Guild Wars 2

I want to open a discussion about our weapons. If you saw or took part in the trait discussion, I’d like for this to be similar, though it will obviously be structured just a little differently. Also, this will go into a BoC Podcast, planned for this upcoming Sunday, December 8, at 2pm PST.

If you can, for each weapon you talk about, list the overall “theme” you think they have, how well they achieve that theme, the skills you like/dislike, and how you would go about fixing any issues you have with each weapon. Also, please include the reasons as to why you think what you do.

As last time, please keep it civil, and format it loosely like so:

What weapons do you really like?
Which of our weapons do you really like, and why do you like them? These would be the weapons you just love, and feel are competitive choices in any build that could use them.

For example I love Dagger off-hand. It just feels right in any build. A more defensive-based condition weapon, it has a blind, condition removal via transferring, and strong AoE weakness, all from the versatile and safe range of 900 units. There isn’t a single thing I don’t love about this weapon, it has specific uses, and does them all well. No build cannot find a use for this weapon.

What weapons do you almost like, or like conceptually, but feel they have issues performing as well as they should?
This would be weapons that you like, but have issues with. Or weapons that you almost like, or like the idea behind it, but don’t like how it works right now, or how the idea has translated in game.

For example I love the idea of Focus. A strong power weapon, it has good damage, offensive support, and also sets up bursts really well. Synergizes with any power-based weapon set.

However, I feel it falls a bit short. Regen doesn’t really fit that well on an offensive support weapon, in fact I feel like every Regen bounce is a wasted bounce, compared to more Vuln stacks; especially when regen is a condition spewed out by a lot of traits and weapons already. Also, Spinal Shivers loses half of its usefulness against most bosses. Even in PvP, Spinal Shivers falls short because of the insane cast time.

Good weapon in idea, but falls short a bit. I’d like to see the 4 skill change to apply some other boon (might, maybe?), and the 5 skill have its cast time lowered slightly. Alternately, instead of making the 5 skill easier to land, reward skillful usage more, and give it CD reduction for each boon removed. If I remove a boon with the skill, make it come back up a bit faster.

What weapons do you feel fall short?
This would be weapons that you just plain feel don’t live up to their design, or just aren’t designed well.

For example: Axe. Its a mess of a skill. Somewhat weak single target burst mixed with sustain, PBAoE control/retal that fits better in a bunker build, vuln stacking on a very weak 1 skill. Its just… badly designed.

I’d like to see it changed to this:

1) Chain skill, the first hit is the same as now, the second chain is a very mini-version of the current #2, maybe a bit weaker, but cleaving in a small area.

2) Completely redesign the ability to be a frontal cone that deals high damage. A slowish moving “wave” type attack that starts at you, then moves out to its max range. Should be fast enough that it wouldn’t be avoided “on accident”, but slow enough that if it isn’t set up at all someone could dodge if they are paying attention and at range (if they are right in melee range, it should be impossible to dodge by reaction).

3) Same skill, its the only good one of the set, why change it?

So again: talk about what weapons you like, what weapons you almost like but think need improvement, and weapons you don’t like. Make sure to expand upon what you say. If you need to compare to other professions, please do so constructively.

Please keep it civil, and open. This isn’t the place to lament how bad we are, this isn’t a place to flame ANet, or any such thing, but have a good discussion, and one that ANet can look at for ideas.

Thank you for your time and input.

Now that Putrid Mark is officially nerfed, and they are gung ho to nerf Mark of Blood, the other staff abilities need to be buffed. Staff was never overpowered on it’s own, and now it’s weaker and offers almost negligable support to a team. We have no other team support weapons.

Ax 1 needs to be a cone attack. It does comparable damage to guardian staff 1, yet it’s single target….
Ax 2 needs to be a 130 radius AE attack, centered on the target.
This would solve the lack of cleave issue.

1. Staff should have a perma shadow-scythe
2. #1 should be a ranged slash attack by swinging the staff like a wicked scythe.
3. It shoots piercing shadow scythes (like focus 4)
4. Make it stronger/more power oriented.

