were considered “bad.” Any chance I could send it to you?

Actually, you both can check out the wonderfully organized, streamlined fixes to base necromancer issues in my signature ! I have some wonderful axe, focus, boon hate, projectile reflect suggestions. Also a way to add flavor to Master of corruptions, among other straightforward suggestions.

Hopefully people will stop complaining and falling into despair over necro. Robert Gee has already done amazing things for our class and I’m confident he’ll continue to address the necromancer’s faults!

nearlight.3064:

Hopefully people will stop complaining and falling into despair over necro. Robert Gee has already done amazing things for our class and I’m confident he’ll continue to address the necromancer’s faults!

I tend to agree with this. While often bitter, Necromancer had undoubtedly been more fun post-patch. Still lots of base-necro stuff that needs looked at, like baseline LB piercing and maybe a few other things as he seems to have already hinted on, but we’re going in a better direction at least.

I still really hope he considers the idea of merging Chilling Darkness to the Minor Master trait in Reaper.

Thank you Robert Gee for your comment
You see, not much is needed to make a (naturally gloomy) necromancer community happy.

As a few have mentioned, blood magic rework was amazing, so if anything like this is applied on our other problems….

The future looks bright, in a dark green sort of way

ronpierce.2760:

I still really hope he considers the idea of merging Chilling Darkness to the Minor Master trait in Reaper.

And replace it with Brain Freeze !

Malchior.1928:

ronpierce.2760:

I still really hope he considers the idea of merging Chilling Darkness to the Minor Master trait in Reaper.

And replace it with Brain Freeze !

YES!

I rerolled guard just lvl 7 but necro I’m not going to play any more tried PVP kitten so much easier and 1v1 win ratio is much higher and is much funnier to play than that cursed necro I wish I could get back my time spent on Necro

Additionally I will leave this here this is 45 min on lfg tool with necro GJ arena you made a clkittened by every one including those who play necro

I hoped Reaper could make a change for this class but no ….just remove necromancers from the game

Malchior.1928:

ronpierce.2760:

I still really hope he considers the idea of merging Chilling Darkness to the Minor Master trait in Reaper.

And replace it with Brain Freeze !

Oh, you guys… :P

I guess that would be one way to add a twist to Curse tree and keep the synergy rolling with reaper! Hell yeah!

nearlight.3064:

Hopefully people will stop complaining and falling into despair over necro. Robert Gee has already done amazing things for our class and I’m confident he’ll continue to address the necromancer’s faults!

When complaining was the only thing able to get us a reply? LOL XD

There is nothing wrong about complaining as long you don’t insult anyone and you explain your reasons.

Honestly I just wanna ask one thing at this point, since you’re the one in charge of necro and mesmer.
One of the new mesmer wells in the new build got pulsting aoe dmg, with a heavy final tick, which also pulses weakness and cripple. On a 20 sec CD. And that’s just the “basic damage” well.
How does that even compare to our lowest well which only pulses vuln (and a very short one at that)?
And then we have a well that makes everyone unblockable AND distosion? Come on please, is that a joke?
When Nothing can save you was shown up I though, “hey it would be nice if one of the unique support necros can bring is making everyone in the party be unblockable, that’d be amazing for a shout”
But yeah I guess necro can’t have nice things

Tristan.5678:

I rerolled guard just lvl 7 but necro I’m not going to play any more tried PVP kitten so much easier and 1v1 win ratio is much higher and is much funnier to play than that cursed necro I wish I could get back my time spent on Necro

Additionally I will leave this here this is 45 min on lfg tool with necro GJ arena you made a clkittened by every one including those who play necro

You do realize that multiple groups there include Necromancers, right? Maybe it’s the fact you were asking for level 40 instead of being a Necro? Random Agony seems like an instability folks would rather avoid or get better rewards for (level 50).

Tristan.5678:

I rerolled guard just lvl 7 but necro I’m not going to play any more tried PVP kitten so much easier and 1v1 win ratio is much higher and is much funnier to play than that cursed necro I wish I could get back my time spent on Necro

Additionally I will leave this here this is 45 min on lfg tool with necro GJ arena you made a clkittened by every one including those who play necro

Looking through all that, there’s two groups that include Necromancers, but only one that includes a Mesmer. So I guess we’re not the worst off.

