Guild Wars 2

So Ready Up has already talked about Necromancers. They were basically where we would have expected. However I think they brought up some really key points that people forget. And first off, remember that this is all conceptual, they are not saying that this is how professions act in game right now perfectly all the time.

Necromancers should be weak to burst damage, and losing the fight quickly. If left alone long enough they should have gained enough strength and lowered the enemies strength enough to win. They aren’t supposed to have good mobility, although some things like flesh wurm allow them to back out shortly.

Something very important though, is that they specifically listed things like sustained AoE power damage as being a weakness. They also mentioned that things like Deathshroud may need to be brought up to allow them to actually sustain like they are supposed to.

Overall, for those of you who watched and listened, what did you think? I thought they were generally pretty correct in the ideas. Obviously numbers still need to be tuned, and Necromancer still lack a few components to be able to reasonably reach that attrition (stability and other CC immunities), but I thought in a very general sense they were pretty on top of things.

I still love you Sharp, I believe.

I was about to load the Ready Up so i havent seen it, but if that was the general sentiment, I’m 100% on board with that idea.

From what i saw, i know now the necro will never be in good spot for competitive pvp. (unless they overpower their dmg as with dhummfire again)

They said necro has good sustain (its strenghts), that they are where devs want them to be. In other words filling the atrition class.
Nuff said …..

And yeah they said they might need to increase lf bar, but that is not what necros need. What they need to sustain is healing wjhile in ds untraited and being able to use utility spells while in ds and making it equal usefull for condi dmg as power dmg.

Emapudapus.1307:

From what i saw, i know now the necro will never be in good spot for competitive pvp.

They said necro has good sustain (its strenghts), that they are where devs want them to be. In other words filling the atrition class.
Nuff said …..

They didn’t at all say that everything was okay. They specifically mentioned that they might bring Deathshroud up to better fill that sustain.

I had a bit of hope when they talked about hard counters they would say something about diamond skin. But alas they chose berserker stance (which I think is intentional).

If Necromancer will remain as vulnerable to burst, PvP will never be our place.

Instead of making DS longer or tougher maybe listen to the players for once and give us more options in shroud, interesting play, LF management ?

PvP fights don’t last long.

Honestly, the only part when I had even better laughs was the Ranger’s part.

Sorry buddies, I don’t buy that “Balance Philosophy” looking at you and your game in 2 years lifespan.

I felt they brushed over the class all too briefly and have no idea what to make of the class. Their listed weakness for warrior highlight exactly how little they know about their own game. The ranger strengths made me laugh, ele has superior ranged single target damage and thats on an aoe weapon.

Adjusting DS numbers isn’t really gonna bring necromancer out of its rut if damage mitigation, boons and mobility are off the table. Deathshroud is only a quarter of the sustain problem.

Terok.7315:

Adjusting DS numbers isn’t really gonna bring necromancer out of its rut if damage mitigation, boons and mobility are off the table. Deathshroud is only a quarter of the sustain problem.

They weren’t talking specific balance solutions. That was an example of them not saying “Necros are perfect we’ll never change them again” and being open to adjusting things where need be to fulfill the balance ideals they’ve set up.

Bhawb.7408:

Terok.7315:

Adjusting DS numbers isn’t really gonna bring necromancer out of its rut if damage mitigation, boons and mobility are off the table. Deathshroud is only a quarter of the sustain problem.

They weren’t talking specific balance solutions. That was an example of them not saying “Necros are perfect we’ll never change them again” and being open to adjusting things where need be to fulfill the balance ideals they’ve set up.

I hope my interpretation was just cynical and you’re actually right, but I feel like this is just another readyup where they quickly gloss over the necromancer just to throw us a bone.

Bhawb.7408:

Emapudapus.1307:

From what i saw, i know now the necro will never be in good spot for competitive pvp.

They said necro has good sustain (its strenghts), that they are where devs want them to be. In other words filling the atrition class.
Nuff said …..

