Guild Wars 2

We had a good run, we were good at something for a while there, I’ll miss you buddy.

“AOE balance. We feel that in PvP some AOE builds are too strong for the opportunity cost, and we’ll be bringing those in line in the next few patches.”

Oh and maybe wells too, I guess we’ll see.

Don’t worry, thieves will probably still be able to shoot clusterbombs over walls from a safe distance out of LoS, doing as much damage instantly as Mark of Blood does over it’s entire duration, while at a safer vantage point.

I don’t think Epidemic is overpowered in any way with all the condition removal being used in WvW. You use Epidemic, and some other Necro uses Staff 4, so much for your Epidemic.

Ravien.4823:

Don’t worry, thieves will probably still be able to shoot clusterbombs over walls from a safe distance out of LoS, doing as much damage instantly as Mark of Blood does over it’s entire duration, while at a safer vantage point.

I don’t think Epidemic is overpowered in any way with all the condition removal being used in WvW. You use Epidemic, and some other Necro uses Staff 4, so much for your Epidemic.

Oh no, that necro is slowly stacking bleeds over a 6 second window, I wonder what’s going to happe—EPIDEMIC—OMG WE’RE MELTING OP OP OP OP.

Meanwhile, Guardian : “Oh look, epidemic, haha cute. SAVE YOURSELF!”

~Converts Conditions~
[or]
~Light Field/Whirl~

Their problem gonna limit it to only transfer 1 stack of each uniqe conditon :p

wiazabi.2549:

Their problem gonna limit it to only transfer 1 stack of each uniqe conditon :p

Oh god lmao. That would drop necro population from 2% to 0%.

Best start leveling your Mesmers.

When they remove necro, mesmer will be next in the line. They probably give portals to warriors, Time Warp to guardians and Moa Morph to thieves.
But I don’t care. For 60$ I had my fun with this game. Better quit before it became “Warrior Wars 2”.

Knote.2904:

wiazabi.2549:

Their problem gonna limit it to only transfer 1 stack of each uniqe conditon :p

Oh god lmao. That would drop necro population from 2% to 0%.

Wow, i seriously laughed irl. That was epic.

And ya i felt the “AoE being too strong” comment was somehow directed to us. After all they like to bully us because we are the 2%.

We do have “strong” aoe, I feel. But it’s more situational and takes a lot longer to stack up and is easily removed. Our AOE isn’t better, just situationally stronger in some cases (and weaker in others)

I love Necro but really hope they actually start fixing our issues.

Ravien.4823:

Don’t worry, thieves will probably still be able to shoot clusterbombs over walls from a safe distance out of LoS, doing as much damage instantly as Mark of Blood does over it’s entire duration, while at a safer vantage point.

lol… just lol

and what exactly is the travel time of this insanely slow projectile that is the mark of blood. It has to be slow and predictable to be compared to clusterbomb

Mark of blood dealing a grand total of 3k damage in like 10 seconds is clearly overpowered. Nerf Nerf nerf!!!

Chill, guys ! I think that you are taking this way out of proportion. Just learn how to use Death Shroud properly and you will see how insanely powerful the necromancer is.

On a serious note – while what A-net said is worrying, we still have no details on what they are looking to fix. We should keep an eye on what is happening, but it is still too early to panic.

Andlat Helsonr.1284:

Chill, guys ! I think that you are taking this way out of proportion. Just learn how to use Death Shroud properly and you will see how insanely powerful the necromancer is.

On a serious note – while what A-net said is worrying, we still have no details on what they are looking to fix. We should keep an eye on what is happening, but it is still too early to panic.

The main reason I “speculate” this nerf is because Anet (the people balancing that is) have shown that they’ve sided with the “top” pvp’ers, and necro sitting there spreading conditions for aoe dmg is “the thing” now.

Now people are saying there’s too much aoe dmg flying around. Thus incoming nerf, since necro’s are the only ones in these matches doing the aoe’ing and what not.

In wvw epidemic is one of the few ways to bust a zerg. Ill be really cheesed if they nerf it.

Acelerion.6820:

In wvw epidemic is one of the few ways to bust a zerg. Ill be really cheesed if they nerf it.

Considering the 5 target cap, I fail to see how. =p

Acelerion.6820:

In wvw epidemic is one of the few ways to bust a zerg. Ill be really cheesed if they nerf it.

