Guild Wars 2

? Huh? 4 sec bleed is like the base for just about any auto attack that has bleed on it but you feel scepter AA is a problem?

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Bleeding_Shot 6s
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Gash 8s
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Vital_Shot 4s
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Impale_ 8s
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Winds_of_Chaos 7s
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Blood_Curse 4s

That’s 5 out of 8 classes you think need a nerf to their bleed damage?

Just to play Devil’s Advocate on that one, its a .5 cast time (oh kitten ANet, I can’t put 5s because it might spell a “naughty” word?), 900 range 4s bleed->bleed->poison (the poison is really the strong part). That makes it unique, and much harder to compare, to high damage melee bleeds (melee will always outdamage per hit because it will hit less), or ranged attacks that only bleed, or the mesmer one that bounces and is random.

Blood Curse doesn’t need nerfing, in any way, but it is a very strong AA.

Bhawb.7408:

How do you heal through damage when they just spiked you with 15 stacks of bleeds, burning, all the extra conditions, and then feared you for 2 seconds, and can chain fear you for longer if you don’t start pumping out those stun breaks?

…

Also, your big “this is why necros aren’t OP” is that they lose to thieves, warriors, and mesmers (LOLOLOLOL at mesmers). Its called being countered (mesmers aside, it would have been difficult to have made a worse comparison, being as we’re a big reason mesmers are on the outs).

…

I respect the top tier Necromancers who I know aren’t just top 500, but have been top 1 on the leaderboards, and have had major success on teams. They all agree that the Necromancer changes made us OP.

World according to Bhawb:

It’s OK for necros to have to stack vit and toughness to deal with getting trained, but it’s not OK for other classes to have to use Melandru’s or spec for heavy condition clearing.

It’s OK when you’ve got eles, guardians, P/D thieves etc with a heavy attrition playstyle, but it’s definitely bad when necro gets tools to work the attrition game.

It’s OK when other classes get uncounterable high damage attacks, but it’s definitely bad when necro gets such attacks.

It’s OK for necros to have counters, but it’s not OK for necros to counter other classes.

It’s OK for 90% of teams to have a guardian or an ele or a mesmer, but it’s bad when 90% of teams have a necro. (Or ranger.)

It’s OK when necro players play other classes to be effective in PvP, but it’s bad when ele or mesmer players swap to necro to be effective.

It’s clearly bad when top teams that don’t play a necro but do play guardian, ele or mesmer say that necro changes made necro OP, because clearly those top teams couldn’t possibly have any alterior motives.

… on the one hand I feel as if I’m being a bit unfair, but then again I actually think you have these positions and haven’t really thought them through. So I feel justified.

Here are my 2 cents. It might be due to lack of experience as I main a mesmer. I do however “spy” on the necromancer forum since I have a necromancer alt closing in on lvl 80.

I think necro’s are seen as OP for a few reasons. (Listed below in no particular order).

a) Lack of clear animations.
It’s rather hard to see which mark is being cast.

b) Conquest mode.
The fact that conquest mode encourage fighting in a rather small area, which makes it easier for the necromancer to transfer conditions from himself to others and to transfer conditions from others to others (Epidemic). To cover the entire area with marks etc.

c) Ranged nuke.
The fact that a necromancer can do an excellent nuke from pretty far away. In comparison a shatter mesmer needs to go close and get in harm’s way to land its full burst combo. (Just comparing to the class I know. Not saying no other class can do something similar.)

d) Condition damage.
The fact that there are no stats that effectively can reduce condition damage. You can spec into toughness to avoid physical damage, but when it comes to conditions: Either you play a class that can cleanse them, without sacrificing a lot, or you don’t. The way I see it, you are more at the mercy of the class design itself.

e) )synergy.
Necromancers synergize very well with some of the other strong classes atm. (Spirit ranger/engi).

Necro strikes me as weak in other areas though. Again, that might just be me being inexperienced. If I make a mistake on my mesmer or if I get pinned down, I often have a chance to make it out alive. If I get pinned down on my necromancer I tend to just die ^^

Wow, this thread has turned really toxic. Who’d have thunk.

Honestly, I don’t think anyone here is really in a position to label anything. Until there is the ability to look at replays of matches, so that particular things can be looked at in detail, without someone saying “It feels like that necro managed to kill me with 0 effort, I’d better report it to the forums”. Giving players the ability to analyse what they did wrong in a fight will be the first step in stopping a lot of the balance whine that’s getting bandied around.

We really don’t need personal attacks on here, all it’s going to do is generate more toxicity, hostility and ill will.

hackks.3687:

Why condi Necros are OP:

1.) Indistinct animations on powerful skills
2.) Condi application rate is too high (read: insanely high)
3.) Terror damage is insanely high, and being a control and damage source it benefits two fold from condition duration. It is the only CC of it’s kind.
4.) High Sustainability. While I don’t feel that our new found sustainability is unwarranted, I do feel that it is too high when combined with the high damage output.

Let me counter all of this:
1) Powerful skills have the same animation, its a giant hand wave, skills with condition effects are the right to left/left to right card give move. Plain dodge when necro pulls hands from above his head (and since no kill skill has a cast time shorter than 3/4 of as second its not hard. – For short L2P issue on your side (also the only mark that was kinda blandish with mark of blood now has a staf point instead of hand animation, others as follow are dark glowy hands, snake on ground, white glow behind dark, not to mention staff does no damage by comparison to any other 2 hander).

2) Mesmers, Ele, Thief and Warrior can all apply more damage from conditions in a shorter amount of time, Necros got more total conditions, but aint stronger in condition damage, thus no cleanse on your build, Personal problem.

3) Terror damage was 25.5% higher before the nerf and noone complained for like 4+ months (maybe more) – kitten pull and lie/strawman

4) Sustainability, Necromancer? You sure you didnt miss the ele or thief forums? Well if you did think so then the points above dont matter since the amount of brain matter you used for what you said was probably just as high as the chance of a jhorror surviving a zerg fight in WvWvW.

sas.6483:

… on the one hand I feel as if I’m being a bit unfair, but then again I actually think you have these positions and haven’t really thought them through. So I feel justified.

I want good balance for Necromancers. Having a build that has some of the highest burst condition damage and such toxic gameplay stay around is not good for us. Twist what I say all you want (you did a pretty good job of completely overblowing everything I said, and completely making some up), what I want is for Necromancers to be balanced.

We are not balanced right now. One build is over the top strong, and most of the rest of our builds are either too dependent on teamwork (which just isn’t that fun to play for the majority of people) or are too weak in general. However once that OP build is toned down to proper balance, ANet might finally realize, again, that we are still in need of buffs to bring us up to good balance.

there really should be a sitting on the couch episode with a 3v3 to debate this ridiculous notion that necros (one build) are OP.

Hell I’ll even 1v3 pobcast the clowns claiming this, hows that for necro 1vX?

Bhawb.7408:

Just to play Devil’s Advocate on that one, its a .5 cast time (oh kitten ANet, I can’t put 5s because it might spell a “naughty” word?), 900 range 4s bleed->bleed->poison (the poison is really the strong part). That makes it unique, and much harder to compare, to high damage melee bleeds (melee will always outdamage per hit because it will hit less), or ranged attacks that only bleed, or the mesmer one that bounces and is random.

Blood Curse doesn’t need nerfing, in any way, but it is a very strong AA.

