Guild Wars 2

Pro :
Necromancers have the best effective base health point in game pretty good access to defensive condition (weakness, blind, fear) and some defensive boon (regen and protect).
We got 2 health bar that are fed by 2 differents source that need us to play an aggressive playstyle (siphon and life force generation).
Fairly good heal skills on long cool down.

Cons :
Necromancers are designed to have poor mobility (teleport and movement skill), few dodge and poor out of combat sustain.
We’ve got no invulnerability so we are bound to suck up damage with our health bars.

Personnaly, I think, defensively, we are in a pretty good spot in sPvP. Our skills are pretty well designed for 1v1 setup. But, when it come to WvW and PvE, we start to fade away, lacking evade and invulnerability to suck up instant massive amout of damage that are pretty common in this 2 realm.

From a WvW / PvE perspective only;

Hard to lay down defensive conditions when being chain stunned – this is an issue for me in WvW.

The chill on the focus is such a slow cast as well – it’s so obvious and easy to dodge.

I don’t run staff, so i’m at a disadvantage defense/utility wise.

Life siphon is pathetic.

We need a mechanic to survive one hit kills in dungeons.

I’m definitely in agreement here, which should come as no surprise, since I am probably one of the necros who is most vocal about this issue than anyone else.

We are the only class with no invulnerability skill, and we have to build life force for our Death Shroud on top of that. It is easily the most rubbish defense in the entire game. When they took away our ability to tank 1-hit kills in DS (which already required good timing and life force management) they gave us nothing in return. This has effectively destroyed our class for PVE. But perhaps worse, is that they removed a fun strategic element from the way our class fights. Removing fun is unforgivable.

I’ll leave MM out of it, because that is the only build that (ignoring some basic problems that we still have) is actually decently balanced right now defensively.

The problem is they’ve basically put all of our defense, right now, into two things. Ridiculously high eHP through Death Shroud, and conditions. The problem is these things don’t translate well into actual fighting. eHP just isn’t good enough when it doesn’t let you avoid CC or huge bursts. Same with conditions, that demand that you pre-apply them and keep them applied, yet they can usually be removed with ease (its only our damage conditions that get left usually).

The problem is we have no way to invalidate a hit of our choosing, or make it through heavy focus fire. We can’t have mobility to escape, which is fine. But that means we need some way to make it through focus fire, which we just don’t have.

Essentially our only “defense” right now is ensuring that we never get into the situations that we don’t have the ability to live through. No other class in the game has this as an innate problem to their class.

what defense? lol

we only have the ablility to tank dmg or lower the dmg done to us with weakness.
we have limited access to blinds, limited access to protection, no access to vigor, No Blocks.

we do have good access to regen but without much healing power it wont really help much.

One of often underlooked issues about necromancer’s defenses is the lack of stunbreak/condition remove in Deathshroud. Lack of stunbreak is kind of understandable due to foot in grave but against a necro you have freedom to freely pump him full of conditions while in DS. And when he comes out of DS it’s easy to just cc lock him and keep the conditions ticking.

Condition builds are at a pretty good place right now. They play like your typical DoT caster that you would see in any mmo.

Power builds could see some sort of boost though, I’d really like to see spectral skills get an across the board cooldown reduction, with the exception of wall of course, and maybe a cooldown reduction for deathshroud entry as well, 7 seconds as opposed to 9, and 3 seconds as opposed to 5.

The reasoning here is simple, condition builds have too many necessary traits, and they would sacrifice too much if they were to capitalize on these buffs. Meanwhile, power builds, tend to gravitate towards spectral skills anyway, so this would be a nice buff.

Deathshroud entry buff is just so that we can keep deathshroud in line with other defensive abilities.

Targuil.3741:

One of often underlooked issues about necromancer’s defenses is the lack of stunbreak/condition remove in Deathshroud. Lack of stunbreak is kind of understandable due to foot in grave but against a necro you have freedom to freely pump him full of conditions while in DS. And when he comes out of DS it’s easy to just cc lock him and keep the conditions ticking.

It would be nice if we could get a trait that gave -80% condition duration on self during deathshroud.

