Guild Wars 2

Because its balanced that the skill which on entry has a 10 second cooldown only applies it on it ending. /a-net logic

Oh wow, again completely uncalled for, thanks ArenaNet.

I guess it makes sense in regards to cooldown consistency, but still: really unnecessary nerf.

flow.6043:

I guess it makes sense in regards to cooldown consistency, but still: really unnecessary nerf.

How about, oh you know, making it actually just show the on entry cooldown, exit just exiting the shroud not resetting it. Hell if they wanted to nerf it just add like 4~5s to the cooldown, would end up with same 10s cd on exit for most builds without nerfing defensive use of it.

Its a bit obvious that this was a bug. It has nothing to do with nerfing us, it was a bug fix.

This was a bug fix primarily. It is one that hurts us, sure, but it’s still a bug fix.

Wasnt it always like this? :/

Said since beta, only having the CD on entering DS would allow much more fun & skilled play, it would also make some of our ‘support’ viable.

Because we don’t gain life force from dying monsters in DS, it would add skill to flip out just as the monsters die.

Deathly Invigoration – could be so cool! But this ‘new CD on exit’ means, it’s less viable to actually be in DS rather than just flash.
Also running into the center of danger to help a buddy, then force yourself to give up your main defense for a new CD is just stupid.
There’s a CD on entry so it’s not like we can spam/abuse it. It’s not like ya’s haven’t thrown extra CD’s on other DS traits if you feel it could be too quick.

Tho, if your trying to fix negative play style of waiting for lifeforce to expire to get out of DS being better than acutally pressing it… Not sure DS4 heal with transfusion stops healing when you let DS run out, allowing it to be ‘skillfully’ used as your LF is low to heal yourself. (Unless fixed and I haven’t noticed, haven’t tested since back)

Sure, it might be a bug fix. However, It wasn’t really that big of a problem since you would always be at 0% life force anyway. Having the cooldown ‘bugged’ also increased the skill cap, as there were more ways of using it. Anyway, this is pretty much a deathblow to any dagger/warhorn necromancers in WvW zergs.

This nerf also doesn’t make any sense whatsoever given what they were trying to do (but failed so miserably at) last feature patch:

Our focus for necromancers in this balance update has been on improving their survivability through utilities and traits (…) Along with weapon skill updates, your utility skills have been updated to provide more survivability over time.

I think necromancers in general will never rise from their dead-state in this game

The recent direction of Necromancer balancing is very concerning in that it seems to be deviating from the very clearly stated purpose of Necromancer not only at launch, but also only a couple months ago and what they in the last feature patch. It seems they are changing Necromancer based off the reactionary feedback of other professions (because they got nerfed and realize they’re not all powerful) or out of willfully limited deliberation.

I thought it was clearly stated almost a year plus ago that exiting death shroud early was to be punished, while allowing it to expire/waste lifeforce is rewarded at the expense of starting back from zero lifeforce and having to restart its generation from scratch (I could be wrong). If it wasn’t clearly stated this was a good way for death shroud to work.

Why?

Because based off Anet’s own design philosophy, Death Shroud is supposed to be the ultimate attrition ability in combination with a Necro’s “zone of control” and our access to stability, boons, blocks, evasions, invulnerability and escape is limited because of this. The problem with Death Shroud has always been that the following:

a) It cannot absorb infinite damage and thereby does not scale with numbers of enemies like blocks and invulnerability do. This is especially bad since we lack escapes and when being focused we are forced to take any and all damage and crowd control save for dodge use. Other class attrition can not only absorb infinite damage for a duration, but can be paired with leaps and escapes to reset the fight. The result is Death Shroud is inferior against spikes than other more common mitigators.
b) Lifeforce regeneration can easily deplete or be seriously hampered by the realities of combat, leaving Death Shroud inaccessible unlike blocks, invulnerability etc. that are based on cooldowns only.
c) Death Shroud cooldowns, especially at 10 seconds, artificially hinder the flow of death shroud for attrition by blocking access to Death Shroud even though we may have successfully generated loads of lifeforce. We are left sitting ducks with no escape, blocks, invulnerability, you get the picture…

All the above means a Necromancer’s attrition can easily fall flat seconds into a fight where if you believe design philosophy, it should outlast the attrition of most other classes depending on each players defensive/offensive investment.