I have to disagree. At one time it made sense to have a strong AA on Scepter because bleeding and poison were the primary damage dealing conditions available to a Necro. Hence why it applies bleeds on nearly everything. Since the additions of Dhuumfire and Torment though, this logic of balance has changed entirely. For instance, take the Engi’s Pistol AA “explosive shot” which only applies a 2sec bleed per hit. The one class that competes with Necros for the condi-pressure role in a group and it only has a single 2sec bleed on it’s AA. Of course! Why? Because the Engi has access to Burning, Poison, and Confusion as well as better sources of Bleed in other weapons/skills. Since the infamous “patch” that gave Necros access to more than just Bleeding and Poison nothing has been done to tone down the previous sources of bleed damage to make room for the Burning and Torment. While Necros did in fact need access to more damage conditions to be able to compete with Engis, they did not however need an overall boost in condition output – which is what happened. So Necros retained a boat load of long duration conditions to go along with their new Burns and Torments. Hence why their damage output is rightfully considered OP.

When I point to the Scepter AA as a problem I’m not saying it’s the problem, but that’s it’s a great example of what’s currently wrong with the Necro’s condition output. Honestly, how much would a Necro lose by reducing the duration to 2sec? There are traits to accommodate the lost duration in the Curses tree alone – remember Hemophilia and Lingering Curses? Those are choices a Necro is currently not required to make in order to make that AA perform at an optimal level.

hackks.3687:

Bhawb.7408:

Just to play Devil’s Advocate on that one, its a .5 cast time (oh kitten ANet, I can’t put 5s because it might spell a “naughty” word?), 900 range 4s bleed->bleed->poison (the poison is really the strong part). That makes it unique, and much harder to compare, to high damage melee bleeds (melee will always outdamage per hit because it will hit less), or ranged attacks that only bleed, or the mesmer one that bounces and is random.

Blood Curse doesn’t need nerfing, in any way, but it is a very strong AA.

I have to disagree. At one time it made sense to have a strong AA on Scepter because bleeding and poison were the primary damage dealing conditions available to a Necro. Hence why it applies bleeds on nearly everything. Since the additions of Dhuumfire and Torment though, this logic of balance has changed entirely. For instance, take the Engi’s Pistol AA “explosive shot” which only applies a 2sec bleed per hit. The one class that competes with Necros for the condi-pressure role in a group and it only has a single 2sec bleed on it’s AA. Of course! Why? Because the Engi has access to Burning, Poison, and Confusion as well as better sources of Bleed in other weapons/skills. Since the infamous “patch” that gave Necros access to more than just Bleeding and Poison nothing has been done to tone down the previous sources of bleed damage to make room for the Burning and Torment. While Necros did in fact need access to more damage conditions to be able to compete with Engis, they did not however need an overall boost in condition output – which is what happened. So Necros retained a boat load of long duration conditions to go along with their new Burns and Torments. Hence why their damage output is rightfully considered OP.

When I point to the Scepter AA as a problem I’m not saying it’s the problem, but that’s it’s a great example of what’s currently wrong with the Necro’s condition output. Honestly, how much would a Necro lose by reducing the duration to 2sec? There are traits to accommodate the lost duration in the Curses tree alone – remember Hemophilia and Lingering Curses? Those are choices a Necro is currently not required to make in order to make that AA perform at an optimal level.

Excuse me but There are these things called Granade kit, Tool kit and bomb kit that did let engies have higher condi application and damage then necros, what then got equalized by the patch with torment and dhuumfire. Remember there was this time where every team had a engie and necros were useful for spreading their condis with epi, well that got fixed. Also Lingering curses is still a must for condi.
True dhuumfire was a idiotic move, but that doesnt change the fact that the rest of the necros kit wasnt changed, the 3 stacks of torment doing nothing compared to other sources of it you can get, no actually it it did get changed a lot, it got nerfed twice after the patch and ruined a corruption skill during it and it got rid of a necros absorb tool, combined with the low LF generation of a condition build you got a real equivalent o a lol carry (no matter how much defensive shiz you add on, if the kit you have doesnt work with it it wont help you survive).
Its plain and simple, people knew necro was shiz, people ignored necro, people adapted playstyle to not expect kills from necro (but cc and “annoying” conditions), necro gets burst, necro kills people, people REFUSE to adapt, necro gets nerfed, people still refuse to adapt even if dps numbers show that we dont lead in condi damage anymore, not only because of cooldowns, but also how easy it is to stop, ping pong or outright just kill a necromancer.

oZii.2864:

LastDay.3524:

oZii.2864:

but some people really think one day every class will be able to support just as good as a guardian(which will never happen)

Their statement about not every Profession being capable of everything is talking about specific things, not the big picture.

A Support Necro shouldn’t Block+Heal the way a Guardian does, but they should still support just as well as a Guardian does.
And perhaps one day they shall.

I just doubt that’s anytime soon.
It’s worth noting that pre-launch Necro was insanely overpowered as a bunker, and now they are terrible at that role.
It takes surprisingly little to change things completely.

No it isn’t specific not every class will do everything as other professions some classes will inherently be better at different roles than other classes intentionally. Right now elementalist is the second best healer in the game after guardian it will never be the best healer that is intended. Elementalist goes against your notion that it is specific because elementalist jack of all trades master of none. If you go look at a old SoTG Chaplan was asked if thief is intended to be the best burst damage class he said “Yes” which means no class will ever be as good at burst damage as a thief (single target and aoe with cleave is another story that title is probably warriors to claim).

-snip for length, I did read it!-

My point was that to claim “every Necro is meant to go condi damage and every Guardian is meant to go bunker! Other builds are meant to be weaker!” is just completely wrong, and something that I’ve heard people say over and over since the launch.

The 3 roles in GW2 are called Damage, Control and Support.
They are VERY broad concepts.

Every Profession is meant to be good at these, although some may always partially lean towards a particular direction.
As an example an Elementalist is meant to maintain a lot of versatility, whereas a Necromancer is meant to always lean towards Control in every build.
Same with Warrior and Damage.

Bursting is what I consider a specific thing.
Dealing Power-based damage is an overall, big picture thing.

So like you already guessed I meant VERY broadly.

A Necro should be a viable Power damage dealer.
That doesn’t mean they need to burst like a Thief or deal as much damage as a Warrior.
Nor even be quite as fast as those two.
It just means they need ways to dish out respectable amounts of Power damage and throw their own twist to it.

In Necro’s case they are meant to make up for the pure damage by having Chills, Cripple, Vulnerability and of course Death Shroud.
Lots of Control and Survivability compared to Warrior and Thief.

Pure damage is king in most of PvE, which is why you see Warriors everywhere in there.
On the flipside despite Warrior’s huge damage output they are far from the best damage dealer in PvP.
Not because they don’t deal enough damage under the right conditions, but because they lack in things that are needed in PvP.

The reason I mentioned this PvE stuff is because it shows you how in PvP even a role like “Power Damage Dealer” holds things other than just damage important.

PvE is eventually meant to value similar things, so it’s balance will eventually be closer to PvP than it is now.
The lack of Defiant on some of the new mobs and their high damage output are signs of the new direction slowly coming up.

Support is a role that is often misunderstood.
Like you already know it doesn’t mean just “Healer”.
It means a role in which you Support your allies somehow.

In Thief’s case the Support build is meant to be things like Venom sharing.
Going so full on Support is meant to be a rare, unusual role for them, but they are still meant to be very effective at it if they choose to go for it.

A Support Necro will probably never Heal others as much as a Guardian does.
Instead they are meant to be an effective mix of of Control and Support who make up for the lower Healing by making their opponents Crippled, Weakened and Chilled.

They are meant to be so good that you’d sometimes pick one over a Support Guardian.
They’ll just be stronger/weaker in different specific things.