They didn’t at all say that everything was okay. They specifically mentioned that they might bring Deathshroud up to better fill that sustain.

Quote from grouch talking about necro sustain fight and other 2 devs there agreeing with him:“I would say that necromancer fills preety well that role right now”.

Yeah and other stuff was prety general class design … strong codnitions, weak mobility blabla….. Only thing that surprised me is that our class design is weakness at sustain aoe power dmg .. meaning we will never get cleave weapon(((

Bhawb.7408:

They didn’t at all say that everything was okay. They specifically mentioned that they might bring Deathshroud up to better fill that sustain.

I may have misheard but i dont recall them saying that.

Infact from what i heard, is that, they have the opinion that necromancers already have good sustain.
I may playing necromancer completly wrong but normally the longer a fight goes the more likely it is for me too lose. So i would disagree with thier statement.

Emapudapus.1307:

Bhawb.7408:

Emapudapus.1307:

From what i saw, i know now the necro will never be in good spot for competitive pvp.

They said necro has good sustain (its strenghts), that they are where devs want them to be. In other words filling the atrition class.
Nuff said …..

They didn’t at all say that everything was okay. They specifically mentioned that they might bring Deathshroud up to better fill that sustain.

Quote from grouch talking about necro sustain fight and other 2 devs there agreeing with him:“I would say that necromancer fills preety well that role right now”.

Yeah and other stuff was prety general class design … strong codnitions, weak mobility blabla….. Only thing that surprised me is that our class design is weakness at sustain aoe power dmg .. meaning we will never get cleave weapon(((

Its been said countless times in the past. Whatever their intended design for necro is it needs to be reconsidered if the class is ever to become respectable in all gametypes. If they never introduce a cleave auto attack to necro then there is no hope for the class in pve. And even with cleave, a lot more needs to be done. Simply because the classes core design philosophies dont fit into the pve gametype.

Muchacho.2390:

Bhawb.7408:

They didn’t at all say that everything was okay. They specifically mentioned that they might bring Deathshroud up to better fill that sustain.

I may have misheard but i dont recall them saying that.

Infact from what i heard, is that, they have the opinion that necromancers already have good sustain.
I may playing necromancer completly wrong but normally the longer a fight goes the more likely it is for me too lose. So i would disagree with thier statement.

This is what I heard as well. The devs seem to think Necro sustain is already pretty strong and that life force goes up a lot more often than down in fights. Unfortunately, the opposite is true. We barely stand a chance if we’re not close to full life force at the start of a fight and in the time it takes to replenish it, we lose too much health.

PvE will never be balanced period. Yes they can give us cleave and make us decent (they already said they wanted to up our power damage a bit), but PvE is still awfully designed.

PvE needs to change to fix PvE, not the professions.

Bhawb.7408:

PvE will never be balanced period. Yes they can give us cleave and make us decent (they already said they wanted to up our power damage a bit), but PvE is still awfully designed.

PvE needs to change to fix PvE, not the professions.

It seems they want to make mobs more boon dependent in pve. This may help us in pve since we are the kings of boon removel/corruption.

I don’t even care anymore….

But wait just to show how wrong this game is lets spell out our weaknesses

Worst power option in game
Worst aoe power option
Worst mobility
Worst sustain
Worst access to boons
Worst escapes
Worst access to finishers
Worst stomping capability
Worst reviving capability
Worst class ever

So.. When you can reply with any other class description with as many negative aspects then you can say this game makes sense.

The dev’s are fine with necro’s being where they are as the noob class. The class that has absolutely no range of skill cap, IS THE ONLY class in the game that requires peels or outside help to function, and has probably the most boring viable build in the game. The class is for faceroll condition nukers or MM. Once you start playing against more experienced players you’re useless. That’s called making a useless profession.

