Guild Wars 2

Sigh/15 characters

Vizardlorde.8243:

Other than mesmers(which was improved a lot with the specialization changes)

For PVP maybe, but Mesmers in PVE are still worthless. Mesmer damage is balanced around the assumption that you’ll have three phantasms out all the time (i.e. you never shatter), and even then you’re still the lowest DPS because armor runes don’t affect illusions, and there are barely any damage multiplier traits.

With all the on-shatter traits, it’s just a spit in the face of PVE Mesmers who can’t ever make any use of them.

If they actually want to fix Mesmers, they need to decouple the Mesmer’s damage from phantasms.

Strill.2591:

Vizardlorde.8243:

Other than mesmers(which was improved a lot with the specialization changes)

For PVP maybe, but Mesmers in PVE are still worthless. Mesmer damage is balanced around the assumption that you’ll have three phantasms out all the time (i.e. you never shatter), and even then you’re still the lowest DPS because armor runes don’t affect illusions, and there are barely any damage multiplier traits.

With all the on-shatter traits, it’s just a spit in the face of PVE Mesmers who can’t ever make any use of them.

If they actually want to fix Mesmers, they need to decouple the Mesmer’s damage from phantasms.

Necros are far worse in pve than mesmers, mesmers bring reflects, condition cleanse, stability if necessary, invis for skipping, the best boon stripping, aoe pulls, and portal for absolute maximum speed runs. The damage might not be the greatest, but many record speed runs bring mesmers simply for their incredible utility and portal skipping. The class is certainly not worthless in any sense of the word.

zapv.8051:

Strill.2591:

Vizardlorde.8243:

Other than mesmers(which was improved a lot with the specialization changes)

For PVP maybe, but Mesmers in PVE are still worthless. Mesmer damage is balanced around the assumption that you’ll have three phantasms out all the time (i.e. you never shatter), and even then you’re still the lowest DPS because armor runes don’t affect illusions, and there are barely any damage multiplier traits.

With all the on-shatter traits, it’s just a spit in the face of PVE Mesmers who can’t ever make any use of them.

If they actually want to fix Mesmers, they need to decouple the Mesmer’s damage from phantasms.

Necros are far worse in pve than mesmers, mesmers bring reflects, condition cleanse, stability if necessary, invis for skipping, the best boon stripping, aoe pulls, and portal for absolute maximum speed runs. The damage might not be the greatest, but many record speed runs bring mesmers simply for their incredible utility and portal skipping. The class is certainly not worthless in any sense of the word.

I couldn’t care less about skipping. It affects a miniscule proportion of the population.

Also most of our reflects are being moved to are most useless specialization line (Inspiration). The reflect skill is literally the only worthwhile one I can see in that line.

Anchoku.8142:

This is a matter of perspective and I admit it is a blurry one with all the modifiers attached but the fact remains that Necromancer rakes no damage to health while in DS.

It is not a matter of perspective. DS is not invulnerability, end of story. DS does not provide immunity to conditions or control skills. So as long as no one recognizes this imbalance, the necro will never become on par with other classes.

DS does not scale with focused fire, or very heavy hits. Invulnerability does.
DS does not make you immune to control skills. Invulnerability does. (that is why we get stun locked, when other classes don’t)
DS does not make you immune to conditions. Invulnerability does.
DS does not allow you to heal or use utility skills. Invulnerability does.
DS requires a resource (life force). Invulnerability doesn’t.

Since we are the only class without an invulnerability mechanic, our class simply has the worst defense of all classes in the game. The whole game revolves around the 2 dodges mechanic, which is broken because of invulnerability, which is in essence an extra dodge.

So why do all other classes get 3 dodges, and we get only 2?

That is a question I would like to ask the game designers at Anet.

Strill.2591:

zapv.8051:

Strill.2591:

Vizardlorde.8243:

Other than mesmers(which was improved a lot with the specialization changes)

For PVP maybe, but Mesmers in PVE are still worthless. Mesmer damage is balanced around the assumption that you’ll have three phantasms out all the time (i.e. you never shatter), and even then you’re still the lowest DPS because armor runes don’t affect illusions, and there are barely any damage multiplier traits.

With all the on-shatter traits, it’s just a spit in the face of PVE Mesmers who can’t ever make any use of them.

If they actually want to fix Mesmers, they need to decouple the Mesmer’s damage from phantasms.

Necros are far worse in pve than mesmers, mesmers bring reflects, condition cleanse, stability if necessary, invis for skipping, the best boon stripping, aoe pulls, and portal for absolute maximum speed runs. The damage might not be the greatest, but many record speed runs bring mesmers simply for their incredible utility and portal skipping. The class is certainly not worthless in any sense of the word.

I couldn’t care less about skipping. It affects a miniscule proportion of the population.

