Guild Wars 2

High hp pool and DS make up for the lack of invulnerability!

They do, they really do! I keep believing this! I want to believe!

HP+DS is enough, it is, it is, it is!

It is, right?

I’m pretty sure leman is being sarcastic here.

1) Mesmers are far from overpowered, they are just annoying.
2) The only thing we are lacking in this area is a reliable stomp/res.

DS is an effective invulnerability, the problem is that we can still be CC’ed in DS, and shroud stomp/res is a glitch. It would be nice to have some better form of stability than needing 30 into SR.

That said, it really isn’t a huge issue, any decent PvP team will have other people to do that job instead, while the necromancer deals with people who are still alive (in team fights) and in 1v1s you actually get much more benefit leaving them downed for longer and using auto attacks/abilities to fully charge your LF. Same with reviving teammates, any decent team should have someone else there to fill that role (and you can still very often get away with it anyway).

Acarius.3052:

I’m pretty sure leman is being sarcastic here.

You got me

I wrote it somewhere else already, but let me write it once more -

Necros are Anet’s dump profession – no one in the studio mains necro, no one cares about it. This is why there are no cool skills, awesome mechanics and great gameplay for necros. If they feel generous, they just tweak numbers of kittenty skills and expect the problem to be solved.

I know what some people will say in a while – Leman’s writing nonsense, he has no evidence, etc. You’re right – I don’t, but I don’t need any evidence to see how poorly designed necro is in comparison with some ‘cool’ professions and frankly I don’t care anymore. I fought for changes since the game hit live and there wasn’t a single thing improved. Only bug fixes and some number changes.

Devs won’t even answer questions about undocumented changes. How am I supposed to respect that behaviour on their part?

In the meantime, Jon Peters randomly jumps on mesmer forums to give comfort about skill’s misleading name/tooltip. Nice joke.

/realism

There are a number of ANet employees that post on other forums, but to my knowledge none of them are doing so as “official” representatives; they are just doing it because they happen to enjoy that class or feel they can contribute to the conversation. Frankly, if I were a dev I’d never post here, the amount of outright hostility they would get is enough, not to mention the unceasing questions/criticisms.

leman.7682:

Acarius.3052:

I’m pretty sure leman is being sarcastic here.

You got me

I wrote it somewhere else already, but let me write it once more -

Necros are Anet’s dump profession – no one in the studio mains necro, no one cares about it. This is why there are no cool skills, awesome mechanics and great gameplay for necros. If they feel generous, they just tweak numbers of kittenty skills and expect the problem to be solved.

I know what some people will say in a while – Leman’s writing nonsense, he has no evidence, etc. You’re right – I don’t, but I don’t need any evidence to see how poorly designed necro is in comparison with some ‘cool’ professions and frankly I don’t care anymore. I fought for changes since the game hit live and there wasn’t a single thing improved. Only bug fixes and some number changes.

Devs won’t even answer questions about undocumented changes. How am I supposed to respect that behaviour on their part?

In the meantime, Jon Peters randomly jumps on mesmer forums to give comfort about skill’s misleading name/tooltip. Nice joke.

/realism

“poor design” doesn’t make this class bad I would hardly consider it a dump class. A good necro is the deciding factor in tpvp team fights. I wouldn’t even consider this class to have an overall poor design we just need a few tweaks, nothing too major.

They expect hostility, because they know they messed up in many different places.

Just look over sPvP forums to see how a badly designed and implemented PvP makes combined with terrible balance makes people react. All this half a year after the game shipped.

I have every right to criticise as long as it is constructive. I did it multiple times, but there is no answer, no reaction.

No wonder, they’re not responding.

Khalifahaze.6045:

“poor design” doesn’t make this class bad I would hardly consider it a dump class. A good necro is the deciding factor in tpvp team fights. I wouldn’t even consider this class to have an overall poor design we just need a few tweaks, nothing too major.

I obviously don’t mean necros are bad. I main a necro and played it a lot. Not only, as most people, in PvE.
The poor design is a comparative description. I believe DS is one of the best profession mechanics design-wise, but the skills there are boring as hell. The staff – the new level of boring. All weapons based on auto + some ground target/channel – boring!

Deep and interesting combo possibilities – sometimes, mostly not.
Play dynamic? Hell no.

I could go on and on. Don’t tell me these are small things.

And as a fun fact I use to make fun of necro – it was the only profession NOT played by a single Anet dev during long hours of beta event streams.

I believe in actions, they cannot lie.

We have a lot of abilities that increase our survivability. If anything I could see them make spectral armor more useful like a longer protection duration, add stability, or something else.

Gasp, a whole half year! Because we all know that every MMO was perfect at launch, right? They readily admit certain mistakes, along with the reasoning behind it.