Also very dissapointed rushing through necro quick as possible as always, but if the stuff was good id have no problem. But it was just general philosophy talk, that should been done 2 years before not after launch.

way too brief stuff. I mean we should write concise stuff like engineers and they just answer with some vague air like a freelance artist.
I mean just LoS, hitbox or 0.2s aftercast can make or brake a skill and further a whole build, while they discuss in which general direction is north and if they should go there sometime in the future

TL,DR: my brief general impression is , that they design an ele/guard with lots of good and little bad stuff and necro with some good and lots of bad stuff to balance

Being able to drop a.well.of.blood upon reviving some one is pretty fken good.

Hasn’t it been discussed to death that its mostly the class mechanic that holds this class back?It leaves no room for buffing in pvp due to situations where we might have alot of LF.It feels almost like they got caught inbetween ideas but couldn’t change it anymore due to release date,it just doesn’t fit well with the game mode.Were slow,no escapes,poor access to stability,and not to mention our damage got nerfed in last patch where they also added healing skills which don’t fit due to us having to be in Ds to even get the regen or the LB heal which me and alot of people knew would be bad.Increasing Ds capacity isn’t gonna help,maybe make it regen a certain amount not to much but just enough to always have it ready or lower it a bit but make it build up faster and change some utilities to use a certain amount to get a decent 2nd effect which could ease up on balance for them.Next should be a look over of traits cause everytime i look at siphoned power in our spite line or our completely useless blood magic it hurts.Lastly weapon look over would help cause im finding it hard what the point of axe is in pvp OR pve since its bad in pvp and ive been told dagger is better in pve and seen it in action.Someone else can speak for pve better than me though.

spoj.9672:

Its been said countless times in the past. Whatever their intended design for necro is it needs to be reconsidered if the class is ever to become respectable in all gametypes. If they never introduce a cleave auto attack to necro then there is no hope for the class in pve. And even with cleave, a lot more needs to be done. Simply because the classes core design philosophies dont fit into the pve gametype.

Muchacho.2390:

It seems they want to make mobs more boon dependent in pve. This may help us in pve since we are the kings of boon removel/corruption.

I think these two points sum it up, specifically as far as PvE is concerned.

When they talked about ‘purity of purpose’ they’re talking about the unique strengths of each profession, what each can bring to the table like no other. A role to be filled. Basically answering the very legitimate question, “Why bring a Necromancer?”

One of the major strengths of Necromancers is their boon stripping/corrupting and CC skills. This strength is offset by their lack of ability to generate and share boons with other party members, also their lack of stability to preemptively counter CC. Since right now PvE is virtually devoid of needing boon stripping and Defiant all but negates the need for soft/hard CC’s all those skills/traits become close to useless.

Imagine how many times guardians would be picked for dungeon runs if every AoE from bosses stripped all boons. Taking away the usefulness of boon stripping and CC’s from necros is pretty close. You can’t really be too surprised when necros aren’t the top picks for dungeons. Not their fault, it’s the flawed mechanics of those dungeons.

When Southsun rolled around my Necromancer was really excited to discover that the Retaliation on the karkas was simply wrecking these poor Guardians & Warriors. I had a role, a ‘purity of purpose’ to strip & corrupt the boons as quickly as I could so that the group wouldn’t retaliate themselves to death. It felt good to be needed. I brought something to the table few others could so the synergies of this group combat really shined. The very definition of balance.

The other point I’d like to bring up is for PvP/WvW. As it stands right now Necromancers are not the kings/queens of attrition simply because when multiple enemies hit us the damage is multiplied by that number, since we have no block or invulnerabilities. If a Guardian, Warrior, Mesmer what-have-you is hit by 100 players while blocking/blurred/invulnerable they take 0 damage. If this happens to a Necromancer they are dead.

There’s definitely some reworking that needs to be done for Necromancers so that our ‘purity of purpose’ really is needed and has, um…a purpose.

