Guild Wars 2

The title says it all. Will it affect your playstyle? Especially if you use the staff.

Mm, I’m mostly afraid for Well of Suffering. It might get changed to be based on vulnerability more than direct damage, which would be a shame.

EDIT: Actually, I bet Epidemic will get a longer recharge. It’s what, 15 seconds? Kind of ludicrously short, really.

I play a vampire build as the minions are kitten terrible but if they do decide to nerf the aoe life transfer (DS4) then they should at least up give us either poison of cleave for our dagger hits. Epidemic is already been nerfed to the ground with it’s 5 target limit so let’s hope they leave it out of the conversation. At very least they should make life siphon scale better with our compassion as it sits not it more of a “life trickle”.

Hopefully though we’ll get a pass on this one, the vampire build of this class is already wearing plastic fangs IMO.

Maybe its wishful thinking but I really don’t think we are going to be effected much and in the long run may come out ahead. Most of our aoe is not big direct damage anyway, its group application of conditions with a bit of up front damage. Because of this I don’t think condition builds will be effected. If anything takes a hit it will probably be well of suffering which is bad being that this is a staple in any power build and even with it power builds are really lackluster for the most part. However, from what has been mentioned they intend to buff other single target skills to “bring certain builds up to the level of others”. If this holds true single target burst is more of a power build thing anyway and they may come out doing better even if well of suffering loses some damage.

Necro is going to get completely hosed here. So is Elementalist. There is no doubt whatsoever in my mind. The fact that they carefully describe their goals without letting it go what AoEs they are concerned with means they are trying to avoid a backlash.

The only major backlashes could come from Elementalist and Necro. We are screwed. Necro is going to be stuffed into a permanent melee hybrid role without viable minions or AoEs.

And to top that off not a single ArenaNet employee plays Necro and could prevent Necro from getting trashed by blanket changes. No one will be sitting in those balance meetings talking about Necro specific changes.

I dont think much will change (I use staff).

I don’t think our AoEs will get balance-nerfed. Its not as though we have OP AoEs, AoEs with too low CD, or the option of switching to single-target skills that we are currently avoiding due to “opportunity cost”.

I think it was idiotic of ANet to come out and make vague statements about a “major” rebalancing of AoEs without specifying the profession(s) and skill(s) that prompted their concern. It just created unwarranted panic in the streets.

TheAgedGnome.7520:

ANet to come out and make vague statements about a “major” rebalancing of AoEs without specifying the profession(s) and skill(s) that prompted their concern. It just created unwarranted panic in the streets.

Much panic indeed , it may be a surprise after all

If you don’t think they are coming for AoE blind and Wellbombers you are sadly mistaken. Necro AoE is truly massive when you focus on AoE damage. You can littally pound a huge area with chain AoEs indefinitely with the correct weapons, traits, and utilities.

Necro is hanging over the chopping block on this one and there is not a single Anet employee in any of those meetings that is going to stand up and speak out for changes that will harm an already unfinished and pigeonholed class.

XiL.4318:

And to top that off not a single ArenaNet employee plays Necro and could prevent Necro from getting trashed by blanket changes. No one will be sitting in those balance meetings talking about Necro specific changes.

Xil, that’s kinda hard to believe (and scary if true!). What is your source for this? Is there a dev post or interview where they state (or imply) this?

TheAgedGnome.7520:

XiL.4318:

And to top that off not a single ArenaNet employee plays Necro and could prevent Necro from getting trashed by blanket changes. No one will be sitting in those balance meetings talking about Necro specific changes.

Xil, that’s kinda hard to believe (and scary if true!). What is your source for this? Is there a dev post or interview where they state (or imply) this?

It’s not true. I’ve played against Anet employees in tPvP on their necros. Just a few days ago, in fact.

Will they nerf/“balance” AoE on necro? Yeah, i bet you they will.
Will they nerf/“balance” every single AoE on necro at once? Nope, they will make small changes every now and then to 1-2 skills while hopefully fixing minion AI and other things that people complain about since… forever.

Craptrain.7203:

TheAgedGnome.7520:

XiL.4318:

And to top that off not a single ArenaNet employee plays Necro and could prevent Necro from getting trashed by blanket changes. No one will be sitting in those balance meetings talking about Necro specific changes.