Bhawb.7408:

I’ll leave MM out of it, because that is the only build that (ignoring some basic problems that we still have) is actually decently balanced right now defensively.

The problem is they’ve basically put all of our defense, right now, into two things. Ridiculously high eHP through Death Shroud, and conditions. The problem is these things don’t translate well into actual fighting. eHP just isn’t good enough when it doesn’t let you avoid CC or huge bursts. Same with conditions, that demand that you pre-apply them and keep them applied, yet they can usually be removed with ease (its only our damage conditions that get left usually).

The problem is we have no way to invalidate a hit of our choosing, or make it through heavy focus fire. We can’t have mobility to escape, which is fine. But that means we need some way to make it through focus fire, which we just don’t have.

Essentially our only “defense” right now is ensuring that we never get into the situations that we don’t have the ability to live through. No other class in the game has this as an innate problem to their class.

^ This.

And when our only “defense” is ensuring we never get into the situations that we don’t have the ability to live through, this results in:

1) Hanging back out of harms way. Aside from not contributing as much to the party, this is completely counter to the lore for adherents of the Aggression school of magic.

2) Being asked to sit out certain boss fights because the rest of the party knows you won’t live through it.

3) Not even getting the chance to participate in some content because no one wants a profession that’s very likely going to die when facing a boss as a member of the party.

So we’re left with a class that is being shut out of certain areas of the game. Remind me again what the point of an online game is? Oh, right…it’s to PLAY! Might want to go back and re-examine the fundamentals, ArenaNet.

Regardless of the solution – whether that be reverting our DS so it can absorb those one-hit-kills again (the simplest solution IMHO) or introducing a new defensive mechanic – it should be patently obvious that we need a solution. To fail to see that demonstrates a big disconnect.

It isn’t our defense. It’s the teams defense. Our job is to have the entire enemy team CC and do damage to us. This is making the rest of our team free to play the game.

What we need is more health. We need to be able to stand in one spot (not use any abilities) and get bashed in the face for at minimal 40 seconds. Our utilities should be innate effects that grant us extra health and we should substitute weapon skills for more health. If we can’t survive all the damage and knockdowns we take our teammates won’t have any fun.

XD fail attempt at troll but u get what I’m sayin.

You call it trolling but I’ve actually considered making builds where the only goal was to pump up my effective HP in order to waste as much enemy time killing me since I can’t avoid it anyways short of not engaging.

Brando.1374:

what defense? lol

we only have the ablility to tank dmg or lower the dmg done to us with weakness.
we have limited access to blinds, limited access to protection, no access to vigor, No Blocks.

Necros have Spectral Armor which can be traited to 9 sec on a 48 sec CD and 7.5 sec of protection when using Spectral Wall. They also have the ability to proc protection from wells of which you can slot four in total.

That’s a LOT OF PROTECTION.

Nagato no Kami.4980:

Brando.1374:

what defense? lol

we only have the ablility to tank dmg or lower the dmg done to us with weakness.
we have limited access to blinds, limited access to protection, no access to vigor, No Blocks.

Necros have Spectral Armor which can be traited to 9 sec on a 48 sec CD and 7.5 sec of protection when using Spectral Wall. They also have the ability to proc protection from wells of which you can slot four in total.

That’s a LOT OF PROTECTION.

If you use all said slots of wells you might come close to the 14 seconds of protection guardians can get from 1 skill on a 48 second cd.. which happens to be the same cd of the spectral armor which is 9 seconds on 48 second CD on two different traits.

If protection is our best defense why is it so crappy in comparison to professions who also have access to it as well as blocks, invuln, vigor, stability and so on?

Okay, first, guardians get 10 sec of protection on a traited 48 sec CD from Save Yourselves and 4 sec on 28 CD from Hold the Line.

Sure, wells occupy four slots and give only 12 seconds of protection which is not as good as the guardian. Having said that, wells do damage, blind, strip boons, heal and give stability. They can be further traited to chill and siphon health. Thus, protection is not their main purpose. While Guardians slot shouts for the boons, necros run wells for other things (devastating, zerg disrupting things) and protection is nice little addition that can be traited for.