I think there might be a disconnect in the definition of an “attrition” fight/style. People seem to think that, in order to be “attrition”, you need to be able to survive 1v2 or 1v3 and slowly (or not so slowly, it seems) bring them all down. Is that attrition, or is that survivability/bunker?

I’ve fought against certain Warrior builds where I effectively could live forever in mostly Zerker gear based on LF regen. Generate LF, use heal, go into DS, soak/do damage, pop out of DS, take some damage and generate LF again, heal, go back into DS, ad infinitum. It was a very “oh, this is what they mean” moment.

I need to watch the Ready Up! to see what they actually say, because I feel like it’s being largely misconstrued in this thread. I believe in the Ready Up! thread in the profession forum, they mentioned that the show was going to cover the design philosophy and not necessarily the current state. I’ve seen a lot of “they said Necros are fine” claims based on them saying a certain strength/weakness, and I really can’t help but feel like the comments were misinterpreted.

But we’ll see. It would be neat to get a moderate swing in mechanics to see how it pans out instead of little bitties all the time, but I also don’t think Necros are in that bad of a place, really.

I think their choice of topic is as interesting as the actual content. Why did they see the need to talk about design philosophies?

Tim.6450:

I had a bit of hope when they talked about hard counters they would say something about diamond skin. But alas they chose berserker stance (which I think is intentional).

I actually watched that bit, and I noticed when they described what berserker stance does, they said it greatly reduces condition duration. Are they aware that berserker stance actually just makes you immune to conditions? They used engi as an example and said, well when I see berserker stance come up I just use my mobility to kite the warrior around or back off, then come back when the stance is over. So the counter is mobility… welp.

Bhawb.7408:

PvE will never be balanced period. Yes they can give us cleave and make us decent (they already said they wanted to up our power damage a bit), but PvE is still awfully designed.

PvE needs to change to fix PvE, not the professions.

In between the lines, you could kind of hear they don’t want to give us cleave though. They said we are supposed to be bad at sustained AoE and also consider warrior’s cleave to be melee sustained AoE, so yeah…

Cogbyrn.7283:

I think there might be a disconnect in the definition of an “attrition” fight/style. People seem to think that, in order to be “attrition”, you need to be able to survive 1v2 or 1v3 and slowly (or not so slowly, it seems) bring them all down. Is that attrition, or is that survivability/bunker?

well i wouldnt go so far and say 1v2 or 1v3. Even in 1v1 against most builds i feel like i will be the losing one, as necromancer, the longer the fight goes.

I dont know but doesnt attrition mean the longer you can survive the better your chances for winning is?

Waffler.1257:

I actually watched that bit, and I noticed when they described what berserker stance does, they said it greatly reduces condition duration. Are they aware that berserker stance actually just makes you immune to conditions?

I think that they are very much aware of it. They were also completely silent about adrenaline gain of berserker stance (purity of purpose, riiiiiight) . This makes me think they intentionally chose berserker stance to place themselves in a good light or maybe I’m just paranoid.

They used engi as an example and said, well when I see berserker stance come up I just use my mobility to kite the warrior around or back off, then come back when the stance is over. So the counter is mobility… welp.

Also the 2 classes with lots of conditions are engineer and necromancer, two classes with little escape options and you need escape options against berserker stance, go figure. Let’s not even talk about cc where those classes are also weak against.

Cogbyrn.7283:

I think there might be a disconnect in the definition of an “attrition” fight/style. People seem to think that, in order to be “attrition”, you need to be able to survive 1v2 or 1v3 and slowly (or not so slowly, it seems) bring them all down. Is that attrition, or is that survivability/bunker?

I’ve fought against certain Warrior builds where I effectively could live forever in mostly Zerker gear based on LF regen. Generate LF, use heal, go into DS, soak/do damage, pop out of DS, take some damage and generate LF again, heal, go back into DS, ad infinitum. It was a very “oh, this is what they mean” moment.