Toad.8043:

Now that Putrid Mark is officially nerfed, and they are gung ho to nerf Mark of Blood, the other staff abilities need to be buffed. Staff was never overpowered on it’s own, and now it’s weaker and offers almost negligable support to a team. We have no other team support weapons.

How would you like to see staff changed?

Personally, I’d happily take a nerf to Putrid Mark (again) if they were to restore at least 3 conditions removed from my allies.

axe needs to be reworked into a melee weapon, as it will be the only way it will get a needed damage increase.
staff is interesting, as the idea of ‘marks’ just doesn’t sit well with me on what i know gw1 necro was. it is definitely a condition weapon, but for some reason i wish it wasn’t. (mainly because necro has no ranged dps at all excluding DS)

Bhawb.7408:

Toad.8043:

Now that Putrid Mark is officially nerfed, and they are gung ho to nerf Mark of Blood, the other staff abilities need to be buffed. Staff was never overpowered on it’s own, and now it’s weaker and offers almost negligable support to a team. We have no other team support weapons.

How would you like to see staff changed?

Personally, I’d happily take a nerf to Putrid Mark (again) if they were to restore at least 3 conditions removed from my allies.

I would like to see something more interesting done with the auto-attack. Pierce and Life Force is great but… it’s kind of plain. I understand auto-attacks are not meant to be better than skills with cooldowns, but as it stands, staff really only exists for skills 2-5. I would gladly give up the pierce for a faster projectile with some additional effect.

Axe is a mess as a whole, and needs some serious redesign. As far as what you have suggested, I’m not sure the second skill in your suggested Axe auto could be coded to work, and it seems odd. Essentially, you generate an AoE field around a target that follows them as they moves, and that just doesn’t seem like something reasonable to expect, given I can’t think of any skills that do that.

In regards to the focus, I feel like it could use a pull similar to Binding Blade/Into the Void, as we have few ways of concentrating enemies in one spot to eat our AoE.

Staff:
I think it would be reasonable to increase the coefficient on staff 1 by 5% or maybe even 10%. Perhaps the trait that increases mark damage by 10% could be changed to increase staff damage by 10%. Given that marks don’t work at all on downed players, objects, several world bosses…. and now with the big change to putrid mark, staff 1 needs to be stronger.

I would also like to see Anet consider adding 1 or 2 second torment to staff 1. I think this should also be done via a trait. I have no idea what trait it would replace. This could be a big deal (gives necro an additional cover condition that does decent damage, which could easily mess with the spvp meta). It might need to be a grandmaster trait.

Mark of Blood and Chillblains should do perhaps 5% more damage.

The numbers of course, are somewhat facetious. Anet’s internal testing would end up dictating what they could actually be.

That’s enough about staff. I thought of 3 other things.

1: Spear as a terrestial weapon.
2: Trident as a terrestial weapon.
3: Terrestial life blast transferring 1 condition like the underwater version does. This would give condition necro’s a reason to use lifeblast, while compensating all necro’s for giving up stun breaks and cures when we use our “defense” ability.

From the viewpoint of a power necro:

Which weapons do you really like
None. I am not being negative but do think all weapons I use regularly could all benefit from some tweaks

What weapons do you almost like, or like conceptually, but feel they have issues performing as well as they should?

(1) Main hand dagger: I really like this weapon. It hits hard but is high risk. The auto attack is great. Skill 2 is okay but I just don’t find myself using it that much. There is kind of an identity crisis with the dagger. When I swap to dagger, I want to do as much damage as possible in a short period of time because if I do not down my opponent, odds are he will kill me in melee. Although it is nice to get some life siphon, the cast time is long and it does less damage than the auto attack. Again, it looks good on paper but in reality I rarely use it. I would love to have some kind of a gap closer on the dagger 2 but know that Anet is reluctant to do so. I like dagger 3 as well for keeping players in my wells but can see that it may have less utility in PvE. Now, if bosses had mechanics where immobilize was needed, that would completely fix this.