Nerfing the cooldown of Death Shroud on expire now adds extra seconds of exposure to health damage, with absolutely no counters, in all game modes, period. Sustain outside of DS has been mostly nerfed and now DS power builds will be nerfed both in sustain and DPS.

The only upside is that we Necromancers no longer have to think about whether to leave death shroud early or let it expire, thereby having it ready for re-entry before getting DPSed downed after some emergency LF gain. Now it doesn’t matter and those situations where we managed to pop back into DS will now just end with us downing. I guess Unholy Sanctuary gets indirectly buffed with this as carefully limiting your time in DS means extra lifeforce for it to have stored. Except with the 30 second cooldown you will only be able to do this once and then hit another 10 second DS wall. Unholy Sanctuary will still perform worse than pre-patch which seems to be common with most Necro changes direct or indirect these days.

My questions to Anet are the following:

“Does the stated design philosophy for Necromancers still stand? Has it changed? Is there even one being followed now?”

Any Necromancer experienced or not will tell you that based on your design philosophy it was logically expected that Necro changes would have made Death Shroud more versatile and lasting during combat, found a way to fix glaring problems with its lacking attrition in some cases, buffed Blood Magic more than it has been and not nerfed highly specialized/investment heavy support skills like Well of Blood etc.

“Why after more than two years are most Necros still typing out more or less the same logical proposals/changes that make sense and are in line with?”

Honestly there has been a good amount of movement in this direction. Unfortunately most of it was limited, has been reserved/nerfed since, or has been made unviable due to other skill/trait nerfs without proper rebalancing. Death Shroud attrition has been nerfed and it’s only true attrition buff to date is Unholy Sanctuary. The issues with DS failings and successes should be so obvious from simple play that it’s beyond me that the single greatest change to Death Shroud from this patch and the major feature pack was giving a grandmaster trait added functionality a cooldown down nerf today…

“If the changes and recent nerfs fit you’re design philosophy that you yourself stated, can you please explain it to us in detail how they do?”

It’s really hard to see it from here.

The timing (mere weeks after the Spectral Armour and Last Gasp buffs, which let zerker necros run around with higher Protection uptime and lots of life force) makes me pretty certain that this WAS a nerf, not a bug fix. Patch notes certainly don’t imply that this was a bug fix.

Regardless, whether or not it was a bug, it was totally uncalled for. Not having the recharge when running out of life force allowed us to manage our cooldowns more effectively (eg. activating DS to soak up incoming damage, then when it ran out using Spectral Armour or Locust Swarm to build it back up and going back into DS again, rather than potentially wasting life force by activating SA before going into DS), use DS as a clutch mechanism to avoid big bursts, and preventing us from being locked out of DS skills for more time than necessary.

It needed thought and good timing to use the lack of cooldown to good effect without dying, and didn’t really give you that much of an advantage. This nerf was totally uncalled for.

1) It was not a bug fix. Every transform skill currently in the game triggers the cooldown the moment you entet the transform. Lich Form has a CD of 180s, once it expires, the CD on the bar is at 160s. Same goes for Plague.

2) Why is DS the only transform skill to get all the restrictions of Transform skills (No access to utlility or heal skills, no weapon swaps) and yet gets further more on top (no healing), while not even getting the benefit of CD starting on enter? Tripple punishment for using class mechanics? YES PLEASE!

3) Gameplay wise it does make a huge impact. I Usually tended to let DS expire naturally, using lifeblast untill its empty, because i was able to use Axe #2 afterwards or any spectral skill and to be sure: I can use DS again right after, even if just for little, the 12% DS is enough for #5 or #3 or a well timed #1 if the enemy was out of our rather small damage range.

Furthermore it gives a huge window of opporturnity for a counter attack, the enemy now basicly always has a 10 second window to CC and burst us to death once we should ever leave DS. Before we had to make a choice, quit early, with CD, but save some Lifeforce, or let it run out, leaving us with no Lifeforce, but also no CD.

Thief for example is the same thing: they only get a revealed debuff if they attack from stealth. If they let it expire they can stealth again without punishment, they can freely choose this. This enables another way of playing and it does feel very rewarding.

Furthermore, facing our current sustain problems this was another nail to the grave. They push our entire sustain and defense mechanics into deathshroud, and now they keep on nerfing DS.