Furthermore, necros get 9 on 48 CD from Spectral Armor and 7.5 on 36 from Spectral Wall. This is greater uptime on protection than the guardian skills, SWall can be a game-changing CC move and can give protection to AN ENTIRE ZERG! SArmor is the only form of protection that heals at the same time when up (life force gain is functionally a heal skill) and it’s a stunbreaker too.

I’m not saying that the absence of blocks, invulns and vigor isn’t kinda messed up. We can’t run so it makes sense that we can block a bit, right? Anyway, the fact is, these skills aren’t crappy. They’re not great for every build (well, SArmor pretty much is) but when employed correctly, they are pretty great.

Hammer Guardians get 100% Protection uptime just by auto-attacking, so nobody has comparable uptime to a Guardian.

Okay here it goes:

Necro has 3 defensive conditions which actually work to some extent (if you count out horn #4)
- weakness
- blindness
- fear

Problem is that in wvw condition durations are messed up, also only condition based builds really can use them somewhat decently. For example terrormancer. Rest of builds will have crap defense. It’s just as it is.

Necro has 2 defensive boons which actually work to some extent:
- regeneration
- protection

Again both of these boons are only available for kind of niche builds which do very little than just tank. Offensive capabilities for these are next to nothing unless your target is like stationary dummy. Or you’re just buying time sitting at the capture point in spvp, you’ll die eventually though after you’re on cd.

Death shroud works until it’s gone:
Yeah. DS is nice. But problem is that you cannot sustain anything. You’re very weak to burst attacks and DS is limited to 5 predetermined skills. Defense except single target #3 is nonexistant. No healing in DS.. If you’re placed on even field you’re gonna get whacked.

To sum it up:
Condition necro and tanky point holder or whatever you want to call it work to some extent. Rest is garbage except in very favorable situtations i.e. you’re fighting another garbage build. D/? and A/? builds have it very bad, sometimes you’re forced to pick staff just to get that aoe pressure and extra fear even if you have 0 condition focus. Dagger is expecially bad because it has no cleave so you’re very weak against hordes of minions, spirits, mesmer op garbage shattering or just bunch of players.

I really don’t think terror necro or whatever need more defense but other builds, yes.

Overkillengine.6084:

You call it trolling but I’ve actually considered making builds where the only goal was to pump up my effective HP in order to waste as much enemy time killing me since I can’t avoid it anyways short of not engaging.

Not my only function, but I often find situations where it is in the teams best interrest (WvW) to keep a few enemies from chasing my teammates. I often use my full soul reaping build/chill/plague as a means of slowing down small groups from getting to my buddies.

I am not saying this is the only use of my character, but in a pinch (bottlenecks, ect) I don’t mind the sacrifice if it allows others to get away. Afterall it does take quite some time to widdle down the health of a fully traited soul reaping necro (excluding being zerged of course).

I am quite happy with our defense.
passive cleansing, passive healing, passive damage dealing, stealth and our incredible mobility makes playing a necro really worth it..

Best part is when you see your 4-5 conditions linger for longer then 1 second while your direct damage tears a hole in any class.

Merlin Dyfed Avalon.5046:

I am quite happy with our defense.
passive cleansing, passive healing, passive damage dealing, stealth and our incredible mobility makes playing a necro really worth it..

Best part is when you see your 4-5 conditions linger for longer then 1 second while your direct damage tears a hole in any class.

You forgot the cleave, 5 targets in a 360 degree arc on all melee weapons is nothing to frown about.

Nagato no Kami.4980:

Okay, first, guardians get 10 sec of protection on a traited 48 sec CD from Save Yourselves and 4 sec on 28 CD from Hold the Line.

Sure, wells occupy four slots and give only 12 seconds of protection which is not as good as the guardian. Having said that, wells do damage, blind, strip boons, heal and give stability. They can be further traited to chill and siphon health. Thus, protection is not their main purpose. While Guardians slot shouts for the boons, necros run wells for other things (devastating, zerg disrupting things) and protection is nice little addition that can be traited for.

