Guild Wars 2

What a joke. So now we’re even more niche. Forced to run 20 points into the defensive tree… I play top tier tPvP and no one was complaining about staff marks being too good.

On top of nerfing staff by moving it to the Master line. You still haven’t fixed the staff 4 transfer bug, where it only transfers 3 condis instead of whatever amount you may have.

What a kittening joke. If you nerf some aspect of something you buff another aspect. I get that you increased stock mark radius. However, a proper buff would have been that and Great Marks radius increased to 300.

Instead you promise survivability and reduced damage. But you reduced our damage, reduced our survivability, and made us run more niche builds. Good job.

I’m honestly not sure you guys know what you’re doing anymore.

Have same feeling. I hoped they will more possobility to get life force, but instead they buffed the most of worthless skills.

This entire forum is littered with good, and yes bad suggestions on what the community would like to see done with the necro. However, it seems the devs never read any of these threads and just use the dart board approach to pick and choose what is removed/modified on a regular basis. Sad really, if you consider that the players that post suggestions on these forums actually PLAY a necro; unlike, I believe, the devs.

I find it odd that not more people do complain.

I think that was one of the worst decisions that could be taken. I love my staff, but since the patch its just sad. I play a lot WvW as well as PvE and in both areas is the standard mark size too small. Without discussion! In PvE I encounter only half of the mobs compared to with trait, most are just little out of range. In WvW, where these days every second player is a guardian, I encounter not only half as much, it will also one half be blocked.

Compared to other two-handed weapons, without traits? Completely underground ….

I think it’s just sad how decisions are made, without even thinking about all the consequences. I can not help feeling, this mark size was introduced solely for SPVP.

It is just to cry and I will absolutely never get used to how it is now.

And the worst thing is, there is no other weapon I could equip …

Please find a better solution. Swap with cooldown trait or increase size and merge cooldown and block.

BUT PLEASE DO SOMETHING!!!!! Bring staff back on par! Please!!

Because many people are perfectly happy with the change. I think moving it to master was questionable, but I know a lot of people just got rid of the trait altogether and adapted to the new mark size, which is big enough.

It is not. At least not for me and I will never adapt. I played since release with staff and bigger marks and you can tell me what you want, I will not agree. Everytime I use staff now, I see and feel the difference – every time! And I cannot invest 20 kitten points!

Bhawb.7408:

Because many people are perfectly happy with the change. I think moving it to master was questionable, but I know a lot of people just got rid of the trait altogether and adapted to the new mark size, which is big enough.

The staff is more than just a giant aoe weapon; necromancers have no cleave weapon, so most necromancers (including myself) just spam all 4 staff marks to cleave through enemies. However, if they’re blocked all of our cleave damage is gone. So, we have to invest 20 points into that trait line just to make them unblockable.

Which is what is supposed to happen. Blocks are supposed to, you know, block things, you think they took the blocks so they could get hit anyway? No. So you have to give up 20 traits to get a very strong ability, making 4 abilities unblockable.

Besides, if I’m not mistaken, Necros already have the most unblockable skills in the game (three wells, five if you have siphoning wells, Dark Path, all Corruptions but Blood is Power).

I do believe that they should have merged Staff Mastery with Greater Marks when they moved it to Master tier, but I don’t have an issue with having to invest 20 points to make 6 skills unblockable (remember the two on Lich Form, though Mark of Horror doesn’t matter if it’s unbockable or not)

cubed.2853:

I find it odd that not more people do complain.

We did, but some time ago, when the patch just came out. We complain, we complain, no one answered anything, and then we accept and go on.

Bhawb.7408:

Which is what is supposed to happen. Blocks are supposed to, you know, block things, you think they took the blocks so they could get hit anyway? No. So you have to give up 20 traits to get a very strong ability, making 4 abilities unblockable.

My point is that necromancers have no cleave weapon – so the 20 points is pretty much required to make up for that against enemies who block things; if the marks get blocked, all of your cleave damage is gone because you can’t spam your marks a second time if they’re blocked.

Every other class has weapons that can spam a cleave autoattack, which necromancers do not have (with the exception of the very unreliable projectile on the staff, which pretty much never hits anything).

I could live with blocks, even if in WvW it 50% blocked. But the size :/ It’s not only that you miss most targets, like I explained above, the problem is also, that 2 and 4 is much harder to utilize for yourself. As also combo 3+4 is pretty hard to succeed, especially if you also try to throw back conditions…
And if you dont agree, just compare staff with other weapons. It’s a mess… Right now I always cry out if I drop a mark…

I would rather have had either Greater Marks or Staff Mastery moved to a master-level minor trait (and drop Reanimator) but do like the increase in base mark diameter. My main hang-up is that Death Magic has too many desirable trait skills. Using two trait skills on staff is a tough choice despite how often I use the weapon.

Staff Mastery beats Greater Marks in priority for me.

Actually, from a WvW standpoint, our tanking with spectral abilities was a little too strong before the nerf. The nerf brought it to where it should be, a nice mid-ground.

I would defend necros, but I admit that the damage on certain builds was a lil too strong, and it naturally got nerfed. No complaints there…

As for marks being in master trait line… The thing they did was not bad at all. If you want slightly larger, unblockable marks, sure, put 20 in death. No one is forcing you tho, as the natural mark radius is decent without any traits. The only catch is that they are blockable. In my eyes, this opens MORE builds because default marks are already large, meaning that you don’t even have to trait into Death magic at all. I’m assuming you had 10 in death. Now you have a spare 10 points, unless you want staff cooldowns.