(2) Warhorn: I like the warhorn but think that it could be given a little more group utility, especially with the long cooldowns. In the past, I have suggested it would be nice if deathly swarm gave AOE swiftness as a little boost but the forums quickly rejected that idea. The daze on wail of doom is nice but situational. Maybe WH4 could be modified to also provide some boon/buff to allies who are within the cone

(3) Axe: I use this a lot in WvW and I do not think that it is completely terrible but I also think that it is generally a suboptimal weapon. I think Anet needs to go one of two ways with it. (a) increase the range to > 600 (like 750 or 900) or (b) increase the damage. Increasing the range would allow an increased ability to kite as many gap closers are 600 range and when you get into 600 range, you can basically be in melee at any second. Increasing the damage would allow for the auto attack to actually matter.

(4) Focus: even though I really like focus, I can see how regen on reaper’s touch does not make a ton of sense. Perhaps rather than regen it can give us might with each bounce. This would fit into the idea of working well with power main hands and could also help with group utility. I love spinal shivers but I play primarily WvW. I can see that in PvE it is somewhat lacking. I selfishly really do not want the functionality changed but maybe it could strip x stacks of defiant in PvE in order to make it more viable in that setting.

I also think that new weapons need to be introduced but that is a different topic and it sounds like at some point it will happen. For now, small tweaks to the weapons we already have could make a big difference.

What weapons do you feel fall short?
The axe, for the obvious, already mentioned reasons. Right now it’s like a slightly weaker dagger-clone for occasions where you cant go into melee range. Most of the time you use it for Axe#2 and use the other skills just to pass the time until #2 is available again.
Axe#1: complete garbage that hits like a wet paper.
Axe#3: boon-rip and cripple is ok, damage and cripple are a bit underwhelming tho and the retal is way too long (but thats a general problem with retaliation. too long durations, relatively weak effect, overly punishing against multi-hit attacks).

What weapons do you almost like, or like conceptually, but feel they have issues performing as well as they should?

Dagger:
It’s ok for roaming and in PvE, for bigger fights it just lacks the cleave (which would be fine if Axe would become our designated cleave weapon). In PvE it also has the problem that theres no need to use anything besides Dagger#1, which makes it a really boring weapon.
The #2 is pretty weak and has a long wind up time. I think this needs a serious buff to both, so it starts leeching faster and also heals more (lower the damage, if you want). Turning it into an Aoe-heal so that allies around you get healed for 50% could also be a good way to give the necro some much needed group support or might make dagger more interesting for minion masters.
I also feel that this weapon could need a gap-closer; it’s pretty hard to stay on people with only Dagger#3 and DS#2 (but thats a general necro-issue when fighting mobile classes).

Staff:
Staff is some sort of weird power/condition/support-hybrid weapon that lost most of its support now. The direct damage is really weirdly distributed. Staff#1 does ok damage, IF it hits and putrid mark hits like a truck, while the rest of the skills scale pretty bad with power. the power-scaling should be more balanced.
Staff#1: if it hits multiple enemies it deals ok direct damage and generates a ton of life force. but thats rarely the case in WvW and often not worth the cast time. This needs to be made more reliable.
Mark of Blood: it’s a solid skill to deal good condition-damage, but it could need a better power-scaling. Luckily the loss of 1 bleedstack doesnt affect WvW, it hurts the skill a lot.
Chillblains: fine, nothing wrong with it.
Putrid mark: im fine with the restriction to 3 conditions, but the loss of the group cleanse is awful and should be reversed. this is way easier than trying to give staff some group support elsewhere.

Focus
Bhawb already said most there is to say about focus.
Spinal shivers has way too long cast time, isnt relevant in PvE cause of lack of boons and the damage is underwhelming. If you remove 2-3 boons with this, it should really hurt.

RashanDale.3609:

Dagger:
It’s ok for roaming and in PvE, for bigger fights it just lacks the cleave (which would be fine if Axe would become our designated cleave weapon). In PvE it also has the problem that theres no need to use anything besides Dagger#1, which makes it a really boring weapon.
The #2 is pretty weak and has a long wind up time. I think this needs a serious buff to both, so it starts leeching faster and also heals more (lower the damage, if you want). Turning it into an Aoe-heal so that allies around you get healed for 50% could also be a good way to give the necro some much needed group support or might make dagger more interesting for minion masters.

Oh geez, this big time!!! This might actually make running a Blood Fiend worth it compared to its abysmal healing.