As far as Bunkering goes whereas a Guardian bunkers with Blocks and Heals a Necro is meant to do it by Life Steals and Death Shroud.

A “Bunker” Thief would use massive amounts of Blind, Dodges and their rather strong healing skills.
Well, I guess Bunker is a rather specific role so maybe that won’t happen!

Since my previous post is too long to edit this in I’ll just doublepost. :P
Naughty me!

In my opinion Anet should bring down our Condition damage builds.
Bring them down to the level of our Power ones.

After this give us more survivability and a better counter to stunlocks and burst.
That way Necro would be more balanced overall than the 1-build wonder it is now.

Not to mention it’d be more fun.
We wouldn’t always gets bursted/focused and the poor, poor Mesmers wouldn’t melt so badly anymore.

I’d like to point out that part of the reason certain of these cookie cutter builds see so much use is not because they are the best builds out there, but because they are the easiest builds out there to put into a team. Guardians are great bunkers not because they have the best support builds, but because they have the most easily applicable support types (no group can’t make use of AoE healing/buffing and some control).

As of now, GW2 teams are still pretty much infants when compared to the big eSports groups when it comes to how they go about competing. As it goes on, assuming it does keep growing, it will eventually mature to the point where those builds can actually be assessed for their true value in actual team comps, and not which one can best be plugged into the new FotM comp.

Necros are the current most OP class in PvP. The question is whether that’s as a result of Necro changes or because people still spec to deal more with direct damage than with conditions.

LastDay.3524:

In my opinion Anet should bring down our Condition damage builds.
Bring them down to the level of our Power ones.

it would seem like your opinion is a bit short sighted then.

I don’t feel like my power build performs at a lower level than the terror build at all.

They both excel at different things and both have great killing power and are both weak to cc and focused fire. Each build has it’s classes that are relatively easy to deal with and those which are much harder because they happen to counter that build better.

style.6173:

Necros are the current most OP class in PvP. The question is whether that’s as a result of Necro changes or because people still spec to deal more with direct damage than with conditions.

Mix of both, second being the bigger reason but still, burning – no no on necro.

Bhawb.7408:

As of now, GW2 teams are still pretty much infants when compared to the big eSports groups when it comes to how they go about competing. As it goes on, assuming it does keep growing, it will eventually mature to the point where those builds can actually be assessed for their true value in actual team comps, and not which one can best be plugged into the new FotM comp.

For that to happen we need new modes (not even competitive ones, but just to show what impact different playstyles have, e.g. capture the flag without conquest, deathmatch, single point conquest/king of the hill, moba like tower siege or even simple open pve dueling), full bug fix line and probably less % damage and more ability changing traits.

hackks.3687:

LOL. kitten I wish these boards didn’t bug out so much so I could quote stuff here. You guys dropped some beauties in there!!!!

@ Nemesis: Let’s just get this out of the way: Necro was the first class I rolled at release, and my 2k+ tpvp matches would beg to differ with your opinion on my “depth of necro knowledge”. And did you really link a shot from WvW of Thief’s backstab damage for a comparison to Terror? lolwut??? I don’t even have words for you honestly. Your little vids might be enough to garner the admiration of those who obviously know less than you about the class, but anyone with any real understanding knows your mostly clueless. There’s no need to debate that further.

Hahaha… 2000 games played on your “OP necromancer” and you’re still nowhere near top 500. But of course anyone with real understanding of the necromancers knows i’m clueless.
Ever think for a second that if you say something like this i would verify this… i can you know. But no… it’s easier to dodge a subject and a fair point that i’ve made with words like… “i don’t even have words for you honestly + we all know you are clueless + no need to talk about this further”.
You forget i’ve been around internet a long while now, i know these shenanigans… they don’t work on me.

In solo que you have 46.29% win ratio with 81 wins 94 wins position 874 with your OP necromancer.
In team you have 50.64% with 1068 wins 1041 losses but you are still just a percentage on the leaderboards.
Now my initial statement i admit i was wrong… i thought that by what you are saying you can not possibly know how the necromancer is played.
I was wrong… you do have a lot more TPvP experience then me… yet you are weaker while assuming necromancer is OP. How low would you be in rankings if necromancers gets nerfed even more…
After 2000 games ? Really ?… Get more OP necromancers mate… after 2000 games you should be wayyyyyy higher with the OP necromancer. But of course… what do i know… i’m clueless…

I’m done posting about balance and taking the time to actually remember scenarios that happend to prove a point, only to be trolled by people that in 2000 games didn’t manage to get off percentages in leaderboards… with the usual shenanigans… “i have no words for the likes of you”.

You don’t… good luck to you in the future, maybe once you reach 4000 games you’ll be better.

As for the necromancer, if it is OP it will get nerfed… if it is UP it will get buffed… ArenaNet is taking their time with both of these since the feedback that they are getting is never really objective…
Including mine… maybe it requires more skill to perma stealth while doing damage, or to use the 90% of the time you dodge abilities on thief then what it requires me to counter him… so the fact that i counter with less skill something that requires way more skill makes me OP trully. I don’t know… never played thief…

But at the same time… like i said and described scenarios, i’m a lot of the time faced with “nothing i can do” scenarios because the target is SIMPLY IMMUNE to everything i have (either by stealth or perma block perma dodge or just plain old immunity) and after that they leave combat with no way for me to stop them. I truly only win when i survive their immunities and 6 seconds stuns while being 1 shot and they still didn’t leave combat… it should have been clear by then that i am more skilled then them… since when i do a chain fear + damage they die but i never do it first… i always must survive their initial damage, i play on their terms always… And they do have the option of always leaving, i never do…
Yet i am called OP noob when they die…

and then we never saw hackks again….

Nemesis.8593:

As for the necromancer, if it is OP it will get nerfed… if it is UP it will get buffed… ArenaNet is taking their time with both of these since the feedback that they are getting is never really objective…
Including mine… maybe it requires more skill to perma stealth while doing damage, or to use the 90% of the time you dodge abilities on thief then what it requires me to counter him… so the fact that i counter with less skill something that requires way more skill makes me OP trully. I don’t know… never played thief…

Just to say, as someone whos actual pvp used to be only theif (since it was faceroll easy in the pistolwhip days then guardian and now actually necro), perma dodge is easy, but permastealth in pvp with ok damage takes way more skill than i ever bothered to put into a thief, so yeah it probably does take more skill for a sneaky backstabber than a drop 2 aoe fears hope idiots run into them, use other fears to defend, but not in any other spec since i put just as little bother (as in knowing basic combos and what actually kills you, situational rotation power and when/what points to control or how to engage em) into learning the specs.

Bhawb.7408:

sas.6483:

… on the one hand I feel as if I’m being a bit unfair, but then again I actually think you have these positions and haven’t really thought them through. So I feel justified.

I want good balance for Necromancers. Having a build that has some of the highest burst condition damage and such toxic gameplay stay around is not good for us.

…

We are not balanced right now. One build is over the top strong, and most of the rest of our builds are either too dependent on teamwork (which just isn’t that fun to play for the majority of people) or are too weak in general. However once that OP build is toned down to proper balance, ANet might finally realize, again, that we are still in need of buffs to bring us up to good balance.

Let me translate the buzzwords. “Toxic gameplay” just means a meta evolving in ways certain players don’t like and are unwilling to adapt to. The junk about “condition burst” is bunk based on the math, which has been posted probably dozens of times. Acting like condition burst is somehow different and more out of line than DD burst is pretty much doublespeak. “Balance” is what everybody wants when they’re QQing about something they don’t like and ignores when gameplay suits them. Pretending that a few builds won’t stand out for certain applications is just silly, and pretending certain classes won’t have certain niches is also silly.