Furthermore, necros get 9 on 48 CD from Spectral Armor and 7.5 on 36 from Spectral Wall. This is greater uptime on protection than the guardian skills, SWall can be a game-changing CC move and can give protection to AN ENTIRE ZERG! SArmor is the only form of protection that heals at the same time when up (life force gain is functionally a heal skill) and it’s a stunbreaker too.

I’m not saying that the absence of blocks, invulns and vigor isn’t kinda messed up. We can’t run so it makes sense that we can block a bit, right? Anyway, the fact is, these skills aren’t crappy. They’re not great for every build (well, SArmor pretty much is) but when employed correctly, they are pretty great.

-So 10 second prot only needing one trait, 5 second prot on a 35 second cooldown, shield 4 granting bout 5 of prot to you + allies on a 30 sec cd, mace 4 on a 15 second cooldown for 4.5 seconds of protection, hammer 1 on 3’rd auto attack grants a second and a half protection. And again this is not including all their other boons. And all easily accessible while maintaining high dps. They have support like no other class with the damage to back it up.

But you’r saying that 4 slotted utilities that our opponents can easily escape which will give us about 12 seconds of prot is better than that? Or the two spectral skills both needing 2 separate traits in two separate trait lines for best specs? This is equally if not better than guardians? XD

I mean I’m not even bothered too heavily obviously since I still go necro every game nearly. But imho I still believe they’re slacking. Saying that necro’s can only focus on one thing at a time but can do it pretty ok is not a pro lol. That’s still a con. If all other classes can perform multiple roles and do them well, then the necro is slackin XD.

I play a DS Power necro the majority of the time and I’m ok with the defenses we have. I run spectral armor/walk and either wall or a well depending on what I see. When I do run the condi build, I feel ok because I don’t focus on chain fearing every person I fight against nor do I rely on DS to tank all my damage. I save my staff fear for preventing stomps on teammates, and use spectral wall if a group is attempting to run at me and I need to get away. The only fear I use often is the DS fear.

We don’t need invulnerability and I think there should be less invulnerability skills because it lets players take more risk with less consequences. I’m still on the fence about stability because I learned to play without it and I’ve managed just fine. I feel that it being 30 pts in Soul Reaping is a bit far for just 3 secs of stability, but stability as a buff overall should only be accessible to tanking/bunker builds on all professions.

We have access to a lot of cc (chills, cripples, fear) and that is what our defenses should rely on. I think DS should have two sets of abilities though, one for power and one for conditions (we should only be allowed to run one set) so that there can be more build variety.

SuperHaze.4210:

I play a DS Power necro the majority of the time and I’m ok with the defenses we have. I run spectral armor/walk and either wall or a well depending on what I see. When I do run the condi build, I feel ok because I don’t focus on chain fearing every person I fight against nor do I rely on DS to tank all my damage. I save my staff fear for preventing stomps on teammates, and use spectral wall if a group is attempting to run at me and I need to get away. The only fear I use often is the DS fear.

We don’t need invulnerability and I think there should be less invulnerability skills because it lets players take more risk with less consequences. I’m still on the fence about stability because I learned to play without it and I’ve managed just fine. I feel that it being 30 pts in Soul Reaping is a bit far for just 3 secs of stability, but stability as a buff overall should only be accessible to tanking/bunker builds on all professions.

We have access to a lot of cc (chills, cripples, fear) and that is what our defenses should rely on. I think DS should have two sets of abilities though, one for power and one for conditions (we should only be allowed to run one set) so that there can be more build variety.

My main is a DS Power Necro as well (Zerker Gear), but I also have a condition Necro who has some Vitality /Toughness gear on him.

The survivability on the Zerker Necro is so much better because of the investments in Soul Reaping and the impact on DS, however it’s still not up to par with any other class in the game and I say this as someone who has every class at level 80.

DS on the Condi Necro runs out so quickly you barely even notice it.

What i think we need to make our defence more impactful and in line with other classes;

- Fix siphoning
- Foot in the Grave – move to master tier or give us a utility with stability
- Deathshroud to absorb 1 hit kills (with some sort of cool down)

I think that would solve our issues.