What weapons do you really like?

Scepter. It has one goal that is condition and every skills of the weapon does that. I like how they tie life force with condition on target as well.

Dagger. It’s melee yet having enough tools to control and gain a little bit range on demand.

What weapons do you almost like, or like conceptually, but feel they have issues performing as well as they should?

WH. Good interrupt, good swiftness, decent swarm to keep enemy hit if out of melee range. Problem is in wvw or pve, it might put you in combat hitting moa/objects if only mobility is wanted.

Staff. Despite the nerf, it has good freeze/fear for group control. Condition transfer is weak now I think it’s out of equation. Staff 1,2 is kinda in a weird position. 1 is direct dmg yet 2 is condition. So is the damage on staff 3,4. And then comes the regen that trigger on enemy. Every utilities is good but put together on a single weapon, it’s kinda a mess.

What weapons do you feel fall short?

Axe. They try to make it a vuln stacking weapon but auto 1 is way too weak even with trait. There are so many other much simpler and faster options to stack vuln without taking a big hit in dps. Axe2 has good burst for 2s but that’s it. Axe 3 is for user to gain a little range with cripple, anti-melee by retal and boon strip that i dunno exactly know what the purpose is. But then it’s a 600range weapon so what range you really want to gain? This weapon is just horrible.

Scepter, offhand dagger, warhorn and focus are all pretty well designed. Spinal shivers on focus could do with a cast time reduction though (or a base damage buff to make it worth the cast time).

Dagger mainhand is pretty good apart from the 2. It could do with some improvement to damage at the very least.

Staff use to be alright for utility when putrid mark worked on allies. Now id say it falls short quite a lot. I also feel the base damage of the marks is a bit lackluster. Comparing it to ele or mesmer staff and you kind of see what I mean with low damage.

Axe is awful. The auto attack is weak and not even that great for vuln stacking. The 2 is weak and it only hits one target. The 3 is alright but it really should be a blast finisher.

For PvE a big theme is how poorly the class synergies with guardians (no finishers, cant get healed in shroud, no cleaving) and the “pack n stack” LOS meta.

There is no cleaving melee attack and this hurts the class because of how every other class has to play with that style. Also, on huge bosses with huge hit boxes, cleaving melee attacks can hit the boss twice for double damage with correct positioning. Necromancer can do something similar, using life transfer to hit jormag in three spots for triple damage, but it isn’t he same. Most of the time, this class is literally doing half damage without access o a cleave.

Finally, the weapons, and weapon selection is limited, are boring. All you got is damage, and conditions (which are mostly just damage). Where is the team utility? Where is the counter play? They play boring too. Scepter is 1 spam. Dagger is 1 spam. Offhand is dagger for the extra condition remove, or focus if you don’t want the condition remove. Warhorn is terrible. Axe is a weapon swapping cooldown nightmare, because the 1 skill is terribad. Staff is a condition trap weapon that keeps getting nerfed, but we all have to take it anyways because it has the only range and utility in the profession.

What weapons do you really like?

Staff

An amazing support weapon. I honestly couldn’t ever imagine not taking it as my second weapon as it provides a long range auto attack, aoe, healing, condi transfer, slow and fear.
Given it can do all that I don’t expect it to do high single target damage.
Just perfect in my opinion – even the animations are awesome.

What weapons do you almost like, or like conceptually, but feel they have issues performing as well as they should?

Axe

Conceptually this is awesome.

I should say first that I’m a huge Necromancer fan, and play them in any game in which it’s available. When I created my Necro in GW2 I had no idea what they would play like, and when I loaded the first zone and started using an axe I was overjoyed at how awesome it was. Especially the animations for Axe 1 and Axe 2 – green energy and necrotic claws slashing everywhere!

I also love the 600 range which works really well with DS.

However Axe has some issues:
Axe 1 – Really low damage. Feel like this should at least cleave. Or just up the damage!

Axe 2 – Pure awesome! Please don’t touch this (unless you make it do the same damage aoe! – still wouldn’t be as good as 100blades!)