Also most of our reflects are being moved to are most useless specialization line (Inspiration). The reflect skill is literally the only worthwhile one I can see in that line.

It doesnt matter what you personally care about. Mesmers are in one of the best positions for PvE. They are integral to organised groups and have a lot to give. Their only fault is their poor damage in PvE due to phantasm reliance. But with the chrono it looks like that issue will be somewhat resolved allowing phantasm/shatter hybrids while also keeping all the utility.

And it isnt just skipping they are good for. Its defensive utility. And yes its increased by specing into inspiration. But with the trait rework that is less necessary (glamour mastery becoming baseline).

Reflection is also crazy powerful in PVE, so mesmers have that going for them.

Death Shroud is not the cause of Necromancer problems

At the end of the day, Death shroud does make the class a little “snowball,” which means that the Class does get balanced a little weak so necromancer teams don’t snowball.

but.

Death shroud is not the reason why we have an entire trait line based on a subset of optional utility skills. Minions have nothing to do with death shroud, which makes their prominence in Death magic very puzzling.

Death shroud is not the reason why lifesteal sucks (anet couldn’t balance lifesteal in GW1 either)

True, they flip flopped constantly on life stealing in GW1. Little buff here, big nerf there. Never making it really strong, unlike Spiteful Spirit, which dominated the PVE meta since day 1. A really bizarre thing if you think about it. Here you have one necro skill in GW1 that obviously blows all others out of the water, yet they are constantly hesitant to make life stealing worth while. In the end, what we got after dozens of minor changes, was that life stealing was just “useable”. It didn’t impress anyone, but it worked, kind of.

This makes it all the more mind boggling that they still can’t get it right in GW2. Come on Anet, put some effort into it! How hard can it be to balance one mechanic? Are you really going to take 12 years to get it to work? If that is the case, you are either terrible at balancing skills, or you simply do not care.

Just one minor correction there Mad, Spiteful Spirit was probably the second most powerful skill due to the fact that it didn’t cause the mobs to scatter. Mark of Pain was actually the strongest skill in gw1. You’re pretty much spot on with the life stealing though.

Mad Queen Malafide.7512:

Here you have one necro skill in GW1 that obviously blows all others out of the water, yet they are constantly hesitant to make life stealing worth while. In the end, what we got after dozens of minor changes, was that life stealing was just “useable”. It didn’t impress anyone, but it worked, kind of.

TBH, I never liked the GW1 balance either.

You had minion builds, which steamrolled everywhere but the “hard” content that actually mattered, Spiteful Spirit builds, and builds where you used soul reaping and another classes skills.

Everything else sucked. The stuff you could do was limited and gimmicky. And all of their balance updates never changed this.

Lifesteal was always awful. Awful DPS + awful healing. The philosophy of its balance was as if 4+4 could somehow equal 10.

There were once upon a time necromancer teams called “blood spike”. But those teams relied on broken soul reaping and broken GW1 Aegis for their power. If a team of 8 players using their biggest (long cooldown) nuke all attack at the same time, and the result isn’t mathematically enough to kill anybody, the team build sucks.

Strill.2591:

zapv.8051:

Strill.2591:

Vizardlorde.8243:

Other than mesmers(which was improved a lot with the specialization changes)

For PVP maybe, but Mesmers in PVE are still worthless. Mesmer damage is balanced around the assumption that you’ll have three phantasms out all the time (i.e. you never shatter), and even then you’re still the lowest DPS because armor runes don’t affect illusions, and there are barely any damage multiplier traits.

With all the on-shatter traits, it’s just a spit in the face of PVE Mesmers who can’t ever make any use of them.

If they actually want to fix Mesmers, they need to decouple the Mesmer’s damage from phantasms.

Necros are far worse in pve than mesmers, mesmers bring reflects, condition cleanse, stability if necessary, invis for skipping, the best boon stripping, aoe pulls, and portal for absolute maximum speed runs. The damage might not be the greatest, but many record speed runs bring mesmers simply for their incredible utility and portal skipping. The class is certainly not worthless in any sense of the word.

I couldn’t care less about skipping. It affects a miniscule proportion of the population.

Also most of our reflects are being moved to are most useless specialization line (Inspiration). The reflect skill is literally the only worthwhile one I can see in that line.

Question : When was the last time you actually did a dungeon? There are basically ZERO groups that do not skip certain parts of dungeons. Eg. Arah path 1, where massive amounts of enemies get skipped. “Full clears” are the exception, not the rule. Mesmer Portal is also incredibly useful for certain “traps” people love to mess up on like the path with the exploding bombs in CoF or simply annoying areas (like the laser jumping BS in the mt. maelstrom dungeon).