I need to watch the Ready Up! to see what they actually say, because I feel like it’s being largely misconstrued in this thread. I believe in the Ready Up! thread in the profession forum, they mentioned that the show was going to cover the design philosophy and not necessarily the current state. I’ve seen a lot of “they said Necros are fine” claims based on them saying a certain strength/weakness, and I really can’t help but feel like the comments were misinterpreted.

But we’ll see. It would be neat to get a moderate swing in mechanics to see how it pans out instead of little bitties all the time, but I also don’t think Necros are in that bad of a place, really.

Lol before you start acusing others of misinterpretation maybe you should dedicate more time reading those missineterpretated comments.

You would noticed that when it comes to atrition and 1v2 or 1v3 it would be logic that you cant normaly survive that but if you are sustain fight class, you should manage long enaugh to survive for help to come. And 1v3, 1v2 ppl also mentioned as necro weaknes meaning they can never be good at bunkering. Noeone said they feel bad cuz they cant win 1v3 fights. Also same applies to 2v2,3v3…. if they decide to focus necro, yes you can take teleport worm, but who care when thief can instant teleport trough walls and finish you off. As said before … 3 sec of invulnerable is able to mitigrate damage equal to 2 ds full pools.

Yeah i fought many bad players in pvp but i guess you cant judge balance on bad player with bad builds? I even 1v3 won fight, wut? nerf necros naw!

And they werent comentating just design philosophy…. you would noticed if you actualy properly read coments.

My take from what they said in the Ready Up is that they believe we are in a good place for attrition but they did mention the DS levels may need to be looked at being raised to provide better sustainability. They feel we should be a class that the longer the fight goes the stronger we get but my opinion is that the longer the fight goes the weaker I get.

The other take I got from this video is they do not want us to have sustained AOE damage and for me im taking that it means there is little to no chance that we would ever get a cleave weapon. Also for reasons like the Guardian they do not want us to have alot of mobility as with our large health pool and DS it would make us too overpowered. Altho not ideal I can see where they are coming from regarding mobility and can see how providing us with mobility could tip the scales alot in our favour.

The Necro’s greatest benefit was discussed as being boon ripping/manipulation which is great in WvW and PvP but practically null and void in PVE. So our greatest benefit is one that is useless within PVE and providing they dont want/envision us having access to alot of boons along with no sustained aoe I just don’t see the current state of no Necros in dungeons changing anytime soon.

They do appear to place a great emphasis on DS and altho it was nice to hear they are gradually upping our physical damage outwith DS. It makes me feel that our main class mechanic is like an anchor around our ankles preventing the class from progressing too much because of it.

Bhawb.7408:

PvE will never be balanced period. Yes they can give us cleave and make us decent (they already said they wanted to up our power damage a bit), but PvE is still awfully designed.

PvE needs to change to fix PvE, not the professions.

Just because pve is poorly designed doesnt mean it cant be balanced. Its actually very close to being balanced. Ranger needs a sword auto fix, engi needs some minor improvements. Necro needs some cleave and utility. The rest of the classes are pretty much fine except for warrior being way too easy for the reward you get. WvW is the only gametype that cant be balanced because zerg vs zerg is impossible to predict an outcome.

Fixing 1 or 2 professions is a lot less work then reworking the entire game. And in all honesty pve isnt that badly designed. Its just old. When pve content is this old with no new stuff it becomes faceroll because of strategies. The players constantly improve but the ai doesnt. Fractals and aetherpath are more recent content and people still struggle with those because they arent as old and unchanged as dungeons. Although in fairness a lot of encounters in fractals are better designed aswell, but they arent really any harder than dungeons when you know them well enough.

Its also very easy to improve a class in PvE without breaking it in PvP. All you have to do is add stuff which would be completely unviable in PvP. Hundred blades is a good example of this. Its powerful but rooted which makes it almost completely useless against other players.