TheDevice.2751:

Nagato no Kami.4980:

Okay, first, guardians get 10 sec of protection on a traited 48 sec CD from Save Yourselves and 4 sec on 28 CD from Hold the Line.

Sure, wells occupy four slots and give only 12 seconds of protection which is not as good as the guardian. Having said that, wells do damage, blind, strip boons, heal and give stability. They can be further traited to chill and siphon health. Thus, protection is not their main purpose. While Guardians slot shouts for the boons, necros run wells for other things (devastating, zerg disrupting things) and protection is nice little addition that can be traited for.

Furthermore, necros get 9 on 48 CD from Spectral Armor and 7.5 on 36 from Spectral Wall. This is greater uptime on protection than the guardian skills, SWall can be a game-changing CC move and can give protection to AN ENTIRE ZERG! SArmor is the only form of protection that heals at the same time when up (life force gain is functionally a heal skill) and it’s a stunbreaker too.

I’m not saying that the absence of blocks, invulns and vigor isn’t kinda messed up. We can’t run so it makes sense that we can block a bit, right? Anyway, the fact is, these skills aren’t crappy. They’re not great for every build (well, SArmor pretty much is) but when employed correctly, they are pretty great.

-So 10 second prot only needing one trait, 5 second prot on a 35 second cooldown, shield 4 granting bout 5 of prot to you + allies on a 30 sec cd, mace 4 on a 15 second cooldown for 4.5 seconds of protection, hammer 1 on 3’rd auto attack grants a second and a half protection. And again this is not including all their other boons. And all easily accessible while maintaining high dps. They have support like no other class with the damage to back it up.

But you’r saying that 4 slotted utilities that our opponents can easily escape which will give us about 12 seconds of prot is better than that? Or the two spectral skills both needing 2 separate traits in two separate trait lines for best specs? This is equally if not better than guardians? XD

I mean I’m not even bothered too heavily obviously since I still go necro every game nearly. But imho I still believe they’re slacking. Saying that necro’s can only focus on one thing at a time but can do it pretty ok is not a pro lol. That’s still a con. If all other classes can perform multiple roles and do them well, then the necro is slackin XD.

The original comment was that we have little access to protection. I pointed out that wasn’t true at all. That was the only point.

Furthermore, if you read carefully, you’ll find I’m not saying necros’ protection is better that those of another class. I said the skills that can proc them are highly useful in their own right AND they can proc protection, too. That’s pretty good.

Our defense is not bad but mediocre. As a wvw player I just ignore condition based defenses because conditions are nerfed to the hell with more cleanse options with every patch. They don’t even stay on enemies so there’s no point to use these in a guild raid or pug zerg. Our only defenses are ds and plague. Spectral armor doesn’t help at all because of its short duration and only 33% reduction. (while warrior has 2x 100% invulnerability+8secs of 100% condition invulnerability) Also the MM build u mention about is the worst one for wvw(due to low health of minions vs a zerg/blob) so i would call it spvp/pve only. Necro needs aoe power based new weapon options and passive defenses asap, because condition builds are dying. They were already dead in pve.(you know, 25 stack limit) And it’s near death in wvw too because of over-cleansing with over-buffs to other classes. Like conditions do so much damage, they are still nerfing…

Umut.5471:

Necro needs aoe power based new weapon options and passive defenses asap, because condition builds are dying. They were already dead in pve.(you know, 25 stack limit) And it’s near death in wvw too because of over-cleansing with over-buffs to other classes. Like conditions do so much damage, they are still nerfing…

Perfectly said.

There are so many cleanses that conditions are a joke. Between Lemongrass food, Melandru runes and everybody running guardians and warriors, why not simply remove conditions entirely? They’re already worthless in 2 of the 3 game modes.

If ANet is so hell-bent on making WvW all about power, just give us a kitten cleave weapon already.

ANet isn’t making WvW about power. WvW just isn’t a consideration except in more extreme cases. Don’t ever expect the game to be balanced for WvW, its impossible.

Bhawb.7408:

ANet isn’t making WvW about power. WvW just isn’t a consideration except in more extreme cases. Don’t ever expect the game to be balanced for WvW, its impossible.