Its unlikely that this nerf (if it hits epidemic) will affect WvWvW, WvWvW is treated as PvE by the developers, as for sPvP yep those guys are pretty screwed…

Savan.8495:

Acelerion.6820:

In wvw epidemic is one of the few ways to bust a zerg. Ill be really cheesed if they nerf it.

Its unlikely that this nerf (if it hits epidemic) will affect WvWvW, WvWvW is treated as PvE by the developers, as for sPvP yep those guys are pretty screwed…

You mean like they make sure not to kitten PvE Mesmers off? We are screwed.

Crap, Epi is getting nerfed? Where can I find this information? Thanks in advance

Knote.2904:

Andlat Helsonr.1284:

Chill, guys ! I think that you are taking this way out of proportion. Just learn how to use Death Shroud properly and you will see how insanely powerful the necromancer is.

On a serious note – while what A-net said is worrying, we still have no details on what they are looking to fix. We should keep an eye on what is happening, but it is still too early to panic.

The main reason I “speculate” this nerf is because Anet (the people balancing that is) have shown that they’ve sided with the “top” pvp’ers, and necro sitting there spreading conditions for aoe dmg is “the thing” now.

Now people are saying there’s too much aoe dmg flying around. Thus incoming nerf, since necro’s are the only ones in these matches doing the aoe’ing and what not.

Even in wvw its hard to hit that many people with AoE at once. People tend to spread out a lot during the zergs. Most of the time my 240 radius AoE only hits 3 people or less.

And since Epidemic got a 600 radius, it is often the only way to spread conditions to enough people. And given how low the damage of our conditions do, this is often the only way for a necro to do anything noticeable in wvw.

randomfightfan.4091:

Ravien.4823:

Don’t worry, thieves will probably still be able to shoot clusterbombs over walls from a safe distance out of LoS, doing as much damage instantly as Mark of Blood does over it’s entire duration, while at a safer vantage point.

lol… just lol

and what exactly is the travel time of this insanely slow projectile that is the mark of blood. It has to be slow and predictable to be compared to clusterbomb

You mean the barely noticeable projectile that doesn’t give any warning unless you’re staring up at the sky? Do you stare straight up during zergs? I have a thief too, clusterbomb is easy to hit people with in mass WvW combat. Sure Mark of Blood is easy to hit people with too, but half the time your bleeds are cleansed in about 3 seconds, whereas clusterbomb can be lobbed from out of LOS, over walls, and does the same amount as Mark of Blood, except instantly. And it also applies a bleed for even more damage.

Knote.2904:

Acelerion.6820:

In wvw epidemic is one of the few ways to bust a zerg. Ill be really cheesed if they nerf it.

Considering the 5 target cap, I fail to see how. =p

Limit is frustrating but cool down is short enough. Confusion → epidemic bombs…

And just because Anet said they are going to look into AoE skills, does it mean they will nerf Epidemic?!!
Seriously? That bad a reputation does Anet have with balance?

Burjis.3087:

And just because Anet said they are going to look into AoE skills, does it mean they will nerf Epidemic?!!
Seriously? That bad a reputation does Anet have with balance?

wait, where did they say this? link please?

I am trying to find this, i know they mentioned they looking at aoe skills, but this does not mean they will nerf them, epidemic is pretty unique skill since it requires a decent amount of conditions on 1 foe to be effective. No offense to necros but we are not the best at applying them. For this to truly be effective we have to rely on others .

It’s at the end of their Dec 14th balance thread where they talk about some of the things they have balanced or going to balance.
But as I said, they never said anything about Epidemic specifically. People just like to assume that Epidemic is one of the “low opportunity cost” and “too strong” AoE skills that Anet is worried about.
However I don’t mind if they limit epidemic to 5 targets like many other AoE spells if they fix other stuff about the necromancer.

I think Anet post was regarding elementarist aoe more than necro aoe. Specially when people are downed.

Sethorus.9231:

I think Anet post was regarding elementarist aoe more than necro aoe. Specially when people are downed.

I’m pretty sure they’re talking about necro’s.

Elementalists are running around as bunkers using their aura/boon cheese.

Necro’s are running around just stacking conditions and spreading them, and spamming marks and/or wells.

The best use of this is when someone get’s downed, necro goes all out on said downed person, making it easy to epidemic, and aoe down both the downed person and anyone trying to rez. They even buffed downed state hp this patch because it’s “too easy” to kill people.