TL;DR
Necro needs to be changed to fit pve. PvE cannot be completely changed. Its not poorly designed, its just old. Changing a single class is more realistic than reworking an entire gametype.

spoj.9672:

Necro needs some cleave and utility.

After the Ready up, i dont think they will give necros cleave. They said no aoe power sustain for necros…

Yeah so it seems i will be forced to abandon any hope for the necro.

Muchacho.2390:

spoj.9672:

Necro needs some cleave and utility.

After the Ready up, i dont think they will give necros cleave. They said no aoe power sustain for necros…

Honestly I could care less if we get a cleaving weapon IF they fix the AI on monsters in PvE. If they give them dodge and blocks, conditions become much more wanted/needed in the spank, stack and then spank some more world of PvE. If the monsters behaved even a bit more realistically (the toxic spore guys) then every role would have a place. I’d settle for cleave if the AI is beyond them to fix world wide, but honestly when condi is king in every other game mode why must condi be so bloody pathetic in PvE.

Edit: wasted breath anyways, a dev hasn’t even visited here in so long we should just call this forum area cobweb corner.

They said Necromancers get stronger as the fight goes on. As much as I love the concept, that is a lie regarding how they actually play ingame PvE.

If such a thing were true, Necromancers should be the top damage class in longer boss fights, with powerful sustain.

This might be answered above but I would appreciate if someone could clear this up for me if possible. Thanks.

I listened but to be honest a lot of this goes over my head. I simply have too many characters most of the time. I love my necro in wvw. I don’t love him in PVE dungeons, or rather most other players don’t love him.

Did they address why they aren’t loved in pve dungeons? Why would you want to take a necro over another class?

There was talk about checks and balances and how each class is supposed to fill certain roles because others lack these things. But how does the necro fit in there better than another class or at least equal to?

spoj.9672:

TL;DR
Necro needs to be changed to fit pve. PvE cannot be completely changed. Its not poorly designed, its just old. Changing a single class is more realistic than reworking an entire gametype.

They’ve done it before: just before GW: Factions was released they rewrote all the mob ai in GW1, making them get out of AOE. It completely changed pve in gw1. Later, with Nightfall, they put in mobs with res capabilities. There’s been no such AI improvements with GW2 even though it’s been 2 years since release.

The Ready up confirmed one of my fears for Necromancer: The devs still don’t know what is going on with the necro.

For example, they say the necro should be an attrition class. So, they give us Deathshroud. But then, they took away all of the other active defenses that necromancers have. This is stupid, because then the Necromancer isn’t an attrition class anymore. They’re a “normal” class, since you haven’t given Necros additional skills. You’ve just replaced active defenses with a gimmick.

And this gimmick is arguably the worst defensive mechanic in the game. DS is just an additional HP bar that shuts you out of weapon and utility skills. It doesn’t stop conditions from being applied, it doesn’t stop CC from hitting you, it doesn’t stop burst damage, and it doesn’t stop procs.

The devs say that players should have to muscle past DS. This would be true, if we started with DS. But, because we don’t start with a life bar, other players have “muscled past DS” by default. The equivalent would be if all other classes started with their utilities on cooldown. This is also build dependent, meaning that you have to kitten specialization in order for DS to merely function properly.

The following traits should be innate to DS, and not locked down a trait line somewhere:

Unyielding Blast
Unholy Sanctuary
Path of Corruption
Deathly Invigoration
and maybe Speed of Shadows

The fact that you have to go 0/6/6/0/2 just to get basic functionality and compensate for the inherent weaknesses of DS is just pathetic.

In all my time using a necro in PVP, I never once pulled off a clutch maneuver. Not once. No, a fight was either so lopsided in my favor that the enemy didn’t stand a chance, or so lopsided in their favor that I never stood a chance. My frustrations with the necro is one of the two big reasons why I quit sPVP in the first place.