I’m not sure I understand. Could you please elaborate?

Nagato no Kami.4980:

Bhawb.7408:

ANet isn’t making WvW about power. WvW just isn’t a consideration except in more extreme cases. Don’t ever expect the game to be balanced for WvW, its impossible.

I’m not sure I understand. Could you please elaborate?

Anet only balances around sPvP. Everything else is after thought. WvW is broken from the getgo. Zerk stats scale ridiculously in WvW. You get 100%+ crit damage bonus. Making burst builds extremely potent before condis can even take effect.

Zergs are mostly immune to condis due to AoE condi clears from guardians. And a group of 5-8 can if built well can also be completely immune to condis if they move together.

Theres tons of condi reduction foods and runes in WvW.

The runes in WvW are also completely broken. Just look at perplexity runes. Any cc class runs that and now they get 25+ stacks of confusion all the time.

Tbh, with all the nerfs to condis I might ‘have’ to start playing a powermancer just to kill things. Theres so much anti condi now its getting ridiculous.

Berullos.6928:

Nagato no Kami.4980:

Bhawb.7408:

ANet isn’t making WvW about power. WvW just isn’t a consideration except in more extreme cases. Don’t ever expect the game to be balanced for WvW, its impossible.

I’m not sure I understand. Could you please elaborate?

Anet only balances around sPvP. Everything else is after thought. WvW is broken from the getgo. Zerk stats scale ridiculously in WvW. You get 100%+ crit damage bonus. Making burst builds extremely potent before condis can even take effect.

Zergs are mostly immune to condis due to AoE condi clears from guardians. And a group of 5-8 can if built well can also be completely immune to condis if they move together.

Theres tons of condi reduction foods and runes in WvW.

The runes in WvW are also completely broken. Just look at perplexity runes. Any cc class runs that and now they get 25+ stacks of confusion all the time.

Tbh, with all the nerfs to condis I might ‘have’ to start playing a powermancer just to kill things. Theres so much anti condi now its getting ridiculous.

Thanks for the info on ANet ignoring WvW. I didn’t know that. Given the amount of attention WvW got with the restructuring and all, I am very surprised it’s never consider in gameplay.

As for conditions, I think that food and runes have as much to do with their lack of effectiveness as guardian cleanses. It’s the combination that completely kills it.

Bhawb.7408:

I’ll leave MM out of it, because that is the only build that (ignoring some basic problems that we still have) is actually decently balanced right now defensively.

The problem is they’ve basically put all of our defense, right now, into two things. Ridiculously high eHP through Death Shroud, and conditions. The problem is these things don’t translate well into actual fighting. eHP just isn’t good enough when it doesn’t let you avoid CC or huge bursts. Same with conditions, that demand that you pre-apply them and keep them applied, yet they can usually be removed with ease (its only our damage conditions that get left usually).

The problem is we have no way to invalidate a hit of our choosing, or make it through heavy focus fire. We can’t have mobility to escape, which is fine. But that means we need some way to make it through focus fire, which we just don’t have.

Essentially our only “defense” right now is ensuring that we never get into the situations that we don’t have the ability to live through. No other class in the game has this as an innate problem to their class.

This post is spot on about necro`s defensive issues. They`re pretty good actually, it`s about not having any option to reset enemy target, get temporary immunity or simply escape an overwhelming force once infight solo-/smallscale roaming.

Best regards

Berullos.6928:

Nagato no Kami.4980:

Bhawb.7408:

ANet isn’t making WvW about power. WvW just isn’t a consideration except in more extreme cases. Don’t ever expect the game to be balanced for WvW, its impossible.

I’m not sure I understand. Could you please elaborate?

Anet only balances around sPvP. Everything else is after thought. WvW is broken from the getgo. Zerk stats scale ridiculously in WvW. You get 100%+ crit damage bonus. Making burst builds extremely potent before condis can even take effect.