As far as going through another nerf / buff cycle, here is an aggregate of what has been roughly proposed in this thread. The new condition necromancer will have:

No terror damage.
No Dhuumfire.
A 2 second bleed and / or no poison on scepter 1. (No idea why there is crying about scepter 1 of all things now, but there it is.)
Slower than 1 second casts with massive animations.
Reduced lifeforce generation / lower sustain.

Inform us how you propose to buff the condition damage necro so that they will be fun to play, capable in 1v1s against other classes, distinct from a power necro, etc. Healing through death shroud and improvements to necro stability are out of bounds.

Dredlord.8076:

LastDay.3524:

In my opinion Anet should bring down our Condition damage builds.
Bring them down to the level of our Power ones.

it would seem like your opinion is a bit short sighted then.

I don’t feel like my power build performs at a lower level than the terror build at all.

They both excel at different things and both have great killing power and are both weak to cc and focused fire. Each build has it’s classes that are relatively easy to deal with and those which are much harder because they happen to counter that build better.

Oh?
Interesting.

I think that Power Necros are pretty good in PvE but I can’t really think of many situations where one would be better than Terror+Dhuumfire in PvP.
Less range, attacks easier to dodge/block.

I’ll admit that I’m not a very skilled at PvP myself.
I’ve mostly gathered opinions and info from people much better than me.
For example just after the first Dhuumfire patch hit I remember Symbolic telling me that Terror Dhuumfire is gonna be OP as heck, which I was skeptical of at the time.

If you have examples of situations where a Power build is better than the Terror+Dhuumfire build I’d like to hear it!
It could add to the conversation as a whole.

I talked to a guildmate who is ranked 15th NA atm he said that many necro’s don’t take dhuumfire trait anymore since it got nerfed to 2 secs and that alot of necro’s are running a tanky lifeforce ds build now.

He said that top meta is necro’s, spirit rangers, stun warriors and sprinkle in guards.

I do wonder what this tanky LF ds build is though. I don’t have a ranger but I do know what the warrior build is as I run that on my warrior (and I always go after necro’s to ping pong as nemesis said)

Andele.1306:

For that to happen we need new modes (not even competitive ones, but just to show what impact different playstyles have, e.g. capture the flag without conquest, deathmatch, single point conquest/king of the hill, moba like tower siege or even simple open pve dueling), full bug fix line and probably less % damage and more ability changing traits.

League of Legends has one game mode, on one map; and most eSports are only played on one game mode, with at most differing maps. But LoL/Dota especially have a massive amount of pre-game strategy and planning that goes in.

The top teams don’t just pick one APC, one ADC, one Support, a bruiser top, and a tank jungle (which is essentially the exact thing we see in GW2, except support/tank is combined, and they add a DPS). It isn’t just pick the most OP support and pick them. Most OP bruiser? Pick them. They have full-team comps. There are teamfighting comps, AoE comps, single target burst/catching, split push, poke, there are tons of comps for different playstyles and for countering other teams. You don’t just say “we like teamfighting so we’re picking a teamfight comp every single game”, and then ban and pick the exact same thing. You specifically learn the enemy team’s strategies, ward placements, what champs they have been playing and the team comps they like to use. You ban out their best champions, or you ban out what they could pick to counter your comp, then you strategically pick champions in specific orders to give yourself not only the best lane matchups, but also while remaining within whatever team comp you want. There is a massive amount of thinking that goes into figuring out what you will do, what they will do, and making sure its as favorable of a matchup as possible.

That just doesn’t happen in GW2. Teams have 1 comp they run on every map, or at most they change a class or two on a map. There is very little looking into and countering other teams, and there is very little change ever made. It is, generally, who has the best FotM comp, and who plays it best. There are a great variety of tactics once you get in game, but the entire pre-game strategy is vastly lacking. As long as that continues, build variety will remain really low.

@sas, toxic gameplay is when gameplay is bad for one or both sides. Generally it involves very little play/counterplay, or the play/counterplay is badly designed. Right now condi Necromancer play/counterplay is based around the Necromancer wanting to get out massive amounts of damage in the best spikes they can (there is some interesting play/counterplay in baiting out cleanses/stun breaks, but that is about it) because they have very little meaningful sustain/escape, and the enemy team tries to kill them as quickly as possible, or at least pressure them so hard they can’t effectively do their bursts. The entire play/counterplay there is a game of who kills who faster. Another problem is that the condi Necromancer’s burst has relatively small tells. They have been fixing this with the new casting animation on stakitten , but it is still possible to get chain feared and condi bursted.

Other toxic gameplay examples are stunlocking warriors and the old backstab thief.

Bhawb.7408:

League of Legends has one game mode, on one map; and most eSports are only played on one game mode, with at most differing maps. But LoL/Dota especially have a massive amount of pre-game strategy and planning that goes in.

The top teams don’t just pick one APC, one ADC, one Support, a bruiser top, and a tank jungle (which is essentially the exact thing we see in GW2, except support/tank is combined, and they add a DPS). It isn’t just pick the most OP support and pick them. Most OP bruiser? Pick them. They have full-team comps. There are teamfighting comps, AoE comps, single target burst/catching, split push, poke, there are tons of comps for different playstyles and for countering other teams. You don’t just say “we like teamfighting so we’re picking a teamfight comp every single game”, and then ban and pick the exact same thing. You specifically learn the enemy team’s strategies, ward placements, what champs they have been playing and the team comps they like to use. You ban out their best champions, or you ban out what they could pick to counter your comp, then you strategically pick champions in specific orders to give yourself not only the best lane matchups, but also while remaining within whatever team comp you want. There is a massive amount of thinking that goes into figuring out what you will do, what they will do, and making sure its as favorable of a matchup as possible.

That just doesn’t happen in GW2. Teams have 1 comp they run on every map, or at most they change a class or two on a map. There is very little looking into and countering other teams, and there is very little change ever made. It is, generally, who has the best FotM comp, and who plays it best. There are a great variety of tactics once you get in game, but the entire pre-game strategy is vastly lacking. As long as that continues, build variety will remain really low.

@sas, toxic gameplay is when gameplay is bad for one or both sides.

Its not really one mode (and especially not since dominion and abyss), its one objective, there are multiple strategies and playstyles that work around different stuff(more often in dota than in lol because people in lol tend to be a lot… lets say tv educated than actually using logic) not to mention that the original aeon of strife turned into a whole genre while mmos and pvp games are in pretty much every other case caused by evolution, not based on the pvp idea.

3 big problems pvp here in GW2 has:

Skills are balanced on avoidance, not reaction to them (even dota, being famous for a 3-6 second long stuns and chain bashes/stunlocks caused by procs is based on how you react, not how to avoid it completely (e.g. a melee minibash will go trough BKB/magic immunity, but if you activate the magic immunity after you got stunned, the stun is broken and you are free to run/get out of the attack range with stuff like stealth or force staff/a leap)

Burst is stronger than any sustain – same thing 2 sides of the same coin that may not be out of balance, but since they are if sustain on a character equalizes with the burst, everyone wants a nerf to it (that is actually justified because no other profession could do that in the example of the old cantrip dd ele)

Stats and builds – with 100 options of how to build something in a moba, 40~ options of weapons mods and secondary equips in fps and even simple things like pickups in arenas/deathmatches, more in depth customization is allowed, thus being locked to amulets + jewels, mostly damage boosting traits and not the option to chose to invest in one stat of a trait line more than the other (e.g. hybrid necro going 450 precision 150 cond damage or tank necro going 50% SR 10% crit) with a minimum requirement in both is a really bad thing.