All I’m gonna say is:
“Let’s give them more sustain guys!”
“Yeah! Let’s do it!”
“Let’s start by messing with Deathshroud!”
“Cool, they’re gonna LOVE that!”

Shake my head.
A nice kick between the legs.

Good thing they came to fixing a thing that has become so interwoven with playing a necromancer?

Wait, so can someone explain the nerf? Or is it basically letting ds expire and manually exiting now have the same cooldown essentially nerfing the living kitten out of almost all spectral builds…. nope all builds. Please tell me I’m wrong.

NeXeD.3042:

Wait, so can someone explain the nerf? Or is it basically letting ds expire and manually exiting now have the same cooldown essentially nerfing the living kitten out of almost all spectral builds…. nope all builds. Please tell me I’m wrong.

Yes this is all a just a nightmare..
Wake up.. wake up.. oh god.. please..wake…….up…

Its not a nerf, and who actually routinely sat in DS so long that it fully ran out of LF and then had enough LF in the next few seconds that it would make a difference? It was a bug fix to something that was obviously a bug. Death Shroud was always supposed to have a 10s CD between uses, this was simply a special case because it has some coding from transforms that gave it this functionality.

Is it a small nerf? Sure. But stop acting like ANet has it out for you personally. It was not an intended function, so it was removed.

The zerker build I had been using for a while now relied on using my lifeforce the immediately having more after using it all up and being able to re enter deathshroud…. it may be a bug fix but a nerf is a nerf is a nerf. How come we are only seeing it get fixed now?

I think they did it to force people into using US.

NeXeD.3042:

The zerker build I had been using for a while now relied on using my lifeforce the immediately having more after using it all up and being able to re enter deathshroud…. it may be a bug fix but a nerf is a nerf is a nerf. How come we are only seeing it get fixed now?

I think they did it to force people into using US.

Or they finally after 2 long year maybe they are giving the profession try.
I hope it’s that, and they discover thre are so many underused traits and mechanics in this profession they are like.. wow.. i didn;t know necromancer had siphon and signets.. and healing.. too bad non of them work together making the profession pretty niche.. hence the underwhelming community interaction and always seeing the same people complaining..

think i got it about right there ^^

Merlin Dyfed Avalon.5046:

NeXeD.3042:

The zerker build I had been using for a while now relied on using my lifeforce the immediately having more after using it all up and being able to re enter deathshroud…. it may be a bug fix but a nerf is a nerf is a nerf. How come we are only seeing it get fixed now?

I think they did it to force people into using US.

Or they finally after 2 long year maybe they are giving the profession try.
I hope it’s that, and they discover thre are so many underused traits and mechanics in this profession they are like.. wow.. i didn;t know necromancer had siphon and signets.. and healing.. too bad non of them work together making the profession pretty niche.. hence the underwhelming community interaction and always seeing the same people complaining..

think i got it about right there ^^

LOL

I think this is it.. the devs finally started playing the Necro!

While I did notice the “bug” I can not say I took advantage of it too often – Mostly a condi player always starving for LF

Taking away options is NEVER a good thing – Like switching weapons in DS

Yeah, let’s fix the bugs that may help the necro, even in a small way and has become the norm as it was like that from beta. This is much better than actually fixing the bugs or the gameplay problems that we’ve been asking and begging get looked at. Seems like perfectly sound logic to me

I get that it was a bug. What needs to be understood though is that this skill has functioned this way for two bloody years, and many of us have gotten used to playing with it this way. This bug fix took too long, plain and simple. It should have been fixed before the players grew comfortable with it, or just left alone because it’s honestly not that big of a deal. How many of us are actually running DS focused builds that fully took advantage of this? Does the gameplay balance achieved from this change outweigh the negative impact that it has on players who now have to un-learn a gameplay pattern that they’re used to?

I think we deserve a mulligan on this one. This bug being fixed makes the game better for nobody, and worse for a very select few running an already-unpopular build.

As i am playing power spec-ed DS flash build that depends on skipping in and out of it as much as possible for the stability retaliation and flury uptime to be able to actually get three hits off with dagger auto..getting the procs, heals,cleanse..you name it..
I’d say it’s a pretty big deal.

but what do i know about what is going on in the minds of the people creating this profession..
So far I’m totally confuzed as what they want the necromancer to be(come), all i have see so far is nerfs and balance that provides a (nerf) change in numbers towards an new introduced gimmic every 6 months doing the profession no good.