Xil, that’s kinda hard to believe (and scary if true!). What is your source for this? Is there a dev post or interview where they state (or imply) this?

It’s not true. I’ve played against Anet employees in tPvP on their necros. Just a few days ago, in fact.

Quality Assurance has no development role. There are no developers playing Necro.

Next patch is not a flat AoE nerf, but a balancing of SOME aoe skill to be more balanced single target, while at the same time power up some single target spell. In this situation I think necro will probably remain unharmed, I mean our main source of aoe are bleed+epidemic that won’t change in single target because most of the boss fight we’re taking out epidemic, and wells that are good but not that overpowered single target.

I am very skeptical that it will affect us at all. They were talking about how they think its an issue when you have single target skills, and AoE skills but decide to use those AoE skills against a single target because it is more effective than the single target. Which in truth really this change does need to happen.

The only issue I see, is professions who do this usually have more AoE skills than single target, and the single targets are only for utility – Perfect example would be Ele Staff.

The Necro has no such weapons that do this. On the Dagger there are no AoE skills. Axe there is only one, and it only gets used single target to blow a cooldown, and for the retaliation, not because its really strong. Sceptre only has one AoE and it’s used anyways for free bleeds and a cripple, which is useful against any number of enemies. The staff is 100% aoe (ignoring auto attack), so how could they nerf the staff? There are no single target options on the staff being ignored.

The only thing I can see A-Net having a problem with is Well Bombing builds, who basically use Wells and Bone Minions for a huge chunk of their damage, but really its just three skills and they are all utility.

I think were fine, but I’ve held false hope in A-Net before so I may be wrong.

XiL.4318:

Craptrain.7203:

TheAgedGnome.7520:

XiL.4318:

And to top that off not a single ArenaNet employee plays Necro and could prevent Necro from getting trashed by blanket changes. No one will be sitting in those balance meetings talking about Necro specific changes.

Xil, that’s kinda hard to believe (and scary if true!). What is your source for this? Is there a dev post or interview where they state (or imply) this?

It’s not true. I’ve played against Anet employees in tPvP on their necros. Just a few days ago, in fact.

Quality Assurance has no development role. There are no developers playing Necro.

Wrong again. During the karka event in LA, myself and several others were chatting with an Anet employee. He said he was a developer, and he was an 80 necromancer, and he was using minions. His minions even had the little Arenanet symbol next to their names, which was kind of funny.

On topic, if they are adjusting AoEs then it is a change that affects all classes. This is like when rogues in WoW complained back when attack power was normalized. It was one change that affected all classes and was meant for the long-term health of the game, yet they took it personally, just like many people in this forum are doing now.

Even if necro AoE is nerfed (as a part of the global AoE adjustment, remember), there will be other positive changes for us in the patch, just like there has been every other patch. Calm down.

I hope they nerf teh crap out of us. Then that means buffs later on. Because necros are already in a bad spot, if they nerf us more, we are done for.

But that just means they will HAVE to buff other builds.

lettucemode.3789:

Even if necro AoE is nerfed (as a part of the global AoE adjustment, remember), there will be other positive changes for us in the patch, just like there has been every other patch. Calm down.

What positive changes have we had that you are talking about? I wouldn’t count on being buffed at all to compensate for any AoE nerfs. Ideally, yes we would receive single target damage buffs but we have been letdown time and time again.

Necros need absolutely no AoE damage nerfs. We only need buffs at this point.

First off the Dagger, in the off hand, has an AoE skill that applies 5 bleeds to the targets within the area.

I am mailny PVE, In my runnings around the 1-5 people in the circle all get the same 5 bleeds. Likewise the staff has the same effects so I cant see that we will be getting hit to hard by this. Being a Minion Master who loves the staff above all other weapons, this scared me alot as well. Once you think about it though it is not that big of an issue.

They said, we want to make sure the effect of the spell doesnt hit one person harder than it would when it hit 5 people. In my playing, mainly the staff as previously stated, there is no difference in the power that effects 1-5 people. Now condition builds may have seen something differently that I have, but I just run in circles and have my AoE’s and my minions, who are also awesome, take the brunt of the attack.