Last but not least Toxic = not fun/ruining gameplay, this is more of a generalized hard counter, such things cannot be balanced (in case of BS thief and cc warrior and some other unimportant builds) without making them useless, the trick is just to make them weak against a character/build/whatever that while having no strengths, has no weaknesses the build can abuse.

Bhawb.7408:

@sas, toxic gameplay is when gameplay is bad for one or both sides. Generally it involves very little play/counterplay, or the play/counterplay is badly designed. Right now condi Necromancer play/counterplay is based around the Necromancer wanting to get out massive amounts of damage in the best spikes they can (there is some interesting play/counterplay in baiting out cleanses/stun breaks, but that is about it) because they have very little meaningful sustain/escape, and the enemy team tries to kill them as quickly as possible, or at least pressure them so hard they can’t effectively do their bursts. The entire play/counterplay there is a game of who kills who faster. Another problem is that the condi Necromancer’s burst has relatively small tells. They have been fixing this with the new casting animation on stakitten , but it is still possible to get chain feared and condi bursted.

Other toxic gameplay examples are stunlocking warriors and the old backstab thief.

Again, this is pretty much straight obfuscation. There are many, many examples of gameplay that is bad for one side, that don’t involve much counterplay. Most if not all PvP pretty well boils down to who kills who faster. Condi necro play is “toxic” because a few teams found themselves on the losing end and then cried about it and made some cherry picked videos instead of adjusting. Strategies used by those teams previously wasn’t, of course, to be considered toxic, even though teams consisting of say rangers and necros probably wouldn’t have fun playing against those strategies.

I heard that evolving metas were a really fun part of the game. I didn’t realize they’d induce so many tears amongst the e-sports crowd.

I just did some more TPvP tonight… and i am literally disgusted but what i have seen.
Game after game i was faced with impossible odds, especially in Spirit Watch and Skyhammer…

Entire groups of players running up and down the mountains with blink while in stealth… occasionally coming out of stealth to one shot then they were gone before i could even see them.

The thing that disgusted me the most was an elementalist that 1v4ed my entire team… i was going towards him, and i saw his HP go down to nothing and back to full, and down to nothing… and back to full… and down to nothing, and back to full. He one shoted + some pew pew… one by one…
I fought him for almost 2 minutes… he literally healed back to full HP about 10 times at least… each time he did i was CCed or he blinked away only to return a few seconds after. (spoke with him after, he said he can go from 20% to 100% every few seconds)

Next game…

I had 2 OP necromancers with me… got to a place where they were fighting this low HP engineer… then i joined it for a quick finish
Automated Response: Condition duration is reduced by 100% when health is below 25%.
He was immune to all our damage for 2 minutes, until i finally decided just to leave… i have… no… WE had no chance of EVEN DOING DAMAGE AT ALL.

I might just quit this game for a while, i’ve seen enough.
Necromancer OP good luck byebye.

just saying nemsesis but ele isnt even viable nowadays, so if he owned your team you guys where just so much worse than him. also engies with autoamted response are killable as necro.

Blackmoa.3186:

just saying nemsesis but ele isnt even viable nowadays, so if he owned your team you guys where just so much worse than him. also engies with autoamted response are killable as necro.

I always thought that expires after a while and wiki just forgot to put a duration on it, but it actually doesn’t… if the engi doesn’t heal up you actually can’t kill him if he reaches 25% health and you didn’t have enough conditions to burst him down when he goes into 25%. Most engineers keep all their cleanses for once they reach 25%… because they know after that they have god mode.

Yes they are killable… but it’s insanely difficult to do so, and the engineer has to do… nothing to obtain god mode ?… all he has to do is use cleanse at the right time and he has god mode… i’m disgusted…

Yeah the elementalist was better then me, we fought 2 minutes and he eventually killed me… but seriously how much better can someone be that he 1v4s my entire team, or how bad was my team ?…
I don’t know… long day, wanted to relax in PvP and all i see is immune immune immune stealth gone stealth gone “your enemy has taken an orb” stun lock stun lock stun lock stealth gone immune immune immune evade evade evade stealth.

At one point i just grabbed a biscuit and was playing with 1 hand running around auto-attacking… i wakittening 1 attack every 5-6 attacks… and that’s the scepter auto-attack.

Blackmoa.3186:

just saying nemsesis but ele isnt even viable nowadays, so if he owned your team you guys where just so much worse than him. also engies with autoamted response are killable as necro.

Because builds other than Cantrip ele totally dont exist *cough Arcane burst, Scepter Air burst, Earth Signet Aurashare point control, Lightning hammer cc burst build and Staff pressure totally dont exist (ok on staff i can see why you wouldnt count it since people dont like how unreliable some of its more important skills are).

It’s just a bad day. It happens.

Dredlord.8076:

and then we never saw hackks again….

Was I supposed to defend myself or something just because some dude looked me up on those farcical leader boards? What is there to defend against when he posts stuff like this?

Nemesis.8593:

I just did some more TPvP tonight… and i am literally disgusted but what i have seen.
Game after game i was faced with impossible odds, especially in Spirit Watch and Skyhammer…

Entire groups of players running up and down the mountains with blink while in stealth… occasionally coming out of stealth to one shot then they were gone before i could even see them.

The thing that disgusted me the most was an elementalist that 1v4ed my entire team… i was going towards him, and i saw his HP go down to nothing and back to full, and down to nothing… and back to full… and down to nothing, and back to full. He one shoted + some pew pew… one by one…
I fought him for almost 2 minutes… he literally healed back to full HP about 10 times at least… each time he did i was CCed or he blinked away only to return a few seconds after. (spoke with him after, he said he can go from 20% to 100% every few seconds)

Next game…

I had 2 OP necromancers with me… got to a place where they were fighting this low HP engineer… then i joined it for a quick finish
Automated Response: Condition duration is reduced by 100% when health is below 25%.
He was immune to all our damage for 2 minutes, until i finally decided just to leave… i have… no… WE had no chance of EVEN DOING DAMAGE AT ALL.

I might just quit this game for a while, i’ve seen enough.
Necromancer OP good luck byebye.

So you and your team got 1v4’d by an Ele – a class that is considered underpowered and inviable in this current meta. GG

Then you discovered that Engi’s are building to hard counter condis and more specifically Necros. I’m sure you saw more than a couple Warriors rocking Mace/Shield and Berserkers Stance since that’s virtually a 100% hard counter to Necros as well.

Thank you though for doing everyone a favor of playing some PvP and reporting back that Necro’s OPness is in fact not an L2P issue on the community’s part because as you clearly discovered people are in fact building deliberately to counter conditions and Necros and not simply holding on to their old builds. If multiple classes are deliberately building to counter a particular class and a particular form of damage, I don’t know what else there is to convince people that Necros are in fact OP… that is, until they run into one of the various hard counters.

The PvP meta is just borked right now. It’s not all Necros fault, but they were an instigating factor in it’s development, and as such some toning down on some aspects of its builds are in order. And just to be clear, I’m not looking to nerf Necros in to the ground, in fact it’s really nice to play him on the regular again. What I’m really looking for is PvP to be balanced and enjoyable. Currently it is the furthest thing from both.

P.S. it’s rather flattering you went so far as to look up the leader board rankings of not only me but other posters in this thread. Kind of scary, stalker-ish but still somewhat flattering. Next time just ask politely and I’ll tell you that my highest rank was top 200 when queuing regularly with a team, lowest rank was 50% after an epic losing streak yolo-queing for a weekend. Nobody cares about the leader boards though while balance is so fubar’d.