Axe 3 – Super random! The aoe slow seems like it would be good for kiting, but then it has retaliation. This is totally nonsensical. When would you want to slow a group, but then stay in melee range to get hit. I could see the Axe3 aoe slow working really well with Axe 2 if that was aoe as well – that would make sense.

Good weapon in idea, but falls short a bit.

Dagger

The dps is out of this world, but whenever I use it I don’t feel like a necromancer, I feel like a rogue.
There’s honestly nothing Necromancer-like about standing there auto-attacking with Dagger 1.
Especially considering Dagger 2 and 3 are not useful for PvE and hurt your dps.
I cannot believe Anet ever meant for the Necromancer PvE meta to be autoattacking with a dagger.
If dagger 2 was instant cast and gave 10 seconds of life siphon on hit that healed the whole group – or anything like that – then I think the dagger would be more Necro-ish. At the moment it’s just really bad for the whole concept of a Necro in Gw2. Especially since it’s the PvE meta.

Hi, Bhawb!

As a powermancer…

What weapons do you really like?

I love Daggers, either MH or OH. As a matter of fact, I like to play with both of them. For cosmetic reasons, I don’t like to use two different weapons: I feel “disbalanced”; and some of the Daggers have a very “necroish” look. Besides, that’s the weapon I love to do damage (I can’t get it right using Axe or Scepter), and the skills are nice enough. That’s why I just love to use both Daggers.

The Staff is another good weapon of choice: it can be easily and effectively used on any necro build. Besides Daggers and Staff, I don’t really like any other necro weapon.

Both weapons can easily fit into a necro-themed character (Daggers because of their deadly, dangerous look, and the Staff because of necros being magic-users). I can’t say the same of most of the other weapons…

What weapons do you almost like, or like conceptually, but feel they have issues performing as well as they should?

Ironically, this would be Dagger MH. I feel that Life Siphon (skill #2) doesn’t fit on that weapon idea. The healing is too low, and the burst is worse than autoattack (Necrotic Slash; skill #1). They should change that skill for something in the same offensive line that the others skills.

Being a light-armored class, going melee is a bit risky. The Dagger DPS is nice, but I would love to let the Dagger autoattack damage more than one enemy at a time (I can’t ask for an AoE of 5 enemies at once, but 2 or 3 enemies would be awesome!).

Last of all, and since we are just making a wish-list, I would love to put bleeds or poison on targets using Dagger autoattack. We are the lords of conditions, and Dagger looks like a superd weapon to cause bleeding or to poison the target of our attacks.

Of course, I understand that (AoE or more than one target) + (Bleed or Poison) + (autoattack) is a little bit OP… You can choose one of them.

What weapons do you feel fall short?

I don’t really like most of the necro’s weapons, besides Daggers and Staff.

Axe and Scepter: I know that those two weapons are the weapon-of-choice of 2/3 of Tyria’s necros, but for some reason, I can’t get myself to use them. Attacking with them is difficult for me, and the medium range is difficult to manage (I find myself going from melee to 1200 range). I accept that this may be some personal issue and not a weapon’s problem, but anyway, I don’t like them.

Focus: I have a love-hate relationship with this weapon. I love the skills, and the fact that a focus can look literally like anything (a mug, a chain, a book, a light…). But I don’t really get the idea behind this weapon, and can’t understand why we can’t use it MH (a necro with two chains, one on each hand! or with the light-balls!).

Horn: A necro running the battlefield with a trumpet? C’mon, guys…

scepter 3 skill need some rework as it doesn’t hit hard enough ( around 1200 at 4 condition, average) and boon rip by 1 is mediocre, need at least 3 boon rip added to it.

we need an accessible fear weapon skill other than staff 5 (ds 3 is clunky and sometimes you dont have access to it)

Stillmoon.6894:

scepter 3 skill need some rework as it doesn’t hit hard enough ( around 1200 at 4 condition, average) and boon rip by 1 is mediocre, need at least 3 boon rip added to it.

Scepter 3 has no boon rip. That’s Axe 3.

What weapons do you really like?
Apart from axe and warhorn i like all necromancer weapons. Axe because, alway when i use it, i feel something is wrong with it. Warhorn, because its a warhorn (but i think the skill set is fine).