Shiki.7148:

Strill.2591:

zapv.8051:

Strill.2591:

Vizardlorde.8243:

Other than mesmers(which was improved a lot with the specialization changes)

For PVP maybe, but Mesmers in PVE are still worthless. Mesmer damage is balanced around the assumption that you’ll have three phantasms out all the time (i.e. you never shatter), and even then you’re still the lowest DPS because armor runes don’t affect illusions, and there are barely any damage multiplier traits.

With all the on-shatter traits, it’s just a spit in the face of PVE Mesmers who can’t ever make any use of them.

If they actually want to fix Mesmers, they need to decouple the Mesmer’s damage from phantasms.

Necros are far worse in pve than mesmers, mesmers bring reflects, condition cleanse, stability if necessary, invis for skipping, the best boon stripping, aoe pulls, and portal for absolute maximum speed runs. The damage might not be the greatest, but many record speed runs bring mesmers simply for their incredible utility and portal skipping. The class is certainly not worthless in any sense of the word.

I couldn’t care less about skipping. It affects a miniscule proportion of the population.

Also most of our reflects are being moved to are most useless specialization line (Inspiration). The reflect skill is literally the only worthwhile one I can see in that line.

Question : When was the last time you actually did a dungeon? There are basically ZERO groups that do not skip certain parts of dungeons. Eg. Arah path 1, where massive amounts of enemies get skipped. “Full clears” are the exception, not the rule. Mesmer Portal is also incredibly useful for certain “traps” people love to mess up on like the path with the exploding bombs in CoF or simply annoying areas (like the laser jumping BS in the mt. maelstrom dungeon).

probably a pvp mesmer complaining about net being able to play his class in pve as sword focus is almost mandatory.

spoj.9672:

It doesnt matter what you personally care about. Mesmers are in one of the best positions for PvE. They are integral to organised groups and have a lot to give. Their only fault is their poor damage in PvE due to phantasm reliance. But with the chrono it looks like that issue will be somewhat resolved allowing phantasm/shatter hybrids while also keeping all the utility.

Don’t kid yourself. Being able to shatter phantasms once will barely make any difference in sustained DPS. It’ll more than likely lower your dps because after shattering, all your phantasms are adjacent to the boss, who will one-shot them on his next attack.

And it isnt just skipping they are good for. Its defensive utility. And yes its increased by specing into inspiration. But with the trait rework that is less necessary (glamour mastery becoming baseline).

Is that a joke? Lowering Feedback’s cooldown from 40 to 32 isn’t going to make up for the loss of two other reflects.

Shiki.7148:

Question : When was the last time you actually did a dungeon? There are basically ZERO groups that do not skip certain parts of dungeons. Eg. Arah path 1, where massive amounts of enemies get skipped. “Full clears” are the exception, not the rule. Mesmer Portal is also incredibly useful for certain “traps” people love to mess up on like the path with the exploding bombs in CoF or simply annoying areas (like the laser jumping BS in the mt. maelstrom dungeon).

I do dungeons every day, and have never skipped, apart from just running past unnecessary enemies. Never once have mesmer abilities been relevant to that. Frankly my Guardian is way better at it because Aegis is much more effective at blocking stray knockdowns.

Mad Queen Malafide.7512:

Anchoku.8142:

This is a matter of perspective and I admit it is a blurry one with all the modifiers attached but the fact remains that Necromancer rakes no damage to health while in DS.

It is not a matter of perspective. DS is not invulnerability, end of story. DS does not provide immunity to conditions or control skills. So as long as no one recognizes this imbalance, the necro will never become on par with other classes.

DS does not scale with focused fire, or very heavy hits. Invulnerability does.
DS does not make you immune to control skills. Invulnerability does. (that is why we get stun locked, when other classes don’t)
DS does not make you immune to conditions. Invulnerability does.
DS does not allow you to heal or use utility skills. Invulnerability does.
DS requires a resource (life force). Invulnerability doesn’t.

Since we are the only class without an invulnerability mechanic, our class simply has the worst defense of all classes in the game. The whole game revolves around the 2 dodges mechanic, which is broken because of invulnerability, which is in essence an extra dodge.

So why do all other classes get 3 dodges, and we get only 2?

That is a question I would like to ask the game designers at Anet.

Just a counter to your arguments : DS have a longer uptime than any invul skill.
Personnally, my issues with DS are more simple :

First, they want DS to be our bread and butter. If you look closely, you see that DS is our DPS mean, our support mean and our defense mean. That’s way too much to force in a single mechanism.

Second, The way DS skills are designed. It’s neither mele nor range, it’s in between. Principal issue with this is that we end up not being good at mele nor at range.

Third, Piercing effect on life Blast. Piercing is probably the worst effect to hit multiple target. It’s the same root as my second point, DS is a mid range transformation.

Forth, DS fight with other mechanism like siphon. It’s not a secret DS negate them and for all we know they are just here as a bit more DPS because as sustain means, they don’t fit with the profession mechanism. Should they remove the damage part of siphons, they would end up totally useless.