Going to ignore what hackks said since i am sure it is some sort of elaborate comeback aimed at me admitting defeat.

The story continues… was just in a TPvP match vs 4 stun locking warriors, they facerolled us so badly i started laughing…

So basically i think they were calling out targets, then pressing all together (not even synchronized) stun… and then stun stun stun stun stun stun stun stun stun… every time we tried to fight back they immediately went into block and condition immunity with stability on top, and then more stun stun stun stun.

Playing with 4 buttons is it ?… and steam rolling everyone i understand me as a necromancer which doesn’t have stability unless you use a SR 30 build, but they face rolled all of us…

My wish is this… i wish more people would realize how easy it is to faceroll as stunners… and when the entire TPvP meta becomes a stun fest… THEN we will see balance.

GeeeGeee

PS: anyone ever got 1 shoted by an elementalists before ?… was scratching my eye, and i saw an elementalist… and i was like pfff and by the time i put my hand back on my mouse i died.

hackks.3687:

Then you discovered that Engi’s are building to hard counter condis and more specifically Necros. I’m sure you saw more than a couple Warriors rocking Mace/Shield and Berserkers Stance since that’s virtually a 100% hard counter to Necros as well.

Thank you though for doing everyone a favor of playing some PvP and reporting back that Necro’s OPness is in fact not an L2P issue on the community’s part because as you clearly discovered people are in fact building deliberately to counter conditions and Necros and not simply holding on to their old builds. If multiple classes are deliberately building to counter a particular class and a particular form of damage, I don’t know what else there is to convince people that Necros are in fact OP… that is, until they run into one of the various hard counters.

They do not only counter necros, they counter every class. Because people adapt and change their build, is not equal to necros are OP. It is however, an expression of adaptation, nothing else. If we now have to change up our builds, to beat the new stunlock warriors, then this would be the same as saying warriors are OP, according to your reasoning. However it is not, this would simply be the meta changing.
Necros are not OP, because several classes have opted to change their builds. Necros are not OP, because people now pack condi clears. Necros are not OP because people specifically aim one or more utilities to counter them.
Again, if this is the reasoning, then every class would be called OP, every time you have to adapt and change things up.

Note, I am NOT saying the necro is OP, I am NOT saying the necro is not OP. I’m arguing against your reasoning.

Nemesis.8593:

PS: anyone ever got 1 shoted by an elementalists before ?... was scratching my eye, and i saw an elementalist... and i was like pfff and by the time i put my hand back on my mouse i died.

Go trough the really old threads, i said multiple time arcane burst is bloody overpowered (just as i said cantrips+water sustain were op in beta in game and on the GW2 guru forums), i think i linked the build even once in the Ele podcast...
Either way 2 arcane builds (the basic D/X and the now fused with Air/Fire crit S/D) can dish out around 40~60k damage burst. Even back on the "zerker dps vs necro" thread i posted eles as the top burster (even if some people *cough s and f to not name a few 4 letter names* didnt agree with me). Just look a little at the exact description of arcane skills and fire air and water traits (yes thats right a total of easy 75% bonus damage). Also if you either of the 2 buggy fire skills *phoenix or burning speed* you can stack up tons of damage ticks to proc.

I’ve seen a very good ele player running around in WvW, from the (my) blackgate server. Heida I believe his name is, however he does exactly this, tons of dmg. When I see him, I know someone is gonna be bent across a barrel and is gonna take it forcibly.
I even whispered him several times, just to say, THAT DMG IS SICK. People drop like flies with the s/d fresh air build. However it isn’t invincible, you can (if lucky) dodge the main burst. The thing is, however, they can do it really really often.

Dietzen.6127:

hackks.3687:

Then you discovered that Engi’s are building to hard counter condis and more specifically Necros. I’m sure you saw more than a couple Warriors rocking Mace/Shield and Berserkers Stance since that’s virtually a 100% hard counter to Necros as well.

Thank you though for doing everyone a favor of playing some PvP and reporting back that Necro’s OPness is in fact not an L2P issue on the community’s part because as you clearly discovered people are in fact building deliberately to counter conditions and Necros and not simply holding on to their old builds. If multiple classes are deliberately building to counter a particular class and a particular form of damage, I don’t know what else there is to convince people that Necros are in fact OP… that is, until they run into one of the various hard counters.

They do not only counter necros, they counter every class. Because people adapt and change their build, is not equal to necros are OP. It is however, an expression of adaptation, nothing else. If we now have to change up our builds, to beat the new stunlock warriors, then this would be the same as saying warriors are OP, according to your reasoning. However it is not, this would simply be the meta changing.
Necros are not OP, because several classes have opted to change their builds. Necros are not OP, because people now pack condi clears. Necros are not OP because people specifically aim one or more utilities to counter them.
Again, if this is the reasoning, then every class would be called OP, every time you have to adapt and change things up.

Note, I am NOT saying the necro is OP, I am NOT saying the necro is not OP. I’m arguing against your reasoning.

I agree some classes have adapted to us having more damage, but this new adaptation is not only aimed towards us… but any other class. Damage immunity is damage immunity… stun lock is stun lock…

When 2 thieves meet they try to one shot each other, if they fail they run away and arrive at a different location to snipe someone else. When two warriors meet they try to stun lock each other, when one gets stun locked he uses perma immunity to damage then tries to stun lock back…

So i ask you this my friends… since we can’t disappear from a fight when ever we want, since we can’t use invulnerability when ever we want, since we can’t one shot people, since we can’t fully heal every 10 seconds…

How do we counter invulnerability and max mobility ?

Anyone care to explain to me how you counter being one shot by something that is immune to your damage for a little while, and if you survive he disappears into the distance without you being able to follow… only to come back again when ever he feels like it (aka elementalist and thief).

I’ve killed hundreds if not thousands of thieves, and at least 50+ were cursing me on whisper, raging and saying the most interesting things… so i’m no pushover… but every time a thief died is because he overextended, he though he could take me…

If a thief doesn’t want to die to me he never will… ever… if i don’t want to die to a thief, i better pray to god i don’t have half my skills on CD when he decides to snipe me from stealth…

So… how do you counter 4 stun locking warriors, how do you counter 1 shoting elementalist that always leaves combat if he fails to one shot you, how do you counter 1 shoting thief that always leaves combat if he fails to one shot you…

Basically how do you counter invulnerability, stealth… and blinking away…
Most classes don’t have that problem since they counter it with invulnerability, stealth… and blinking away of their own.

Why am i constantly being forced to kill people only IF they are stupid enough to fight with a superior opponent… and yes, i am superior because i’ve killed them… but even though inferior they always have a chance to leave combat and not suffer defeat.

If i am faced with a superior opponent… hohoho…

edit: this morning every single opponent i met, either tried to one shot me then run away… or stun lock me then run away… all i could do was survive that and… walk with swiftness towards the location they were heading…
Stopping them from doing that is not an option… unless someone teaches me how to damage invulnerable or stealthed blinking characters…

Dietzen.6127:

I’ve seen a very good ele player running around in WvW, from the (my) blackgate server. Heida I believe his name is, however he does exactly this, tons of dmg. When I see him, I know someone is gonna be bent across a barrel and is gonna take it forcibly.
I even whispered him several times, just to say, THAT DMG IS SICK. People drop like flies with the s/d fresh air build. However it isn’t invincible, you can (if lucky) dodge the main burst. The thing is, however, they can do it really really often.