The lack of melee cleave is even more frustrating. Look, the fact is that players don’t stand next to each other in PVP. The only place cleave really helps is in PVE, and against AI builds (because we all want more of those, right guys?). So, when the devs say they don’t want necros to cleave, it isn’t an issue of PVP balance at all. All they are really saying is “No, we want necros to be permanently inferior in PVP, because we feel it should be that way”.

manveruppd.7601:

They’ve done it before: just before GW: Factions was released they rewrote all the mob ai in GW1, making them get out of AOE. It completely changed pve in gw1. Later, with Nightfall, they put in mobs with res capabilities. There’s been no such AI improvements with GW2 even though it’s been 2 years since release.

Allegedly they have hired a separate company to fix AI (I haven’t heard this from an official channel though, take with a grain of salt).

Giving us cleave and utility in PvE doesn’t fix us in PvE, it just gives every profession one single build that makes them not useless in PvE. Its still all DPS all the time, and that is just strictly bad design. While that would be nice to play Necro without being the worst profession, frankly I don’t care too much if they’re just going to leave PvE as a DPS race.

Theres nothing bad design about everyone dps. Its a hell of a lot better than forcing people to wait for healers and tanks. Everyone does dps, different classes provide different utility. And builds are tweaked for individual expectations.

If full dps didnt work then it would be going against their play how you want philosophy. Full dps is the meta, there is always a meta. People seem to want clerics builds to clear content just as fast as full dps groups. Which just makes no sense. The only thing that needs to happen is to make it harder for full dps groups to work. So it discourages bad players from using it. This means coordinated groups can still reap the rewards but most pugs will no longer worry about gear checking as much.

DS wouldn’t be considered nearly so bad if you could regenerate life force more consistently.

I still think a smaller life force pool by about 30% of its current total but a bar that refilled much faster would be better. That way you have more of this playing between life and death type of idea.

spoj.9672:

Theres nothing bad design about everyone dps. Its a hell of a lot better than forcing people to wait for healers and tanks. Everyone does dps, different classes provide different utility. And builds are tweaked for individual expectations.

If full dps didnt work then it would be going against their play how you want philosophy. Full dps is the meta, there is always a meta. People seem to want clerics builds to clear content just as fast as full dps groups. Which just makes no sense. The only thing that needs to happen is to make it harder for full dps groups to work. So it discourages bad players from using it. This means coordinated groups can still reap the rewards but most pugs will no longer worry about gear checking as much.

There shouldn’t be a necessity for bringing a non-dps build, but I think PvE giving incentive to bringing support/control builds would make for much more interesting content.

Support and control are both heavily used in the current meta. But those roles have nothing to do with gear. This is where people fail to understand the game.

spoj.9672:

Support and control are both heavily used in the current meta. But those roles have nothing to do with gear. This is where people fail to understand the game.

Just to clarify, I had used the term “support/control” to be more inclusive of the (possible) variety of different builds instead of listing off all the specific gear prefixes that are made unnecessary by design in this dps meta.

Ok.. Let’s get a few things clear. We are not an attrition class nor are we able to survive in fights.

Attrition is where where the longer the fight lasts, the more we wear down our enemy until they lose. Attrition means that we will have all the necessary things to fill that role………….. We don’t. It would mean that we should be able to survive for long periods of time if we build right and play right WHILE also continuing to wear down our enemy.

1. If we require outside help such as peels from an ally: We are not an attrition class. we are simply a class that needs help to survive.

2. Attrition, for us, means conditions: We need conditions to fulfill the role of attrition, whether you’re condition or power. If opponents can survive/negate those conditions by adding 1-2 easily build splashable traits or skills that do so, then we’re not really attrition.

3. When hard CC is our worst enemy along with our own lack of mobility and dodges/blocks, this makes for one of the most confusing aspects of how we are supposed to perform our role.