All in all I dont see this effecting me at all. I think the Necro is very good class and I surprise everyone I play with, with my survivability. The main key to that is knowing you traits, skills, and class and how they mix with your particular play style.

Wells and marks are going to get nerfed for sure.

Noltrach.3087:

First off the Dagger, in the off hand, has an AoE skill that applies 5 bleeds to the targets within the area.

I am mailny PVE, In my runnings around the 1-5 people in the circle all get the same 5 bleeds. Likewise the staff has the same effects so I cant see that we will be getting hit to hard by this. Being a Minion Master who loves the staff above all other weapons, this scared me alot as well. Once you think about it though it is not that big of an issue.

They said, we want to make sure the effect of the spell doesnt hit one person harder than it would when it hit 5 people. In my playing, mainly the staff as previously stated, there is no difference in the power that effects 1-5 people. Now condition builds may have seen something differently that I have, but I just run in circles and have my AoE’s and my minions, who are also awesome, take the brunt of the attack.

All in all I dont see this effecting me at all. I think the Necro is very good class and I surprise everyone I play with, with my survivability. The main key to that is knowing you traits, skills, and class and how they mix with your particular play style.

What dagger skill do you have that gives 5 bleeds?

Dagger 5 gives 2 bleeds and weakness. Dagger 5 + Sceptor 2 can do 5 bleeds, if that is what you mean to say. Staff doesn’t apply 5 bleeds either, it applies 3.

And not to be coy, but I like that you ended the post commenting about knowing your traits and skills.

On topic though; the only way this AOE nerf will really effect condition necro is if they reduce the max targets down to 4 or 3 on AOE skills. That would hurt severely, and epidemic would suffer as well. This change would hurt everyone though, except of course the blessed thief class. (I bet they buff the damage on Mug so they feel better aboe the AOE nerf to short bow)

But more than likely they will just take the really strong ranged AOE skill that require no risk (ranged well bombs and some ele staff skills) and just weaken them by 20% or something like that. Yeah it will hurt melee well bombers pretty bad potentially. I view it like what they did to grenades and engineers. Prob. will be the death of the full time staff ele.

if they were smart about it (a big if, I know), they’d simply augment the Focused Rituals trait to include a slight dmg reduction to balance out the fact that it can be cast from range.

I don’t really see them changing marks at all. There’s nothing devastating about the staff. Useful, yes. Devastating, no.

I hope they don’t touch my Epidemic and Enfeebling Blood… It’s all I have :’(

Epidemic already does not do any damage itself and only hits 5 targets so I would be really shocked if they did anything to that. I guess they could increase the cast time but that would be extremely lame.

It all depends exactly what they do to what, which we don’t know.

All I know is that I honestly don’t see the base damage we do as being by itself ‘very-high/extreme’ if you’re just splattering around some marks and a well or 2. When I see people bragging about 17k damage from 100-blades, 10+k kill shots, 8k back stabbings from people you cant see in wvw… our damage is utterly miniscule!

As a condition-spec, my damage over time can be completely negated by ANYONE with a condition clearance in under 2 seconds and some of the passives condition removal can do it very quickly as well. Personally, I think if you run without a stun-break and at least 1 condition removal into a pvp environment of any type, your going to get it in the neck and its really only yourself to blame.

If you’re using Epidemic as a force multiplier (which is what I do essentially as a role) with your group correctly, the damage is situational very high… but, it only affects players and you’re not knocking down siege, walls or anything else.
Just from casual play and reading forums, I’ve not really seen anyone complain about necro’s damage! (well, not in any sense that ‘gee those necros pop out of nowhere and bust my crap apart before I can see them’ kind of damage complaint.)

Option 0
Anet nerfs my necro’s aoe damage, for no real obvious reason except they can… and in practice taking away my last crumb of enjoyment of this career. I get all my badges, make about 2 months worth of Omega golems and begin my career as a Robot Pilot, in the vain hope they’d roll-back sometime between me running out of badges to make more or I continue to level my warrior on the side. (those guys never get nerfed!)