You dodge the main burst then what ?… you kill him ?… mist form ride the lightning blink…

Andele.1306:

Nemesis.8593:

PS: anyone ever got 1 shoted by an elementalists before ?… was scratching my eye, and i saw an elementalist… and i was like pfff and by the time i put my hand back on my mouse i died.

Go trough the really old threads, i said multiple time arcane burst is bloody overpowered (just as i said cantrips+water sustain were op in beta in game and on the GW2 guru forums), i think i linked the build even once in the Ele podcast…
Either way 2 arcane builds (the basic D/X and the now fused with Air/Fire crit S/D) can dish out around 40~60k damage burst. Even back on the “zerker dps vs necro” thread i posted eles as the top burster (even if some people cough s and f to not name a few 4 letter names didnt agree with me). Just look a little at the exact description of arcane skills and fire air and water traits (yes thats right a total of easy 75% bonus damage). Also if you either of the 2 buggy fire skills phoenix or burning speed you can stack up tons of damage ticks to proc.

I don’t think i said no back then either… it’ just…
It is not a pleasant gaming experience when you know that… that fast moving dot towards you can one shot you once he gets here, you can survive if you are good… but then he will leave and there’s nothing you can do about it.

Any way you look at it, they have more damage and more survivability because they can do that… yet when i kill one of them, i am being called noob.
If i had a screenshot for every time i got called OP noob my 2 TB hdd would have a lot less space on it now.

Nemesis.8593:

Dietzen.6127:

I’ve seen a very good ele player running around in WvW, from the (my) blackgate server. Heida I believe his name is, however he does exactly this, tons of dmg. When I see him, I know someone is gonna be bent across a barrel and is gonna take it forcibly.
I even whispered him several times, just to say, THAT DMG IS SICK. People drop like flies with the s/d fresh air build. However it isn’t invincible, you can (if lucky) dodge the main burst. The thing is, however, they can do it really really often.

You dodge the main burst then what ?… you kill him ?… mist form ride the lightning blink…

Firstly, in reference to your previous post, I was saying the same thing as you did, builds changing is NOT only against necros. It’s against anyone and everyone. So I agree with you there.

It depends, if the ele thinks he can win, I win if I dodge successfully. If he doesn’t want to fight, I’ll have to be lucky with my signet of spite/DS2 or spectral grasp if I have it equipped or staff2. Else he can get away. Which is what you were getting at, if I caught the innuendo correctly.

Nemesis.8593:

I don’t think i said no back then either… it’ just…
It is not a pleasant gaming experience when you know that… that fast moving dot towards you can one shot you once he gets here, you can survive if you are good… but then he will leave and there’s nothing you can do about it.

Any way you look at it, they have more damage and more survivability because they can do that… yet when i kill one of them, i am being called noob.
If i had a screenshot for every time i got called OP noob my 2 TB hdd would have a lot less space on it now.

No, im pretty sure that you just continued to brag about how you were doing on something awesome (the axe burst numbers vid), but what you can do about it are as follow:
Have 10 in DM for cleanse on DS, 30 in SR for stability on DS and always carry staff + Sarmor vs em, if you get the timing right: (ele start with either LTR or Flash into Earth from air) Sarmor, (ele recovery via missile crit into air for updraft blind 2x lightning) DS, (ele wants to do shield) DOOOOOOOOM, staff fear drop on you and chill.
It wont let you kill the ele but it will force a lot of CDs and only 2 long ones for you.
Then again eles did swap parts of the old arcane rotation i called op for a weird Scepter focus build that might be stronger since they got obsidian flesh, 4 sec of projectile destruction and a long daze in it if played right, but no LTR.~
Sorry that i didnt go by ability names but a) im sleepy right now b) I also dont know the actual names of the skills, scepter was too boring for me on the ele.

Andele.1306:

Nemesis.8593:

I don’t think i said no back then either… it’ just…
It is not a pleasant gaming experience when you know that… that fast moving dot towards you can one shot you once he gets here, you can survive if you are good… but then he will leave and there’s nothing you can do about it.

Any way you look at it, they have more damage and more survivability because they can do that… yet when i kill one of them, i am being called noob.
If i had a screenshot for every time i got called OP noob my 2 TB hdd would have a lot less space on it now.

No, im pretty sure that you just continued to brag about how you were doing on something awesome (the axe burst numbers vid), but what you can do about it are as follow:
Have 10 in DM for cleanse on DS, 30 in SR for stability on DS and always carry staff + Sarmor vs em, if you get the timing right: (ele start with either LTR or Flash into Earth from air) Sarmor, (ele recovery via missile crit into air for updraft blind 2x lightning) DS, (ele wants to do shield) DOOOOOOOOM, staff fear drop on you and chill.
It wont let you kill the ele but it will force a lot of CDs and only 2 long ones for you.
Then again eles did swap parts of the old arcane rotation i called op for a weird Scepter focus build that might be stronger since they got obsidian flesh, 4 sec of projectile destruction and a long daze in it if played right, but no LTR.~
Sorry that i didnt go by ability names but a) im sleepy right now b) I also dont know the actual names of the skills, scepter was too boring for me on the ele.

Thank you for the input… yeah, i thought about it as well… even played that build for a little while, sadly it doesn’t offer enough condition damage vs classes that go heavy on condition removals.
So i would be able to mostly not get killed by the elementalist, not kill him back… but i also reduce my damage vs other classes…

It’s a hard choice…

Even with my build without SR 30 i can survive the elementalists if i’m not on CD full HP and i see them coming. Then again… as a necromancer if you’re half HP and just got out of DS after defeating someone, an elementalists like that comes behind you… byebye.

Reading more and more of posts about OP necro, I can’t really find a good argument that make the “accusers” prove their point.

It seems mostly cause by 2 things:
-Ignorance of the class that killed them.
-False evidence of what exactly killed them. (Even worse in PvP, with a Death log that doesn’t represent what happened, just numbers from highest to lowest, and a combat log that doesn’t show all numbers.)

Some myths about OP condi necro 30/20/0/0/20 build:

- They have unblockable marks that can one shot you from 1200 yards.

- They can burst from 1200 range (when the real “burst” is under 600)

- Terror damage is OP (we’re talking about 1k damage a second, removable by both Stunbreakers AND conditions removal and negated with Stability before hand.)

- OP necro seems to have up to 8 or 9 skills slot at all time: They can use Signet of Spite, Epidemic, Spectral wall, Spectral armor, Plague Signet, Corrupt boon, and all wells, all instant cast, with no way to evade/invulnerable/block them.

- All necro are 30/20/20 conditions, therefore when I kill someone with a DS power crit build or a MM vampire build, I’m a noob with a FotM class.

- Plague gives you 20 second of invulnerability.

So can anybody tell me why exactly is necro OP? In a 1v1 setting that favors the necro if he starts with full lifeforce and full Corruption stacks? I really think that class knowledge is the real issue here, exactly like when I hated facing thief until I started one and just learned what they could/couldnt do and what to counter and how to do it.

@Haccks: About the loser who can’t dodge a hammer strike: The point is, you will get hit by one sooner or later with only 1 dodge every 10 sec, and when you do get hit, it will hit more than a full 5 sec of Terror, except the damage is instant and knocks you down. I don’t know about you, but I don’t become invulnerable when I’m knock down for 2-3 second, so every hit still register, exactly like Fear/Terror.

So I really don’t see why Terror needs another damage nerf. Being CC for 2-3 sec can be lethal to anyone regardless of the skill used to CC if you’re caught without a stunbreak.