What weapons do you almost like, or like conceptually, but feel they have issues performing as well as they should?
-MH dagger 2, i feel for its range its damage and its duration/cooldown it heals to little. I think the reason siphon builds suck is not because the traits are that bad (well the well siphon trait is bad as it is too unreleably), but that our real siphon skills daggar 2 and locust signet dont heal enough for what the offer.
-Staff, while my most loved necro weapon, i think the marks somewhat lacks direct damage, but for that i would probably change the spite trait for the marks so that the do more damgae maybe to 25%. Also the aa could be a little faster.

-Focus 5, i think, is as strange skill, because for one part its a slow and a boon removel, which in my opinion need fast cast times for effective control and for the other part a damage skill if 3 boons are removed, for which a long cast time is ok. So i think reducing the cast time and the damage would make the skill better as i use it mainly for control. Focus 4 i am not sure if i like that skill or not, but for what it does i guess its fine, maybe a longer reg duration.

-Szepter 2 i would change the bleeds into torment.

What weapons do you feel fall short?
-Axe is in my opinion the worst necro weapon, i really dont know what roles it could forfill, maybe mm? But for mm i think dagger/something and staff is better. For power necros dagger and staff is always better. Maybe changing the range or giving the aa aoe would make it a better weapon. Axe 3 is also strange its a slow/boon removel but also gives retalation, which would fit more a melee weapon i think.

I see Axe, as an attrition weapon. The longer the fight, the worse for the enemy.
Axe #1 increase the speed by, at least, 50%→ more vuln→ more damage.
Axe #2 Fine as it it.
Axe #3 Add Blast finisher. Change cripple for chill and retaliation for regeneration

Dagger has a great potential for an AOE PVE weapon.
Dagger #1 add cleave
Dagger #2 add area effect, like DS#4 but hp instead of life force
Dagger #3 change to: Teleport to target area, immobilizing up to 5 targets in the area.

Some numbers should be adjusted to not become OP.

What weapons do you really like?
Dagger OH for reasons already stated. A great choice even in power builds.

Staff. Except for the auto attack, which could need a small boost in projectile and casting speed it is a well rounded weapon that brings a lot of utility and AoE.

Axe- contrary to popular opinion i think the current axe is better designed then dagger. While the auto attack is low damage and a bit lacking the other skills more than make up for it. Great life force regen and decent dmg on skill 2, good utility and AoE on 3. Axe mastery is a great trait too and lies on our way to one of the best power traits (except that mastery kind of feels necessary).
Also i don’t have issues with the range beeing to small since i think of it more as an extended range melee weapon which grants more dmg uptime on non static encounters.

What weapons do you almost like, or like conceptually, but feel they have issues performing as well as they should?

Dagger MH- My main issues are that #2 has too long casttime, #3 has too long cast time and cd or lacks secondary effects. Imo the immob on #3 could be reduced to 2 sec, cd to 15 and some kind of gapclosing after-hit skill added but thats probably just me…
Also i think the design is pretty strange because dagger lacks a “burst” skill. Most other professions go in melee to use their cd’s and as a necro you go in melee to auto attack and generate enough life force to use your cds and shroud auto attack(auto… again).
In PvE the weapon is good but not enjoyable.

What weapons do you really like? – Staff currently is my “fav” in terms of that its a solid weapon, great kills and isnt to bad to play.

If Dagger/Dagger was more versatile/Mobile as they are for Ele i think they would work really well. Along with buffing the hell out of leeching/Siphon skills.

What weapons do you almost like, or like conceptually, but feel they have issues performing as well as they should? – Dagger/Dagger. Though its a real shame as they are really weak and not fun to play. Of course this is based on the fact that Ele Dagger/Dagger is INSANELY! fun to play.

They have SO much potential to be a great in your face weapon, with buffs to health Siphons and tweaks with animation and skills then i think it would really be cool. I want to see a RtL variant! Maybe like turn the Necro into an actual swarm of bats or something that fly them forward and deal damage and leech health of all nearby enemies

What weapons do you feel fall short? – All of them in my opinion. They all feel Meh not only in power/utility and such but also in how FUN they are.