4. If burst is supposed to be a major weakness yet classes who burst have the following: Invisibility allowing them to reset the fight (effectively shutting down attrition)
Low cool-downs allowing consistent and frequent burst. (which necro’s cannot keep up with)

To the Devs..

My solution: Remove the idea of making this class the attrition class. Deciding that this class is the attrition class has ever since sealed its fate as being a terrible class. Attrition isn’t something you want a class to be focused around. Perhaps a team comp or strategy, maybe even just a build can revolve around attrition… But not an entire class itself. This is a germ in this class that will always make it sub-par because it cannot fill the roll in the way you envision.

Release this class from the chains of attrition. You’e declared the entirety of this class to function a certain way; that’s opposite of not only the freedom-of-build-diversity of what I gw has shown in the past but also constricting its enjoyment. Make it exciting to play and something you learn; not something you’re told.

If I felt that it actually mattered I would give an entire two pages of concepts or just some ideas to throw around. Alas, I think we’ve about seen the vicious sequence of nerf / over-buff / nerf nerf / over-buff / nerf nerf nerf. The worst part is that all these past changes have really had little relevance to what should make the class interesting and viable.

Terok.7315:

spoj.9672:

Support and control are both heavily used in the current meta. But those roles have nothing to do with gear. This is where people fail to understand the game.

Just to clarify, I had used the term “support/control” to be more inclusive of the (possible) variety of different builds instead of listing off all the specific gear prefixes that are made unnecessary by design in this dps meta.

Thats the trap your falling into. Gear has nothing to do with build. Your choice of gear is representive of how much damage you expect to take and what type of damage you want to do. You take more survivable gear if you need it. If you dont, you dont. No gear is unviable. Full berserker is simply the most efficient. Nothing you do to the game will change the meta. There is a huge variety of builds. However most of them involve berserker as recommended gear because its the most efficient. Mesmer and guardian rarely use max dps trait setups because supportive traits are often required.

It really annoys me how so many people are completely dense about this subject. The roles are fine, the game is fine. The only problem is the content is old and too easy now, but it was fine a year ago when people were much worse at the game. We need new content, not fixes to the dps meta. No matter what you do to the dps meta it will always be there unless they make it completely unviable. Which will just drive 80% of players away from the game because of their ascended berserker gear becoming useless.

Tommyknocker.6089:

Muchacho.2390:

spoj.9672:

Necro needs some cleave and utility.

After the Ready up, i dont think they will give necros cleave. They said no aoe power sustain for necros…

Honestly I could care less if we get a cleaving weapon IF they fix the AI on monsters in PvE. If they give them dodge and blocks, conditions become much more wanted/needed in the spank, stack and then spank some more world of PvE. If the monsters behaved even a bit more realistically (the toxic spore guys) then every role would have a place. I’d settle for cleave if the AI is beyond them to fix world wide, but honestly when condi is king in every other game mode why must condi be so bloody pathetic in PvE.

Edit: wasted breath anyways, a dev hasn’t even visited here in so long we should just call this forum area cobweb corner.

Condi is far from being king in Wvw/Tpvp, not sure what you’re talking about.

Condi is the only competitive tier build for tPvP, so that is fully accurate, and in WvW its entirely debatable.

Wasn’t talking about condition build (Even though I think power necro is slowly outshining cond necro in tpvp, in other words, necromancer has no competitive builds atm in pvp), I was talking about condition in general.

Well theres no possible way to incentivise things like cleric and PVT beyond killing the viability of glass cannon gear. There is plenty of diversity already in PvE. The lower end of the scene just doesnt see it. And they see that almost all variations of builds still use berserker and think that theres no diversity, support or control going on. This is the problem i have with this whole no support/control/diversity arguement. Its built on pure ignorance, no offence. Yes the game could be improved with more complex encounters and harder fights. But that wont change the diversity, its already there. People just choose to ignore it.

Well, there still isn’t really any “control” going on (due to defiant and melee stacking), but support is.