I dont think it will do much to us. maybe a slight staff mark nerf, wells will most likely go untouched. same as epidemic. they are very situnational. The nerfs most likely will be targeted at the weapon aoe skills – ele will be hitted the most. but i could imagine they also nerf the meele weapons with a wider range of attack. warrior greatsword autoattack for example. cleave is a way of AOE as well.

I think they’re gonna spank our staffs. Marks in PvP are pretty much the only thing keeping my MM’s head above the water, and I see that getting a nerf since it’s so strong when I haven’t even spec’d into it.

It will definitely effect us. The question is how bad will it be?

Im preparing to switch mains. Seriously. If they nerf marks and wells Im out and going to play another char.

I have been trying to get the message across that there are two sides to AoE. The damage output (say by us) and the damage received by the targets. It seems everyone is focusing on damage output and not damage avoidance/mitigation/survivability of the targets.

There are many glass canons out the complaining about our AoE (which we have had to incorporate in some build at a lot of expense to burst etc.) yet they refuse to modify their builds to add a bit of avoidance/mitigation/survivability so ANet solution is to punish us. Having said that, the choice to add some survivability etc must come at a cost and not simply be handed out as passive abilities. After all we have had to chose the opportunity cost of damage for survivability and AoE. But I fear this will be too hard for them.

In addition, there are so many bugs with broken mitigation/avoidance traits and abilities that I can’t for the life of me see how they can balance any damage, let alone single out AoE, without them being fixed first. Only today there was a red post about a broken dodge mechanic (been there for a long time) is going to be fixed in the the next patch….things like this have a DIRECT bearing on any AoE analysis that needs to be undertaken before they start hacking and slashing.

I am at a real loss…anyway I start chemo tomorrow so it will keep me occupied for a while….but I really do not like the thought of what “damage” will be done by “hasty simplistic” fixes that don’t address the real issue by the time I get back on.

Oldbugga.7029:

In addition, there are so many bugs with broken mitigation/avoidance traits and abilities that I can’t for the life of me see how they can balance any damage, let alone single out AoE, without them being fixed first. Only today there was a red post about a broken dodge mechanic (been there for a long time) is going to be fixed in the the next patch….things like this have a DIRECT bearing on any AoE analysis that needs to be undertaken before they start hacking and slashing.

I am at a real loss…anyway I start chemo tomorrow so it will keep me occupied for a while….but I really do not like the thought of what “damage” will be done by “hasty simplistic” fixes that don’t address the real issue by the time I get back on.

I agree. I don’t understand why they are ignoring so many bugs in favor of nerfing the mediocre/weaker professions time after time. It’s mind-boggling to me and I’m beginning to doubt that the devs are actually playing the game much.

Also, good luck in your chemo.

I think some of you are delusional if you think Epidemic and marks/wells are not getting to get hammered.

The ONLY thing we can hope for is they said special attention will be given to the classes with only a couple viable builds. I consider Necro to have 2.5 good builds. Conditions and straight power, plus wells which usually overlap one or the other.

[quote=1266684;Rennoko.5731
And not to be coy, but I like that you ended the post commenting about knowing your traits and skills.
[/quote]

Not sure if that is indeed coy or just good at pointing out the irony of the statement with my miss information. You are in correct assumption in that I was thinking about the scepter and the dagger thrown together. Also I have a Superior Sigil of Geomancy that adds to that. So the 5 bleeds that I see on them after using the skill is 5-10.

About the hitting only 3 instead of 4, I agree would hurt me as well. I enjoy the power that comes with taking on a few enimies at once. If they wanted to talk about balance, we are indeed a glass cannon in some cases. It takes most seconds to destroy me in WvW. In PvE I seem to last much longer, 20 points in tthe toughness increase doesnt hurt in either case.

All in all I stand by that with whatever they do a small change of traits or skills used will make everything ok. I wont stop playing MM necro, I have tried other classes and just can’t.

Oldbugga.7029:

I have been trying to get the message across that there are two sides to AoE. The damage output (say by us) and the damage received by the targets. It seems everyone is focusing on damage output and not damage avoidance/mitigation/survivability of the targets.

There are many glass canons out the complaining about our AoE (which we have had to incorporate in some build at a lot of expense to burst etc.) yet they refuse to modify their builds to add a bit of avoidance/mitigation/survivability so ANet solution is to punish us. Having said that, the choice to add some survivability etc must come at a cost and not simply be handed out as passive abilities. After all we have had to chose the opportunity cost of damage for survivability and AoE. But I fear this will be too hard for them.

