Guild Wars 2

It occurred to me while playing tPvP trying to defend a point against 2 knockback guardians that knockback is superior to our fear in every way.

- They both last about 1 second. Some knockbacks knock you down and last about 2.5-3 seconds.
- Knockback pushes you away farther than fear.
- The classes that have knockbacks seem to be able to use them about once every 5 seconds – much more often than necromancers can use fear.

I guess I’m just bitter because we have no access to stability unless you trait for it in the death shroud tree..

But seriously, “knockback knockback knockback knockback” in pvp all day makes me wish fear was even close to comparable.

Well we do have stability but its only when we used lich or plague forms. Also the 30 point one from DS tree but 30 points for 3 second stability is kinda…well kinda limited but 3 seconds every time you hit DS and you can enter DS every 10 seconds isnt so bad if you can keep the Lifeforce coming in.

I could not agree more coro, not having a viable method of stability is game breaking for necros. Not just for staying on a point but for stomping and rezzing, a very key part of higher level play. Its getting harder and harder as a necro stomping in Tpvp
seeing improvements in players skill levels and builds people are protecting downed players and rezzing them fast. I kept downing a glass thief today at a GY zerg fight could never stomp him due to a guardian and eng (bunkers) knocking me all over the place they rezed him 4 times and eventually rolled us.

What really had me raging is I could not rez my own teamates even once I get knocked a mile away then they get stomped… my fear is on much longer cooldown then the spam knockbacks, downs and stuns. Dont get me starting on thiefs fear steal 3 seconds lol.

And 30 points in the DS tree is worst then not having stability imo the whole DS is not viable with the only good necro build in tpvp… conditions.

suggestion: – getting knockedbacked causes stability buff to be put on you for 1-2 secconds

Knockback is the best CC in the game period. It lasts the longest and moves people pretty far. It’s also usually AOE.

And yes I agree that necros lack stability. And yes it does suck that we ‘have’ to go 30 points if we want any.

I feel the need to take 30 points into Soul Reaping just so I can guarantee stomps and rezzes. I also feel mandatory to take 10 points in Death Magic just to get the increased Mark sizes.

Thats 40 points gone, leaving only 30 to play with.

Thats a lot of points forced, and then you could do 30 for the condition.

Also I feel 20 into Soul reaping is mandatory, the life force on marks is too good, along with last Gasp.

i do hate the fact that Soul Reaping has crit % which I feel is mostly worthless in almost all necro builds. The one thats possible is Power crit death shroud builds but even then you know they arent the greatest for our class when the staff is condition based.

I also hate our revive trait which would be awesome if it didnt have a 30 second CD on it, which in team fights makes it worthless, cause usually you have to rez 1-2 in quick succession.

As i pointed out a nice time ago, we wouldnt lack stability if the 30 SR trait would give stability while in ds + around 4 seconds post exit.

in beta it was 100% stability while in DS but I think it may have been seen as a bit OP so was reduced to 3 seconds

Yes it’s much much better. In every single aspect. Duration, distance, availability. Considering that they are countered by the same thing – stability – I just don’t see a reason why fear even exists. Pretty much the same effect as knockdown just weaker. Flavor maybe…

Actually the lack of stability is even more hilarious when you consider that the necro is envisioned as a class you should have a hard time to get away from. Well, 1 knockback and your victim can easily run off, or a thief stealing your fear…

Just about the only time I get completely owned is when I’m knocked back/down over an over… Without a “Shake if off” you’re SOL. I may trait into the DS=Retaliation to help with this, then at least I can return SOME of the pounding…. to bad fear only affects your target (unlike “fear me”) and only last about .5 seconds….

DarkHeart.1760:

Just about the only time I get completely owned is when I’m knocked back/down over an over… Without a “Shake if off” you’re SOL. I may trait into the DS=Retaliation to help with this, then at least I can return SOME of the pounding…. to bad fear only affects your target (unlike “fear me”) and only last about .5 seconds….

I think what should be done abotu DS is simply that Stability for Ds should be moved from Grandmaster to master and that whenever any Necro goes into DS all effects from Knockback, Stun, Daze,….. are immediately removed, sorta like instant-recovery
Seriously, just think about it. When someone goe sintoa spectral form, you expect the Laws of physics to at least blink or take a short brake alltogether. I was very disappointed when Necro couldn’t float around like the lich in DS.

It has a 10 second cooldown. And DS was always supposed to be a “no you don’t” modus for Necromancers, allowing him to turn things around. It should be at least a weak counter to most shutdown strategies.

Likely another side effect of the DS “tuning” that was done right before release.

There is a big difference between knockBACK and knockDOWN

KnockDOWN is the long lasting one (2 seconds always) and the shortess cooldown of a knockdown is 45 seconds on backbreaker.