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

Tristan.5678:

I rerolled guard just lvl 7 but necro I’m not going to play any more tried PVP kitten so much easier and 1v1 win ratio is much higher and is much funnier to play than that cursed necro I wish I could get back my time spent on Necro
You guys also should have noticed most lvl 50 are meta build which mean necro will get insta kicked as always .

Additionally I will leave this here this is 45 min on lfg tool with necro GJ arena you made a clkittened by every one including those who play necro

You do realize that multiple groups there include Necromancers, right? Maybe it’s the fact you were asking for level 40 instead of being a Necro? Random Agony seems like an instability folks would rather avoid or get better rewards for (level 50).

I run daily Fractal 50 40 and is same rarely rarely I find a group of nice people who dotn mind and do the daily still its frustrating
When I decided to make these screens I already had done lvl 50

Funny is that When I joined to team I was insta kicked and only after I showed my gear they decided to let me run with them after I joined second time
But notice what crazy demand for war for ele I wish i had made screen when PPl were typing no necro xD

Also if you look careful you find there are lvl 40 groups but again necros not welcome necro are bad necro have no dps necro not meta insta kick necro
Its you fault arena you made necro a terrible reputation
Give MORE BUFFS TO ELE next meta in HoT will be 5 Ele or 5 Hammer Guards

Tristan.5678:

I rerolled guard just lvl 7 but necro I’m not going to play any more tried PVP kitten so much easier and 1v1 win ratio is much higher and is much funnier to play than that cursed necro I wish I could get back my time spent on Necro

Additionally I will leave this here this is 45 min on lfg tool with necro GJ arena you made a clkittened by every one including those who play necro

I hoped Reaper could make a change for this class but no ….just remove necromancers from the game

Nobody wants to play 40. Try 50.

Khristophoros.7194:

Nobody wants to play 40. Try 50.

Or Fourty!NINE hahahaha TROhLLOL OLOLL Sorry

Don’t get your hopes too high is all I’m saying. I’ve learnt my lesson long ago. Better just wait till the patchnotes hit the ground.

I certainly do appreciate the response. The clarity is important and does a lot more for my opinion of how it’s being looked at than complete silence.

I do wish we got patch notes a lot like how GW1 patch notes were. When skills were re-balanced, there was normally an explanation with each of them like “we felt that lingering curse had too much presence in jade quarry, so we reduced the degen slightly for PvP.”

The big issue I think a lot of players have, is that we don’t understand why things like chilling darkness were nerfed, yet dagger/dagger ele remains untouched after all this time. Explanations behind changes (in the patch notes) would really help players understand why certain balance changes happen.

GG Robert Gee, thank you for the response. It makes me happier now. Good to know axe may get a look at, I’m excited but holding back the excitement because axe trait got a nerf during the traits revamp. I hope you work some magic, there are definitely a lot of things the necro community would like for you to review.

Robert Gee just saying the word axe made my life better.

We did it guys

Robert Gee.9246:

…snip(incidentally RS 2 blocks projectiles because of a suggestion I read here).snip…

My heart just skipped a beat!

Praise be to the Gee!

Now I can quote this whenever people try to argue that no one listens to the forums. I look forward to the beta soon, and hopefully we can provide you good feedback.

Did the necro forum grab the attention of a dev!? omg.. there just may be hope!!

I’m glad Robert responded the way he did. People forget all the time that development takes time, and people are busy. There are so many things that could be going on, or requiring testing, that constantly being on the forums is unrealistic to expect.

We shouldn’t need or expect dev responses to everything we ask them. Professions don’t live and die by the amount of red posts on a particular topic or forum. It’s very hard to see ask the notes and discussion employees might have because of our topics on the forums, but it doesn’t mean they don’t happen.

I’m also glad that by being a follower of every profession here, I can reference this post as an explosion why other forms might not be getting responses to their questions.

Samhayn.2385:

You do know he made the changes to the necro and the mesmer at the same time.

Yes i know that and it concerns me a lot tbh. We all know how that ended…..

Robert Gee.9246:

Right now I’m waiting to get feedback from the upcoming beta weekend on Chronomancer and Reaper, but I haven’t worked on either of them specifically for several weeks.

The big question is what kind of feedback and in what quality can you expect from a beta event which lasts only ~3 days ? Even if you collect only data from the servers it is a really short time frame. I am sorry but i don´t buy that, if you are really interested in player feedback and in game data why don´t you open a test- or beta server like any other game developer to let people test classes / balance / content on a longer time frame ?