Yeah Necro has zero future as anything but a jigsaw half finished class that Devs just kick from one meeting to another until some intern gets saddles with the work no one is willing to do. You can tell the entire class was designed from the perspective of someone who was completely underwhelmed with the task they were given.

To be fair the major offenders are usually not Epidemic but our Wells, Greatsword Warriors and pretty much every Thief specc besides MH Pistol.

I agree… if they mess with “MY” epidemic, there’s going to be a… misunderstanding :P

Don’t think they will though, epidemic is not an AOE damage ability, it’s damage depends entirely on how and when you use it. It already has a variable, if you make it less effective by default + all the variables it goes through, condition builds will die for the necromancer and with that the hybrid build.

Since bursting necromancers don’t have good AOE, they will literally make necromancers from one of the best AOE-ers in the game, into a single target sad class…
Necromancer was not designed for single target fighting, that’s why we have double HP bar, that’s why we have so much HP in the first place… so we can AOE and agro everything…

If they mess that up, it’s not worth to play a necromancer, single target DPS only… necromancer is lacking but it compensates for it with AOE.

Nuhj.8372:

To be fair the major offenders are usually not Epidemic but our Wells, Greatsword Warriors and pretty much every Thief specc besides MH Pistol.

No it’s definately our epidemic lol.

Someone downed? Spam conditions, epidemic, continue spamming marks/conditions, then it’s dead, well of corruption to fear people off, etc.

Of course you could also just add wells to this in a hybrid build, or just go full glass cannon well/staff build but you’re too cooldown dependent and you’re not as useful til someone is downed.

Plus you can do terror build with condition build, which is what I’ve been doing.

Wells being on a 36+ second timers is not a OP aoe skills considering how easy they are to get out of in most cases. Epidemic is a great skill of ours, one of the best but necros are not the best at putting out tons of conditions as knote makes us out to be. With someone who can or others to help pushing/applying condition out as well, makes epidemic an amazing skill.

Knote.2904:

Of course you could also just add wells to this in a hybrid build

This is excactly what the vast majority of tPvPers is running. Carrion + Corruption/Suffering and of course Signet of Undeath. Epidemic is still a great teamfight utility though.

gamefreak.5673:

Wells being on a 36+ second timers is not a OP aoe skills considering how easy they are to get out of in most cases. Epidemic is a great skill of ours, one of the best but necros are not the best at putting out tons of conditions as knote makes us out to be. With someone who can or others to help pushing/applying condition out as well, makes epidemic an amazing skill.

No, but we can easily on someone who’s downed.

Knote.2904:

gamefreak.5673:

Wells being on a 36+ second timers is not a OP aoe skills considering how easy they are to get out of in most cases. Epidemic is a great skill of ours, one of the best but necros are not the best at putting out tons of conditions as knote makes us out to be. With someone who can or others to help pushing/applying condition out as well, makes epidemic an amazing skill.

No, but we can easily on someone who’s downed.

Ok ill give you that, but running with others who can help us apply conditions does make epidemic much better of a skill then say if it was just you.

Funny thing about the post is that it is complete speculation at this point

Well what else do you want us to do savan. We have treads for bugs, builds, things most of us can agree we need to be moved on trait lines, etc. So why not a speculation tread?

With how long/infrequent balance patches are I think your safe for awhile :P

AoE is too powerful, especially necromancer AoE, so its getting nerfed. Seems good to me.

I play a lot of WvW, but i hardly ever use epidemic. Sure, trolling enemy groups who are doing the grub is fun, but besides that, epidemic is very situational. I small scale fights it’s hard to hit more than maybe two enemies, and in large zerg fights conditions get removed so fast that you dont do much damage with epidemic anyways. Also it takes time to stack enough conditions to be worth useing epidemic, and normally they get either removed before there are enough on the target to be worth the skill, or the enemies gets killed by your own zerg und die faster than the conditions can tick. Running into an enemy zerg, drop well of corruption + well of suffering, scepter nr2 + dagger nr5, switch to DS and DS nr4, switch out of DS and go plague form, then walk back to collect the bags. That’s where the AoE is.

And one thing to think about: I think one of the main reasons for the 25 bleeding stack limit are skills like epidemic who affect all conditions on the target. Imagine an epidemic on the grub without bleeding stack limit → instant death for everyone who gets hit (or any other situations with extreme condition stacking on one target). So i would be glad to loose a skill like epidemic if we can get rid of the 25 bleeding stack limit at the same time.