Other times, such as in the case of most professions, people just complain because they got completely crapped on in some aspect of the game, and [sarcasm]obviously the player could never be at fault, it must be ANets fault for making a terrible game. I mean, who makes a game that requires skill, or thought? Certainly we don’t want a game with any shred of diversity or difficulty.[/sarcasm]

Nice try at that if you’re trying to say I suck, I cannot prove I don’t but let me just say, that I completed most of PvE when it still meant something and I pvp’d thousands of tournaments.

I learned to play the game back in BWE3 and further when necro was a total kitten. And the argument about the game not being even a year old is, quite comically, getting old.

You’re missing my point trying to blindly defend necro when it has obvious problems and gets no interest from Anet at all.

You may be patient enough to have no problem with that, but my patience is no more with all my friends long gone for other games. Same goes for sPvP, but I believe you don’t play it, Bhawb.

leman.7682:

They expect hostility, because they know they messed up in many different places.

Just look over sPvP forums to see how a badly designed and implemented PvP makes combined with terrible balance makes people react. All this half a year after the game shipped.

I have every right to criticise as long as it is constructive. I did it multiple times, but there is no answer, no reaction.

No wonder, they’re not responding.

Khalifahaze.6045:

“poor design” doesn’t make this class bad I would hardly consider it a dump class. A good necro is the deciding factor in tpvp team fights. I wouldn’t even consider this class to have an overall poor design we just need a few tweaks, nothing too major.

I obviously don’t mean necros are bad. I main a necro and played it a lot. Not only, as most people, in PvE.
The poor design is a comparative description. I believe DS is one of the best profession mechanics design-wise, but the skills there are boring as hell. The staff – the new level of boring. All weapons based on auto + some ground target/channel – boring!

Deep and interesting combo possibilities – sometimes, mostly not.
Play dynamic? Hell no.

I could go on and on. Don’t tell me these are small things.

And as a fun fact I use to make fun of necro – it was the only profession NOT played by a single Anet dev during long hours of beta event streams.

I believe in actions, they cannot lie.

I agree that most of our skills etc can be somewhat boring at times. I feel the issue is the devs don’t really know what to do with this class, and it does seem like they hardly care about the class.

I feel some of this may come from the fine line that the necro walks. I believe we are in a spot that is somewhere between mediocre and overpowered. A few changes and the necro can easily become OP. I play with the host of SOTG all the time and I have given him specific questions regarding the necro. Hopefully they will give us some worthwhile answers.

It wasn’t meant to insinuate that you aren’t good. However, the idea that necromancers are in need of more than just a bit of number changes here and there, and bug fixes, is laughable. We are well balanced, with a number of viable build paths, and quite a few specific builds within that are all completely viable. We just happen to require a bit more thought than “well I’m going offensive, so slap 30 points into spite, throw some others in curses, and the rest in blood/death and boom, build done”.

As for the age of the game, it matters a lot. No game is going to be completely balanced on release, its impossible for them to anticipate what hundreds of thousands of people playing for hours a day are going to discover, even if they beta tested for 3 years. The core mechanics of the game, the part that really matters, is solid. At this point they are just trying to adjust the things that are much more minor in detail (like numbers on skills, and fixing bugs).

You’re missing the point and trying to blindly complain about necromancers when it has minor issues.

As for PvP, I play it almost exclusively. I only go into PvE for fun, to level characters, and to get gold/gear for WvW. If I did PvE exclusively, I’d probably have a much worse opinion of necros, we are much better in PvP than we are in PvE, imo.

@Khalifa: I agree. It is something I raised few months ago about general necro feel. The class mechanic didn’t allow devs to get more creative with the skills and created lots of balance issues.

Devs changed many skills prior to launch. I’m pretty sure axe had a gap closer (visible on the locust swarm promo video), Doom was a fear skill with an animation from downstate fear. You were able to summon 3 bone minions, Grasping Dead was a different skill. Fear was necro-exclusive. Even the DS was different (I think it started as a unique pre-downed state phase).

All professions have these things in promo videos, but still there’s this feeling of devs scratching their heads thinking how to fix necro and having really hard time.

Yep, the problem was the necromancers were stupidly OP during closed beta, and still even into open beta we had a few balance issues (I mostly noticed on minions). They had to nerf/change them, and didn’t have as much time as they would have liked to make all the changes and test them.

The only real issue I have with necro right now are all these pointless limitations on deathshroud, punishing you for using your class mechanic.

We cannot gain health while in deathshroud from any source, regeneration is wasted while in DS, heals from allies. life siphon traits, all wasted while using our class mechanic. If they think it would be so shockingly overpowered that could reduce healing effectiveness in DS or something.