Fifth, Life blast a single DS skill have at least 4 specifics traits supporting it. So to make use of this skill, you have to go in DS and actually use this skill (even if this skill is cluncky) to make use of these specifics traits.

PS.: Strill, You should look closely at the futur inspiration traitline. You should be able to understand that this traitline will be very very usefull in dungeon. Illusionary inspiration being a free share of all your boons everytime you create a fantasm. Group cleanse everytime you use a heal skill or cast a mantra, distorsion on your fanstasm when you create them… This traitline will be mandatory…

Dadnir.5038:

Just a counter to your arguments : DS have a longer uptime than any invul skill.

But long DS shroud times are not the effect of one skill but multiple skills.

Honestly if minions didn’t also suck, DS wouldn’t be such a big deal.

All the necro’s major abilities:
Minions: Weak , not enough variety or total numbers, and stupid

Life Steal: You get better healing from Mango pie :-/

Death Shroud: started out as slightly OP, then after successive nerfs is now more a cause for complaint than a reason to choose necro.

I wouldn’t be complaining as much about DS, if they changed it back to what it was on release. When damage didn’t spill over from DS into our actual life pool, DS did allow us to do what other classes do with invulnerability, kinda (survive single damage spikes).

This would solve at least one of the issues.

Mad Queen Malafide.7512:

I wouldn’t be complaining as much about DS, if they changed it back to what it was on release. When damage didn’t spill over from DS into our actual life pool, DS did allow us to do what other classes do with invulnerability, kinda (survive single damage spikes).

This would solve at least one of the issues.

A better comparison is actually aegis. And it wouldn’t really solve anything. Give us a little bit more survivability but not a whole lot.

cause of all necro problems = we are cc magnets and we can’t do crap about it but for one godkitten stab skill in ds, and some stun breaks, leaving us with little utility. now there is talk of giving us shouts… just … can’t … find the motivation to play. the powerful will keep getting more powerful while we stay mediocre at best. So freakin bored with this unchanging power structure.

New Necromancer shouts.

“Curses, foiled again!”
“Curses, if it wasn’t for you meddling kids and your dog, I would have gotten away with it!”
“I’ll get you next time, Gadget… next time!”
“Would you do it for a Scoobie Snack?”
“Think, girls, think, except for you, Bubbles!”

The more I think about it: Minions are the source of Most of Neromancer’s Problems

1. Minions get their own trait line, which kills non minion build diversity. Just adding minions as utilities doesn’t work because you need the minion traits. Adding death magic without full minions is a waste of traits.

2. Minion AI is horrible.

3. The minions stand in AoE and die very fast

4. Necromancer’s finishers are tied to minions, but because minions don’t work, neither do the finishers.

5. Shadow fiend is a very poor skill

6. Minion damage is part of the Necromancer’s “total power budget”. Weapons have to be balanced with minion damage (and utility, such as finishers) taken into effect, and thus get balanced weaker by themselves (this is also an issue for Mesmer and ranger)

7. Necromancer weapons have no synergy with minions. (anti synergy in the case of staff as tossing marks will not trigger minion attack AI)

8. Minions have nothing to do with death shroud (no synergy there) and get destroyed by lich form and plague.

9. Minions die when you get in the water.

Minions aren’t the source, they just have a bunch of their own problems. Nothing you listed is actually affecting the rest of the Necromancer except for minion traits clogging things up a bit, which as long as they don’t put DN/Necromantic corruption in the same tier will be fine.

nekretaal.6485:

The more I think about it: Minions are the source of Most of Neromancer’s Problems

1. Minions get their own trait line, which kills non minion build diversity. Just adding minions as utilities doesn’t work because you need the minion traits. Adding death magic without full minions is a waste of traits.

2. Minion AI is horrible.

3. The minions stand in AoE and die very fast

4. Necromancer’s finishers are tied to minions, but because minions don’t work, neither do the finishers.

5. Shadow fiend is a very poor skill

6. Minion damage is part of the Necromancer’s “total power budget”. Weapons have to be balanced with minion damage (and utility, such as finishers) taken into effect, and thus get balanced weaker by themselves (this is also an issue for Mesmer and ranger)

7. Necromancer weapons have no synergy with minions. (anti synergy in the case of staff as tossing marks will not trigger minion attack AI)

8. Minions have nothing to do with death shroud (no synergy there) and get destroyed by lich form and plague.

9. Minions die when you get in the water.

Well if you go for blood magic and death magic you can heal your minions in deathshroud and give them protection when you exit. Also axe and staff do synegize with the minions by giving vulnerability and using poison field for minion blasts and the staff blast for minion poison fields. But outside soloing open world content minions are a joke like you said.