Savan.8495:

Funny thing about the post is that it is complete speculation at this point

Stating the obvious much.

Well, if they nerf the AoE aspect of the necromancer, then maybe more people will start playing powermancers, since the power build will not be that much weaker than the condition one.

Also – I doubt that they will nerf the class skills into the ground, but even if they do, they are likely to give the Necro some buffs to compensate.

JonathanSharp

AOE balance. We feel that in PvP some AOE builds are too strong for the opportunity cost, and we’ll be bringing those in line in the next few patches.

I think the key word in that statement is some this isn’t directed at Necromancers specifically but in general.

Epidemic has already been hit by the 5-cap AoE limit plus has a negative drawback for using so i don’t believe it will be changed with this said patch. I believe its aimed more at skills that can hit more then 5 people still such as Daggerstorm.

Savan.8495:

Knote.2904:

We had a good run, we were good at something for a while there, I’ll miss you buddy.

“AOE balance. We feel that in PvP some AOE builds are too strong for the opportunity cost, and we’ll be bringing those in line in the next few patches.”

Oh and maybe wells too, I guess we’ll see.

negative much?

Again obvious. If you’re enjoying the game so much, why do you feel the need to come on the necro forums that you’re sick of reading, to flame bait? That bored?

there are so many ways to remove conditions now, I would be really surprised if Epidemic is nerfed. I will also be really kitten

Sneth.6981:

there are so many ways to remove conditions now, I would be really surprised if Epidemic is nerfed. I will also be really kitten

I have very little doubt that Epidemic will get nerfed.

I am even willing to put 50$ US on them specifically changing Epidemic to a static transfer of each single condition (no stacks), and a static duration on each condition spread.

We could do a points pool on how lone the new Duration will be. I would drop 5$ on 2 seconds 3 seconds and 5 seconds just to play the odds a but given a single option… 3 seconds.

Wells will also be nerfed into uselessness. I can venture to guess that this will come for two reasons specifically. Wells are the most powerful Utility and they offer massive damage when traited appropriately for that damage.

In the metrics they will see two things. They will see Wells being used more than any other Utility, and they will see AoE damage extremely exaggerated due to damage stacking and hugely OP AoE builds from multiple classes.

Since no one at Anet plays Necro, they will have no contextual reference to seperate the use of Wells from the exaggerated AoE damage. So they will have two very valid reasons to nerf Wells. At least from their perspective.

First Wells must be too good. That is why so many people use them and ignore all these other Utilities… Right? (of course that ignores the fact that all those other Utilities have a tendency to be useless or broken) No one at Anet plays Necro so the is no way they would know.

And AoE damage is a problem for multiple classes and in the spirit of fair play all large AoE options should be toned down to prevent disparity between classes in a particularly heavy nerf.

/thread

I could definately see them changing the skill to work on a static duration, like a 5 second max duration on anything transferred. IE it takes a snapshot of all conditions, sends those to 5 in range people for 3-5 seconds.

I can’t see them making it only send over one stack of each condition, that would just be complete garbage. Not saying it won’t happen, but that would be the equivalent of just removing the skill all together.

Rennoko.5731:

I could definately see them changing the skill to work on a static duration, like a 5 second max duration on anything transferred. IE it takes a snapshot of all conditions, sends those to 5 in range people for 3-5 seconds.

I can’t see them making it only send over one stack of each condition, that would just be complete garbage. Not saying it won’t happen, but that would be the equivalent of just removing the skill all together.

Nerfing Epidemic and Wells is like removing them. They are only barely useful as it.

remember they said, basically, its the personal danger of the skill not its actual effect.

so if they stick to that then the necro will just get more risk when casting it.
add an LOS requirement.
reduce cast range.
maybe give the necro the epidemic as well.
something to make it more dangerous to use.

It already debuff’s us with vuln….. which means it SHOULD be good/better than comparable other class skills because of that downside.

Recently I have been so irritated with the price we have to pay when using skills and abilities. The long cast times/debuffs/etc. And they are just in-line or weaker than other class skills that are instant cast, and don’t have a backstab effect.

Just about EVERY skill on my mesmer is instant cast, usable while stunned, and powerful. Not to mention the mobility and access to invulnerability skills. Apples to oranges, I know, but still. I still enjoy my necro quite well in PVE, but in wvw it has lots quite a bit of its appeal.