We lose our spectral buffs while in deathshroud. While I understand why we shouldn’t get to use the buff while in DS, it makes no sense for us to lose it outright, it should simply not work while we’re in deathshroud, as I find the idea of wasting a good part of a 90s CD skill by pressing f1 rather displeasing.

We cannot see buffs and conditions while in Deathshroud. They’ve promised to fix this at some point, but this is pretty basic UI functionality that should have been in since release. On top of that, we cannot see condition ticks on us while in DS for whatever reason, further reducing the information we can see.

We cannot see how much life force we have as a number. People have made fairly good estimates, but I cannot understand why we shouldn’t be able to see precisely how much damage we can take with our life force, it just pointlessly reduces the information we have access to.

We cannot normally stomp/res while in deathshroud. While we can, and do shroudstomp, it’s always been a gray area, and it would be much better if we could do it without doubt, and it adds some pretty basic functionality to deathshroud.

We can no longer change weapons in deathshroud. No one knows for certain if this was intended or not because anet doesn’t have accurate patchnotes, and don’t post here much for various reasons. Either way, it reduces our combat effectiveness and simplifies deathshroud for no real reason. This change is particularly notable in PvP.

All these things are stuff we can do normally, but cannot do while using our class mechanic, in my opinion the class mechanic should enhance our gameplay, not restrict it.

@up: Exactly! Another part where they pretty much, and I have a problem finding a proper word, failed with the design. They shouldn’t add skills/mechanics that just negate your other effects.

Spectral skills should synergise with DS just as minions should synergise with transforms. Do Guardians lose spirit weapons when they use their Tomes? I think they don’t.

If there’s a balance problem (I guess minion life siphoning could be one of the issues) – rework the skills or traits that cause problems!

This is basic stuff…

Just a small note: Thieves don’t have any acces to invulnerable except in PvE when fighting pirates. Because -hiccup- Yarrrr

Bhawb.7408:

As for PvP, I play it almost exclusively. I only go into PvE for fun, to level characters, and to get gold/gear for WvW. If I did PvE exclusively, I’d probably have a much worse opinion of necros, we are much better in PvP than we are in PvE, imo.

Ha! That’s kind of funny, I always assumed all the complaints about necros were from the PvP side of things since I exclusively play PvE and have had nothing but success with my necro. In fact when switching to other professions I usually get knocked on my butt a bit before I wake up and remember that I can’t just roll over everything like I can on my necro. Really I think we’re one of the better off professions, people just like to complain about everything.

Yeah, we’re okay, that doesn’t stop us from having a dozen unexplained bugs/limitations on just about everything. That just puts us at ‘mediocre’ assuming we aren’t dueling.

P.S: How to shroudstomp?

Once one truly masters Deathshroud, one will be unstoppable.

All other classes can keep there perma-stealth, impossible mobility and cleanses, high health regen, long invulnerability and blocks and straight up take no damage…

we have the the promise of a Dev that a mastered deathshroud is unstoppable…

I’m okay with my plague form stomping tbh. You can spam blind WHILE channeling the stomp… pretty much “invunerable” if you think about it… Yes you can still take range dps, but you’ll have about 3-5k toughness and 30k + health(assuming you plagued while over half health). Knowing anet it will probably be nerfed someday soon, but I shall enjoy the trollstomping while it lasts

Ascii.9726:

Once one truly masters Deathshroud, one will be unstoppable.

All other classes can keep there perma-stealth, impossible mobility and cleanses, high health regen, long invulnerability and blocks and straight up take no damage…

we have the the promise of a Dev that a mastered deathshroud is unstoppable…

I see what you did there

They just need to normalize the way stomping works. Right now it seems to be a game of favorites on who gets the freebie stomps and who doesn’t.

If mist form stomp is okay, then stomping from DS should be okay as well. DS is instant cast after all, there is no reason it should interrupt the stomp.

Or better yet, take away all safe stomping except for pre-cast invulnerabilities (which would likely run out before the end of the stomp) and stability. We wouldn’t really be in a better place, but all that garbage safe stomping from other classes like tiny/mist stomping would at least stop. Invisible stomping should also reaveal you when you start channeling the stomp.

Again it really is just an issue of the fact the mechanics are not consistant across the board. I am okay with any set of rules as long as they are enforced evenly.

Furienify.5738:

Yeah, we’re okay, that doesn’t stop us from having a dozen unexplained bugs/limitations on just about everything. That just puts us at ‘mediocre’ assuming we aren’t dueling.

P.S: How to shroudstomp?

Same as you (formerly) could animation lock, shroud then stomp immediately after, virtually at the same instant.

I think if they fix the death shroud UI, fix some minion issues (sinking golem – wtf?), we will be in a decent place.