Guild Wars 2

Does anyone really believe, given how the game plays, that “attrition” is a thing that’s ever going to happen? I really don’t care what ANet has said in the past, and I odn’t think it matters. How would that work? In what situations would it work?

Someone try to define their own personal view on what “attrition” is, where they want it to apply, and how that would be balanced for anything but that one situation. I’m going to assume sPvP, because the idea of WvW attrition is just sillybuggers to me. Do you just mean “bunker”? If so, say that. “Attrition” makes it sound like the Necro should be able to tank damage and still dish it out with enough pressure to get kills, where a “bunker” just tanks damage.

I really don’t think the idea works for a game like GW2, and I think ANet realized it. Maybe they’re still trying to work it into the game, but I can’t help but wonder if all of this clamoring for attrition is hurting the class when it could instead be trying to evolve with the game, not against it.

Maybe my animosity is simply because I’ve seen the word “attrition” used 100 times in the past few threads I’ve looked at, so I’m simply tired of the buzzword. Like “leverage” or “low-hanging fruit”. Either way, I simply don’t see it working.

Oh well — guess I’ll shelve this effort now then. I’m not in the mood to level up to 80, gear the toon out, and then find the build is crap.

Back to my mesmer PU build.

Attritional is a thing that’s never going o happen and should be shelved.

If you think of DS as extra HP, then the necro seemingly has great attrition. Dagger, axe, fill DS fast.

But, Death shoud is not extra HP. Death shroud has to be activated, and, needs a ton of traits to be somewhat useful. If you don’t take these traits, you are locked out of your skills and are very subpar. You cant heal in death shroud. Plus Death shroud does not refill for free out of combat like hit points do, the only thing that refills it is risking your actual hit points in combat. Death shroud has a cooldown timer and lcks you out of your heal and utilities when it ends.

Finally, HP as a resource does nothing against stuns, immobilizes, other CC, or ficus fire and you can be one shot even while you are in tanks gear with full death shroud.

nekretaal.6485:

Attritional is a thing that’s never going o happen and should be shelved.

If you think of DS as extra HP, then the necro seemingly has great attrition. Dagger, axe, fill DS fast.

But, Death shoud is not extra HP. Death shroud has to be activated, and, needs a ton of traits to be somewhat useful. If you don’t take these traits, you are locked out of your skills and are very subpar. You cant heal in death shroud. Plus Death shroud does not refill for free out of combat like hit points do, the only thing that refills it is risking your actual hit points in combat. Death shroud has a cooldown timer and lcks you out of your heal and utilities when it ends.

Finally, HP as a resource does nothing against stuns, immobilizes, other CC, or ficus fire and you can be one shot even while you are in tanks gear with full death shroud.

Pretty much this. Anet needs to start listening to the people actually playing the class.

According to the live streams, the devs only seem to be playing warriors/guardians and mesmers.

When I think of how attrition works in other games and even in this game, the classes that are apparently unintentionally great at it, attrition comes not through having the biggest damage sponge (like they have tried to give it to Necros through), but in frequently having periods where you escape damage altogether.

Usually in GW2 this is from mobility, stuff like stealth, blink or ride the lightning. You are still hitting the enemy, or at least healing more, while they aren’t hitting you.

It can also be achieved not by you getting faster, but by the enemy getting slower. This would be CC and kiting attrition, unfortunately, doesn’t really work in this game because condition clearing is easily accessible, that no cripple or chill can be relied upon to stay on enemies to keep them off you. You can overload condition cleansing, but the ultimate benefit of that is usually just our damaging conditions bursting them down (which is not attrition) instead of covering for our CC.

Fear is workable CC, but it again is so short that it fits a burst offense ‘kill or be killed’ style and not drawn out attrition survival.

In summary they have no idea what they are doing when it comes to attrition and this class and vs the style of combat currently in the game.