Condi nec is way too strong. Burst through Dhuumfire, terror and bleeds is through the roof and AoE pressure with marks, DS, scep2/dag5 is over the top.
Also pretty high weakness and chill application.
The thing that makes people seriously discuss this OP abomination for ages is that it is not the only broken thing currently in use.
Next to spirit ranger, far point (bomb) engis and s/d thieves and the possibly overbuffed warrior it is just a strong choice, but compared to every other build it is just too much dmg in a too small time frame.
Mind you, the class, so to say, is interchangeable. Especially spirit rangers are also running rampant, also mace/shield + gs warri with zerker and balanced stance. 4 sec stun every 8 sec into hundred blades, yep that’s the way to go and way more effective then the silly hammer warri that is talked about here so much.

Necro is strong if compared to Meta/high end pvp builds and Necro is broken/OP compared to everything else. Does that mean necro needs a fix? Yes. Does that mean everything is fine, when nec is fixed? No, bc there is still too much kittenedly OP stuff in the game.

Panhauramix.2784:

@Haccks: About the loser who can’t dodge a hammer strike: The point is, you will get hit by one sooner or later with only 1 dodge every 10 sec, and when you do get hit, it will hit more than a full 5 sec of Terror, except the damage is instant and knocks you down. I don’t know about you, but I don’t become invulnerable when I’m knock down for 2-3 second, so every hit still register, exactly like Fear/Terror.

So I really don’t see why Terror needs another damage nerf. Being CC for 2-3 sec can be lethal to anyone regardless of the skill used to CC if you’re caught without a stunbreak.

The key difference being that Doom (the major burst component) is instant cast and the hammer has a long kitten cast time. Another significant difference would be that Terror is doing in one skill, what that Hammer is doing in 3 or 4 skills by dealing continuous damage and allowing the Necro to continue to pile on more damage. And another difference is that Terror can be extended by condition duration and it’s damage heightened by condition damage, where as there is no corresponding stat increase for “hard CC” other than those traits/runes/sigils that directly and only effect those CC skills. While there are some stupid long CC effects in this game, by and large they require some dedication in their build to achieve that effectiveness. The Necro on the other hand is simply building for damage output via condition damage and duration stats, and being rewarded with extended CC effects as well. There simply needs to be more build decisions made when it comes to condi Necros. Just like with the scepter bleeds. What’s the purpose of having traits like Hemophilia and Lingering curses if the duration is already producing optimal results? But I digress, back to Terror…

The instant cast nature of Doom and the nuke it becomes by speccing for Terror is the major stumbling block for balancing Terror in PvP. Doom was implemented as an instant cast CC available while stunned, the same way DS is available as instant cast and while stunned, in order to compensate for Necro’s lack of access to stability via utility skills/stun breaks. It was designed and balanced as a defensive mechanic but no longer functions as one once Terror is slotted.

The way I see it, if Necros keep Terror they’re going to lose Doom as an instant cast. Which in itself will incite a whole host of necessary balance changes as Doom was originally intended as a Necro’s primary defensive mechanism along with DS, which would no longer be the case. Or…. they could simply remove Terror and then everything else starts to look pretty balanced and OK and we can go on being kitten kicking machines but people will have far less reason to spec for things like Berserker Stance, Automated Response, 6pc Lyssa Runes, etc.

Don’t get me wrong I love Terror just as much as the rest of you, just not as much as I love PvP when it’s meta is healthy and rewarding skillful play. I’m simply trying to present the idea of taking a quick hit (like pulling off a bandaid) by giving up Terror rather than go through the enduring pain of months of rebalancing just for the sake of keeping a diminished version of Terror. There’s no getting around it, IMO. Terror will definitely be nerfed again. How much it’s nerfed could determine how much of the rest of the class we get to keep.

edit: please delete

Uhh, no, Hackks. A hammer CC does the same damage in the initial hit (so all at once) as Terror does over its entire duration (which can be prevented via stability or mitigated via stunbreak or allied/passive condition removal). Anything else that follows the hammer knockdown is just more damage.

The thing is, when you break down a condition necro’s “burst”, you find out that the entire damage output is only about 3500 DPS. That’s actually really low. Other classes/builds do 4-6k DPS just by auto-attacking. If they throw in a stun (say Warrior Mace burst skill or an ele’s knockdowns), you have a similar effect as a condition necro’s highest burst potential, but only using a couple of skills (the necro, meanwhile, has to blow at least three long cooldowns).

So, the damage isn’t actually the issue. The control isn’t actually the issue. Even the combination isn’t the issue. So what is? The instant cast CC? Looked at Mesmers lately? Ever tried to dodge a Guardian’s Shield of Absorption (which isn’t instant cast, but pretty close). Good players know to expect a fear when the necro goes into death shroud and will often anticipate the Fear (usually with stability or blocks). I may not do PvP, but people in WvW can counter a condi necro pretty well, so I would imagine that it’s possible on the PvP stage as well. (and don’t start on Lemongrass Soup, Rare Veggie Pizza cancels that out).

Just by looking at hackks pos the difference as he will probably reply with is that (at least for doom) is instant cast I still don’t think it does alot of damage tbh. If you go into ds as a necro most people know the danger spells are doom, tainted shackles and maybe life steal transfer.

As other classes it is easier to dodge the CC of hammer warriors because you have more dodges necro’s don’t have vigor and I don’t suspect sigil’s of energy are top priority on necros weapon sets. Hammer does alot of damage you can dodge it but the burst mechanic aoe stun can be up every 7 seconds and every attack on hammer can do pretty close to what terror does with backbreaker doing 1-2k more than terror even if you get the close 4 tick proc.

If terror stays and doom loses it’s instant cast as hackks suggests then necro’s lose probably the best get out of jail card they have.

exactly oZii, and thank you for understanding what I wrote. I was beginning to think I was posting in Sanskrit or something.

edit: also, you guys seem to be hitting for a lot less than what my Doom snipe hits for. I get 2k worth just out of the LB critting right after the Dark Path and Doom. Total damage for my combo is closer to 7k than 3.5k.

3.5k DPS, not total. Even so, you are blowing how much on your burst to just edge out over an auto-attack chain?

I was only discussing Terror damage nerf there, not a full combo burst. If you include all the steps (not instant, only Doom is) to produce this “burst”, on one player (because this burst is not AoE) and compare it to others real burst like thief, ele, warrior mace/gs, etc etc, it will be subpar and all that “high” damage can be negated by a stunbreaker or some condition removal (be it from you or a teammate).

All the burst of the others class is not negated by a stunbreaker or stability. You won’t get the CC, but you will still take the full damage.

Thus, in my humble opinion, Terror is not the culprit here and another nerf to it will not remove the feeling of OPness we seem to radiate.

30/20/0/0/20 seems more to be the culprit of this uprising, because of a combination of Dhuumfire, Torment and adding Terror on top of it. However, even there, I wouldn’t call it skillless play, you must still decide to use your fears offensively instead of defensively, and at least wait for a stunbreak or 2 before trying to go for the kill it against good player.

Now if those players are out of stunbreakers or dont have one, what player with full burst combo ready wouldn’t put a dent in them?

Videos and examples of OPness against players of equivalent skills would be the best proof, not our feeling about it or the fact that we can stomp new/ less knowledgable players in a spectral wall corner trap.

Every time you killed someone with Terror burst, or that you died to a Terror combo, is there really nothing they/you could have done to prevent that damage all together?

Are we still just talking about a 1v1 matchup, or dueling, or exceptionnaly good or bad personal experience? Fact is what need here, and it feels like peoples are riding the OP wave based on myths/legend of that dreaded epidemic once in a blue full moon