This beta weekend sounds more a marketing than a test event.

@draugris: from what we know they made huge improvements to the Revenant after the previous BWE, like adding weapon swap.

If they are really willing to listen and act on feedback like they did for Revenant, this is our best chance to make the Reaper right.

Robert Gee.9246:

Regarding general silence, it’s mostly due to how busy everything is at the moment, but also due to how a company as large as ArenaNet works. I’ll see if I can explain a few things to put the situation into context.

Right now I’m waiting to get feedback from the upcoming beta weekend on Chronomancer and Reaper, but I haven’t worked on either of them specifically for several weeks. Many of the changes you’ve seen from Gamescom were locked down weeks ago in order to assure the stability of the floor demo and the upcoming beta weekend. With a game as big as Guild Wars 2 it takes a long time (and a lot of QA effort) to make sure big events like Gamescom go smoothly. My work over the last few weeks hasn’t been for Necromancer or Mesmer and is actually been for the Warrior elite specialization (which I probably can’t say anything else about). I’m also fixing bugs on live for ALL professions this week and next which has kept me pretty busy.

Now this isn’t to say that I’m not paying attention to what’s being said or what’s been said in the past. I take notes on threads I think are relevant for when I have time to work on them. I have notes on things to improve with both axe and scepter as well as a note about skills that we could add projectile blocking to (incidentally RS 2 blocks projectiles because of a suggestion I read here). These are changes I’d like to get to and see happen, but right now iteration on Reaper and Chronomancer are probably going to take priority over that once the beta finishes.

I hope that clears up a few things. I’m not really as talkative as Roy or Karl, but I’ll see if I can show up now and then to answer the occasional polite question.

I just wish the team would stop being so afraid of overbuffing necro.

When other classes get buffs, they get HUGE broken buffs that usually have to be tuned back later and end up being still extremely powerful post-buff. Necro on the other hand is lucky to get minor QoL changes, and anything that ends up being 0.5% too good gets a 20% nerf fairly quickly.

Best example of this is the downstate necro damage which got taken from 50% down to 25%. I feel like necro having huge downed damage was a good way to balance out how terrible the downed 2 skill is. Necro has a massively telegraphed and therefore easily avoidable single target fear on a long cast time. Compare that to guardian having an instant AoE knockdown, or elementalist being able to go into mist form. Those are extremely strong downstate skills, yet no one complains because they’ve just gotten used to it and expect those classes to be strong. You brought necro downstate damage in line with other classes, but you didn’t do anything about the crowd control skill being unusably terrible to balance it out.

It seems like the people in charge of balancing necro are like the only people working on balance who actually have finesse and/or are worried about overdoing it. This is really professional, but maybe it’s time to stop being cautious and just throw out some buffs without worrying too much that they might be too good. Guardian burn damage is still too good. Everything about elementalist is still too good. The people in charge of those classes seem to be fine with them being the best at everything. Maybe it’s time to try the same tactics with necromancer balance and just let them have good things for a bit.

Robert Gee.9246:

Regarding general silence, it’s mostly due to how busy everything is at the moment, but also due to how a company as large as ArenaNet works. I’ll see if I can explain a few things to put the situation into context.

Right now I’m waiting to get feedback from the upcoming beta weekend on Chronomancer and Reaper, but I haven’t worked on either of them specifically for several weeks. Many of the changes you’ve seen from Gamescom were locked down weeks ago in order to assure the stability of the floor demo and the upcoming beta weekend. With a game as big as Guild Wars 2 it takes a long time (and a lot of QA effort) to make sure big events like Gamescom go smoothly. My work over the last few weeks hasn’t been for Necromancer or Mesmer and is actually been for the Warrior elite specialization (which I probably can’t say anything else about). I’m also fixing bugs on live for ALL professions this week and next which has kept me pretty busy.

Now this isn’t to say that I’m not paying attention to what’s being said or what’s been said in the past. I take notes on threads I think are relevant for when I have time to work on them. I have notes on things to improve with both axe and scepter as well as a note about skills that we could add projectile blocking to (incidentally RS 2 blocks projectiles because of a suggestion I read here). These are changes I’d like to get to and see happen, but right now iteration on Reaper and Chronomancer are probably going to take priority over that once the beta finishes.

I hope that clears up a few things. I’m not really as talkative as Roy or Karl, but I’ll see if I can show up now and then to answer the occasional polite question.

Yay! Scepter changes!