The problem with WvW is that it is a blend between PvP and PVE. It’s almost impossible to balance skills and traits on WvW, due to afore mentioned game elements. You’ve got all sorts of modifications from WvW-only abilities, and various foods and boosts, plus it is a giant zerg fest. Where one guardian with condition cleansing in any dungeon or PvP scenario might be considered balanced…. the moment you have a giant ball of players, with several guardians among them, all cleansing conditions, the balance goes right out the window.

Some of these problems could perhaps be solved if boons and conditions were less fire and forget. For example, in GW1 enchantments, conditions and curses mattered a lot. They were not matters that players would casually ignore, and they weren’t cleansed so easily. Plus there was a lot of focus on energy management. But in GW2 in any situation outside PvP, it’s just a whole lot of spamming conditions and boons left and right. In GW1 you could die if one of your enchantments was removed at the wrong second. GW2 does not have this depth.

Mad Queen Malafide.7512:

Berullos.6928:

Nagato no Kami.4980:

Bhawb.7408:

ANet isn’t making WvW about power. WvW just isn’t a consideration except in more extreme cases. Don’t ever expect the game to be balanced for WvW, its impossible.

I’m not sure I understand. Could you please elaborate?

Anet only balances around sPvP. Everything else is after thought. WvW is broken from the getgo. Zerk stats scale ridiculously in WvW. You get 100%+ crit damage bonus. Making burst builds extremely potent before condis can even take effect.

The problem with WvW is that it is a blend between PvP and PVE. It’s almost impossible to balance skills and traits on WvW, due to afore mentioned game elements. You’ve got all sorts of modifications from WvW-only abilities, and various foods and boosts, plus it is a giant zerg fest. Where one guardian with condition cleansing in any dungeon or PvP scenario might be considered balanced…. the moment you have a giant ball of players, with several guardians among them, all cleansing conditions, the balance goes right out the window.

Some of these problems could perhaps be solved if boons and conditions were less fire and forget. For example, in GW1 enchantments, conditions and curses mattered a lot. They were not matters that players would casually ignore, and they weren’t cleansed so easily. Plus there was a lot of focus on energy management. But in GW2 in any situation outside PvP, it’s just a whole lot of spamming conditions and boons left and right. In GW1 you could die if one of your enchantments was removed at the wrong second. GW2 does not have this depth.

It is perfectly possible to have better balance in WvW as it is now if you forget zerging/siege wars and focus on 1v1 or 5v5 scale fighting. I don’t think anyone would expect WvW to be in perfect balance but it really could use some work too.

jalmari.3906:

It is perfectly possible to have better balance in WvW as it is now if you forget zerging/siege wars and focus on 1v1 or 5v5 scale fighting. I don’t think anyone would expect WvW to be in perfect balance but it really could use some work too.

Oh I agree. I’m not saying WvW can’t be balanced. I just think it is very hard to balance skills and traits on WvW, since it is a blend between two worlds (PvP and PVE).

One thing that could be done to balance 1v1 and 5v5 fighting, is to more encourage those fights in WvW, instead of it being so zerg-focused. Players would have to feel the need to not always zerg and “ball up”. I think that can be achieved by taking a couple of lessons from GW1, and introducing skills that punish enemies for being balled up.

Berullos.6928:

Nagato no Kami.4980:

Bhawb.7408:

ANet isn’t making WvW about power. WvW just isn’t a consideration except in more extreme cases. Don’t ever expect the game to be balanced for WvW, its impossible.

I’m not sure I understand. Could you please elaborate?

Anet only balances around sPvP. Everything else is after thought. WvW is broken from the getgo. Zerk stats scale ridiculously in WvW. You get 100%+ crit damage bonus. Making burst builds extremely potent before condis can even take effect.

Zergs are mostly immune to condis due to AoE condi clears from guardians. And a group of 5-8 can if built well can also be completely immune to condis if they move together.

Theres tons of condi reduction foods and runes in WvW.

The runes in WvW are also completely broken. Just look at perplexity runes. Any cc class runs that and now they get 25+ stacks of confusion all the time.

Tbh, with all the nerfs to condis I might ‘have’ to start playing a powermancer just to kill things. Theres so much anti condi now its getting ridiculous.