KnockBACKs last only one second and the distance varys depending on the skill. Compared to fear some do indead create more distance but depending on what knockback skill is used or if the enemy is affected by cripple or swiftness fear could create more distance. The cooldowns on knockbacks tend to be shorter and classes tend to have knockbacks over knockdowns but they don’t go under 15 second cooldowns (enginneer overcharged shot I believe, plus that skill also knocks back the engineer)

i think the realy sucky thing about our 30 soul reaping trait stability it that it doesnt scale with boon duration at all its just static.. it would be actually pretty nice to have 4 or 5 seconds of stability every 10 seconds.

That may be a potential issue with moving it down the trait ladder, as then it could be comboes with the 5 second DS cooldown to have near continual stability.

Then again, we can via that route have continual fury and near continual retaliation…

Dante:

It’s not so much that the cooldowns on each skill are too long. It’s the fact that they have access to so many knockbacks at the same time.

eg. Guardian with X/shield + hammer

Shield of Absorption: AoE knockback – lasts 4 seconds, 40s cooldown
Ring of Warding: AoE knockdown on contact – lasts 5 seconds, 40s cooldown
Banish: Huge knockback/down (launch) – 25s cooldown

Hammer of Wisdom – knocks down every 3 attacks – estimated 10 seconds between KD’s
Bane signet – active is a knockdown – 45s cooldown

So, in a 50 second window, that guardian can knockdown/knockback/launch 10+ times – once every 5 seconds.

In the same window, a necromancer can use fear 3 times, assuming death shroud is up and they only use death shroud to fear, then immediately change back.

digiowl.9620:

That may be a potential issue with moving it down the trait ladder, as then it could be comboes with the 5 second DS cooldown to have near continual stability.

Then again, we can via that route have continual fury and near continual retaliation…

I think the point is no one wants to put 30 points into a tree for 3 sec of stability. Even if they did use the stability and CD reduction traits DS is only 4 skills and 3 have reasonably long CDs (keep in mind you’d be forced to choose the DS skill cd reduction OR the stability in this case). On top of the issue of maintaining LF any build centered around utilizing DS so often is severly limited and performing to 1/3 the potential of most other classes. Basically it’s a poor man’s Elementalist without all the power and utility. Why wouldn’t you just log over to your Ele and do it better?

I do not even understand why fear is such a weak CC on the necro; warrior, on top of all of their CC have a better one, and thieves steal from necros gains a CC that is better than every CC we have on top of a massive bleed).

I have a feeling this came from WoW, I dont know how it is now but when it was released I rolled a warlock and their “fear” could be kept up for 50% of the fight, which was balanced considering just like the necro they had very little CC and escame mechanisms they almost entirely relied on it. However, since all the hate that warlocks got for having fear, every other game I have played that has PvP and fear had it being extremely weak….something about fear makes people think it is stronger than it is. I think I was astronished by the amount of CC guardians and Warrior have…not to mention the fact that most of that CC lasted long enough to cast a spell or two….our fears are mostly an “interrupt” skill rather than a hard CC.

“The classes that have knockbacks seem to be able to use them about once every 5 seconds.”

Lol, stopped reading there.

Why? Read my post further down. I showed how a guardian can use knockbacks (half of them aoe) every 5 seconds.

Engineer:

Overcharged Shot – launch every 15 seconds
Thumper turret – launch every 30 seconds
Throw mine – knockback every 18 seconds
Big Ol’ Bomb – launch every 30 seconds

That’s 6 times in a 36 second window – once every 6 seconds.
Also, most of those are launches, which have more distance and last longer than regular knockbacks.

One thing people seem to have forgotten about fear is it stacks in duration. Blowout has a fixed duration. Fear also makes people turn their back to the source, meaning even if someone breaks out of it, they are still facing the wrong way, and that’s a huge advantage.

Numot.3965 – Model is, camera lock isnt, you can instantly cast as soon as you get out of fear, on knockback you get a nice kitten with movement and camera so you cant react instantly no matter how much you want.

In general on the topic, Fear = PvE interrupt and a kitten you boss effect, dont treat it as anything special, ill never be because people will whine why we get something unique.

This is true. If you blow both of your fear cooldowns, you can fear someone for .. 1+1=2 seconds. 2 seconds! That’s like 2/3 as long as thieves’ stolen fear or warrior’s aoe fear. Whoa! Someone call the OP police.

Seriously though, I agree that the “facing the wrong way” thing is nice.. but it’s still not as useful as actually knocking someone down, which is a harder cc.

didn’t they hard cap the fear duration to 5 seconds to fix the issue of auto-fear on CC resulting in 20+ seconds of fear under certain conditions?

Those conditions being a necro traited for auto-fear, or mesmer traited to reflect CC back tries to fear an equivalent necro or mesmer, resulting in the effect bouncing back and forth multiple times in the span of a second and racking up an impressive stack for anyone within range.