Well… the thing is… in WvW, when you get focused and you enter DS, you tank the incoming damage… and in many cases all DS gets depleted, completely. This means that deathshroud would be on about a 5 second cooldown now. You could come out, use Spectral Wall, Walk or Armor and re-enter in no time, and continue tanking. If not, you are probably kiting away while recuperating your life force. With this, it will make focus fire harder to deal with, in my opinion. Sure, it was a bug, and yes, it was a nerf, but that doesn’t help the “We’ll give Necros more sustain” that they talked about.
I rarely complain, but I think this is very silly.

This absolutely is driving me crazy….I find myself fighting to make any kind of intended attrition necro build in this game. I find myself fighting to try to make a viable life shroud build. I’m constantly fighting my own class to do what it was supposed to do by design because of decisions like this.

When is the last time we actually had a dev post in this forum? Is it possible we can have some form of state of the necro discussion? Some dev mind set on the necro post? Some something to detail what the purpose of the last patch was this update and some idea about what our REAL intended future is?

There is a complete and utter mis-alignment with the community and the development team on this class in particular, I don’t know how to really verbalize this in a way that is attention getting considering I won’ t be the obnoxious one that you generally see on the forums but in a very real and sincere way we need some very specific attention. I understand that life shroud is a complex damage type but there are a myriad of ways to make this work and not break balance elsewhere (im thinking about the potential fears around minions being overbuffed). The same goes for giving us some form of attrition and having life shroud. The same goes for many things about us. We have had multiple posts with many suggestions that were excellent…whats going on???

Some very good points by Brujeria.7536. Not gonna quote the post cause I basically agree with the whole of it, but I’d like to emphasize how much I HATE the inconsistencies in this game about how similar skills work in entirely different ways! It’s not just the transform skills, like Brujeria.7536 mentions. It’s how some skills with no cast time can be cast during other skills, while others (eg ele’s Magnetic Leap, or Corrupt Boon before the tooltip fix) can’t, how some skills require facing while other’s don’t, and neither fact is documented, how different skills have different aftercasts (also undocumented), it’s all very messy and sloppily designed. I get that some of these differences are for balance reasons, but I ask: wouldn’t it be better to change the core functionality of the skill if it’s overpowered or underpowered, rather than fiddle with its undocumented features?

Bhawb.7408:

Its not a nerf, and who actually routinely sat in DS so long that it fully ran out of LF and then had enough LF in the next few seconds that it would make a difference? It was a bug fix to something that was obviously a bug. Death Shroud was always supposed to have a 10s CD between uses, this was simply a special case because it has some coding from transforms that gave it this functionality.

Is it a small nerf? Sure. But stop acting like ANet has it out for you personally. It was not an intended function, so it was removed.

Sorry Bhawb, you’re wrong. If it was a bug, then, like Brujeria said, the fact that the cooldown doesn’t begin when we ENTER DS should also be a bug. The timing makes it obvious: they overbuffed Spectral Armour (even though it was already good and nobody asked them to buff it), and now they’re messing around with random things to compensate. It’s a kittening mess.

That isn’t a bug because it is not a true transform, they only borrowed some transform coding because it is partly a transform. If it was a full transform it would kill all our minions, so if you want it to have all the properties of transforms people are not going to like the consequences.

Inconsistencies happen because of how they coded the game. Same as why some skills that have no apparent projectiles can still be reflected (right now you can still reflect Mesmer staff 2, despite it having nothing to do with projectiles, for example), same as plenty of other things. Yet they try to fix an inconsistency, like DS having different CDs depending on how you leave it, and we moan about it.

It is supposed to have a 10s CD, that’s all the fix is about. It has nothing to do with nerfing us at all, that is only a consequence, not a cause.

Bweaty.9187:

Said since beta, only having the CD on entering DS would allow much more fun & skilled play…

Agreed.

I also disagree with those claiming its a bug fix. Patch notes usually identify bug fixes as such. This was a balance patch (i.e. nerf). It is one that makes sense and I’m not really bothered by it, but the fact that they went out of their way to make necro’s just a little bit less capable despite the many, many legitimate problems with the class does bother me a lot.

Bhawb.7408:

That isn’t a bug because it is not a true transform, they only borrowed some transform coding because it is partly a transform. If it was a full transform it would kill all our minions, so if you want it to have all the properties of transforms people are not going to like the consequences.