You are right, that was what I’m trying to say in my post. But when you try to make a powermancer for wvw, you will realise that mainhand axe or dagger are the worst choices for a necro against a zerg in wvw. The biggest problem is, these weapons are single-targeted, so you can’t even tag players as aoe and hit only several ppl in whole zerg. You will only have ds#4 and well of suffering to do a “real” aoe damage with power base, and as you all know ds#4 gets always interrupted in wvw zerg fights.

If you enter in enemy zerg with melees(due to these non-ranged mh weapons) you will see that you are a ping pong ball for hammers. We need to stay ranged until they add us real passive defenses and long stabilities. Our main damage reducing defense depends on a condition(weakness). And it gets cleansed in 1-2 secs in an enemy raid or zerg which makes it pointless.

And Staff is mainly condition based, its base direct damages of marks are so low to make it “really” usable in power builds. You may use staff 4 to do some damage but its main use is transferring conditions to save your character, I wouldn’t use it to do some mediocre dps. If we are enforced to play as powermancer with so much cleanses to condis, we definitely need “real” alternatives to staff/scepter-dagger for powermancers that deals mainly power based aoe damage from range.
This is why i always suggest that wvw needs to be held as seperate environment.

Mad Queen Malafide.7512:

One thing that could be done to balance 1v1 and 5v5 fighting, is to more encourage those fights in WvW, instead of it being so zerg-focused. Players would have to feel the need to not always zerg and “ball up”. I think that can be achieved by taking a couple of lessons from GW1, and introducing skills that punish enemies for being balled up.

I don’t think this is a good idea. This sorta kills the idea of, well, guilds. What would be the point of creating a large guild only to enter WvW, thin out and diffuse like vapor?

Furthermore, large-scale fights add to the diversity of game play. Sure, blobs of PUGs are stupid, I’m not disputing that. I’m talking about organized zergs headed by competent commanders. They require entirely different sets of skills and strategies than other engagements. Take for instance “balling up” as you put it. You make it sound simple. But it’s not. It’s really not. If it were, PUG blobs wouldn’t look like mile-long trains or their fights like generalized riots. Besides, finding fault with tight formations and coordinated maneuvering is like criticizing the Greeks for inventing the phalanx.

And it’s not as if single roamers or havoc teams aren’t effective in WvW. To the contrary, they a key factor to map domination. Quickly flipping camps, sniping yaks, holding bloodlust, putting swords on keeps and taking empty towers are vital to overall strategy. Sure, if you run into a zerg, you’re gonna get ground into paste but zerg can only move so quickly. Small forces create chaos across the map — they score, distract and disrupt.

To punish zerging would be limiting the number of ways the game can be enjoyed. 1v1 and 5v5 already have adequate representation in PvP. There really isn’t a need for another exclusive venue.

Only thing that really needs to be done in WvW is rewarding defense more, in my opinion. Not one of the season 1 achievements is for defending an objective.

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

Only thing that really needs to be done in WvW is rewarding defense more, in my opinion. Not one of the season 1 achievements is for defending an objective.

This is a really good suggestion. Defense wins but is never rewarded in the scoring. I think they could encourage this by:

Rewarding players with XP/loot bags/badges for refreshing siege (<30 min?) and holding bloodlust.
Giving bonus PPT per upgrade in towers, keeps and camps.
Giving more XP for yak escort. Yaks also need waaay more HP.
Road sentries are able to kill yaks. Yaks move faster on claimed roads.
Greatly reduce XP and loot for taking places. Replace with bonus loot and XP based on PPT. (This way, scoring and loot are synced.)

I’d also love to reward scouting/sentries but not sure how to go about it.

As I mentioned in a couple of other threads, my main concern about our defence is that ANet expect us to use our defensive DS LF for both offense (which is included in our balance parameters) and defence. On top of this the change to allow incoming DS damage to spill over to real health is unjustified in any shape or form given our lack of other mitigation abilities and just seemed like an act of kittenry (self imposed censor here). The other issue is that we have to build LF BEFORE we can use our primary defensive shield substitute…..and that leaves us hugely vulnerable early in encounters.