Compared to say, physical damage avoidance (Invulnerability, Sanctuaries etc) on a handful of careers there’s a very large amount of ways to remove conditions on just about every class, some of whom have more than others and in some cases its on a passive removal!
If you choose to run around with your nuts in the breeze without a stunbreak and some kind of condition removal on any class in a pvp environment, then cry about it when they get clipped, you’re severely ignorant.

I spend hours explaining this to people in the guild I run with as part of PvP 101- yeah all your big number damage is great, but the last guy standing on a mound of outright dead enemies- wins, not by being the first who put someone into downed state and then falling over sometime straight after.

That’s not to say pure-glass doesn’t have its place, (gimp necro needs bags, please donate) but its a niche aspect for solo, hit-run experts and not straight out of the blocks newbies. PvP, is not an area as a newbie you should tread lightly into, this is where people have literally invested hours of research and 100’s of hours into learning exactly just how to kill you with the mechanics available to them.

My sympathies for the chemo, been there, done that and have a speedy recovery.

I dont think we’ll get nerfed much. We arent an aoe spam class, and I dont think there are many that consider us OP.

That said I’ll be enjoying epidemic as much as possible until then just in case.

There’s no reason for them to.

Then again, there’s no reason for them to nerf AoE in general either… So, who knows…

I still think this is targeted at elementalists, not necros. 17 or 18 of a D/D ele’s skills have an AoE component to them, even though the build is supposed to be a small-skirmish-single-target sort of thing. I think we will see changes that reduce AoE in certain builds that are not “supposed” to have such good AoE given the build, if that makes sense.

Spyder.7192:

I think some of you are delusional if you think Epidemic and marks/wells are not getting to get hammered.

The ONLY thing we can hope for is they said special attention will be given to the classes with only a couple viable builds. I consider Necro to have 2.5 good builds. Conditions and straight power, plus wells which usually overlap one or the other.

Per their stated reasons for looking at AOE adjustments, there’s no reason for them to touch Epidemic. The whole point of the nerf is that some AOE skills do very strong single-target damage while having the same opportunity cost as a regular single-target skill, so the player has no reason to avoid spamming them whenever they’re available. Epidemic has no direct damage component, and is useless in single-target fights.

ProxyDamage.9826:

There’s no reason for them to.

Then again, there’s no reason for them to nerf AoE in general either… So, who knows…

They aren’t nerfing AOE in general. Their goal is to make it so that AOE abilities are something you reserve for AOE fights.

Recent interviews have suggested this is not going to be across the board nerf to all AOE. They described it as going over all the abilities and perhaps finding the few most blatant ones and making some tweaks. Doesn’t even mean every prof will necessarily see change.

I imagine they will remove the damage component to marks and leave us with the crappy condition damage only, and they will nerf wells at least 25% (timers should remain the same). It essentially kills necros that aren’t d/d. Our 1 staff skill only hits downed players, nothing moving for sure, so staff may get completely broken. 6 months later they may realize they went too far with the nerf.

They seem to be fine with having 2 or 3 overpowered combos for single target, but even mediocre aoe is too much, because people tend to not move when standing in stuff. Sadly, we are not one of the classes that has any strong single target abilities.

The 1 spam skill from warrior axe, hits harder than any ability we can equip…and they can spam it. We are resigned to condition damage and manning siege if they hose us with this nerf.

FYI. A post by Jonathon Sharp in the AoE thread in the 11-page Discussion forum:

Just wanted to let you guys know that we’re reading this thread.

Your logic, reasons, anecdotes and ideas are being listened to. Also keep in mind, that as I said yesterday, a skill can be a balance problem in one area of the game, but underpowered in another. That’s the nature of using one set of #‘s to balance across all areas of the game. So we’re keeping that in mind as we look at this. We may need to do different tweaks in different areas of the game.

We’re also not going to make a knee jerk reaction to this. We’re still gathering data, watching player trends, and having meetings on all possible ramifications from possible changes

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Is-AoE-actually-a-problem-Discussion-Thread/1237400