Inconsistencies happen because of how they coded the game. Same as why some skills that have no apparent projectiles can still be reflected (right now you can still reflect Mesmer staff 2, despite it having nothing to do with projectiles, for example), same as plenty of other things. Yet they try to fix an inconsistency, like DS having different CDs depending on how you leave it, and we moan about it.

It is supposed to have a 10s CD, that’s all the fix is about. It has nothing to do with nerfing us at all, that is only a consequence, not a cause.

And thats why everyone is upset about it. It cripples a bit more the necromancer, now that we just received a nerf not too long ago.
They should have fixed it on the upcoming balance class fix instead of now.

It may turn out to be a pretty major nerf for some builds, like the new berserker necro with lots of spectral skills that people have been running. Usually powermancers I meet in pvp melt instantly, but I’ve seen a couple of surprisingly durable ones lately and I was impressed. I don’t think they were that OP though, to warrant a nerf 2 weeks after they first appeared!

Besides, the point is they did it because a buff that nobody had asked for (Spectral Armour recharge) turned out to be better than they anticipated, so instead they nerf something that affects everyone, whether they use Spectral Armour/Last Gasp or not! It’s a terrible approach to balancing! It’s like the nerfs to our bleed stacks after Dhuumfire was introduced all over again! Undeserved nerfs to counterbalance unneeded and unasked for buffs, hurting build variety and lowering the skill ceiling of the class!

This has to be one of the stupidest nerfs I have ever seen ANet do. For the people who are saying that it was a bug, there is no way ANet did not know this for over 2 years. If this has been a bug for over 2 years, ANet should have fixed this first, instead of fixing their tooltips for 2 years. They are penalizing necromancers who stay in death shroud. It does not matter if you are a death shroud build or not, they still penalize you for staying in it longer. One of the biggest benefits of death shroud was the cooldown mechanics. If you were a good player and stayed in it, then you can reuse it without a cooldown if you can get it back up. People who complained about this, obviously were either trolls, or people who need to get better at the game. Now mesmers can instantly recover their clones by replacing the oldest ones, so now they can always have clones with full health. I honestly do not understand ANet’s logic with this game, but I do not see how that is fair, but “Fixing” a feature on the necromancer that has been in play for over 2 years is.

Lopez, it was not a bug though. Death Shroud is considered a transformation skill. All transformation skills work the same. And if it was a “bug” then what you are saying is for over 2 years, even more because of the alpha, then instead of fixing it, ANet was fixing tooltips since it was a higher priority. That is highly unlikely. It is a huge nerf for the class, not bug fix. I can see them increasing the death shroud time, but changing the entire mechanics is a horrible nerf.

Bhawb.7408:

Its a bit obvious that this was a bug. It has nothing to do with nerfing us, it was a bug fix.

I dont disagree with you… but do you ever remove your lips from anet’s hind-quarters?

Lopez.7369:

There are plenty of bugs the developers are aware of and don’t do anything about.

Ineptitude thus getting the boot or ignorance and lacking qa thus the entire company being sued for selling a not fit for purpose product or plain playing misinformation/lack of knowledge thus avoiding most of the responsibility.
I dont think that the devs would ever admit to the first 2 because of the negative effects it would have.

Come on… People, you make it sound as if we are being antagonized on purpose…

I even doubt those in charge of fixing bugs even relate to the balancing people – this was a bug, it has been squashed… For the worst of us? Yes! But don’t make it sound as if the Balancing Team is now sipping a Martini and laughing at our pain… Why else design 8 classes if you are constantly antagonizing one?

Be constructive, and don’t make everything sound as if the apocalypse is neigh…

well this and the last update shows that they are never going to address the problems with necro especially when their idea of increasing our attrition is to nerf everything to do with it they may as well delete the class. not to mention they said they feel the necro is in a good place in the streams.. just wtf

I put my necro on hiatus because of the crap changes, and then this happens which wrecks every build I’ve ever liked to use. They really have no idea of how to play this class. This is over.

GG. This is why I hate nerfs. Their idea of “nerf” is to destroy things.

only just discovered a tanky build that can survive double hambow for quite a while and even kill one of them lol no longer functions… the moment ds runs out its gg in all team fights necro is now left with nothing to protect its self =\ being able to pop a spectral skill build up some lf and jump back into ds with life siphon usually got me past the bursts allowing me to heal up and regain some control, now its ds out bam smash gg no re because everyone waits for you to leave death shroud to burst you down

Bhawb.7408:

Its not a nerf, and who actually routinely sat in DS so long that it fully ran out of LF and then had enough LF in the next few seconds that it would make a difference? It was a bug fix to something that was obviously a bug. Death Shroud was always supposed to have a 10s CD between uses, this was simply a special case because it has some coding from transforms that gave it this functionality.

Is it a small nerf? Sure. But stop acting like ANet has it out for you personally. It was not an intended function, so it was removed.

Yes, it prolly was a bug fix.
But I did, I did exactly what you mentioned sat in DS for very long periods of time, the no CD on complete depletion has saved me numorous times. One press of SA, one hit on me and I could go back in. I had tons of sustain in my spectral build, and it was the only thing keeping me alive.

Kahrgan.7401:

Bhawb.7408:

Its a bit obvious that this was a bug. It has nothing to do with nerfing us, it was a bug fix.

I dont disagree with you… but do you ever remove your lips from anet’s hind-quarters?

Bhawb always plays devils advocate (No behind adoring going on.)

I’ve used this probably as much as anyone else, and it doesn’t feel like that big of a deal to me. Some big overreactions in here. Just use your cooldowns wisely and you won’t notice anything.

the part that irks me the most is the fact that these bug fixes always seem to be the ones that apply a fix for something that benefits the character. Whereas the real nasty bugs are the ones that players are asking to get fix are the ones that never get fixed (unless its a bug with their gem store of course).

Bhawb.7408:

Its not a nerf

Is it a small nerf? Sure. But stop acting like ANet has it out for you personally. It was not an intended function, so it was removed.

wat.

i dont see how it matters at all if it’s a bugfix or not. It’s a nerf. Period.
They turned unintended bugs into intended game mechanics before (like when they kittened up our weapon switch), so saying that it was a bug doesnt justify this nerf at all.

Anet shouldve removed the cooldown-refresh when you leave DS via hotkey instead.

Not a big deal, and no matter how you slice it, the necromancer, both power and condition will be more powerful than most other classes in PvP and WvW zergs.

This will impact WvW roamers and zerg(ers).

It was a design oversight/bug. Wasnt necessary to fix though. Normally things like this would bother me but i dont play anymore so its just like “meh expected”.

Anyone who keeps saying this isn’t a big deal has clearly not noticed how unbelievably awesome it was to use a full ds bar, pop a spectral or last gasp and be able to instantly reenter ds for that little bit of sustain we need or even to keep offensive pressure up with lifeblasts, or an extra fear, or an extra tele, or an extra immobilize. ..

I still do not see how people still believe the mechanics were a bug. I also do not see how people still do not see this as a big deal. For people with spectral builds (like myself) if you have spectral armor on and pop death shroud and if you are fighting someone, IF THEY ARE SMART they would stop attacking when you see the buff on, but clearly people love to troll and complain about how op it is when they should learn how to play better. There has been plenty of times I have faced smart players and when they see me have spectral armor on, they immobilize me, knock me down, and do every which way they can stall me until the buff ran out. But once again ANet sees it as “Unbalanced” since too many people “including them” do not know how to play their own game.

RashanDale.3609:

i dont see how it matters at all if it’s a bugfix or not. It’s a nerf. Period.
They turned unintended bugs into intended game mechanics before (like when they kittened up our weapon switch), so saying that it was a bug doesnt justify this nerf at all.

Anet shouldve removed the cooldown-refresh when you leave DS via hotkey instead.

If you aren’t used to me completely contradicting myself then you haven’t read my posts much :P

The reason they changed it was because it made no sense that you’d have different CDs depending on how it was used. And no, removing the CD is absolutely awful. It allows you to only be barred from DS according to how quickly you can build LF, meaning if you can build enough LF you can be in DS effectively 100% of the time.

Kahrgan.7401:

I dont disagree with you… but do you ever remove your lips from anet’s hind-quarters?

When the collective forum remove their hands from each other’s dongers then I won’t have to be the only one applying logic instead of acting like ANet has some personal grudge against them. Also as someone else said, I always try to present the side of the story that everyone else is neglecting, regardless of what my personal opinion is. I’m actually very critical of ANet when its fitting if you listen to the podcast.