Guild Wars 2

This is a lot less interesting than I expected.

I thought we’d get a really nice place with a beautiful view over the landscape and nice decorations etc. This look cramped, ugly, and simply annoying to be in. Not at all the luxurious area I expected.. I really hope they change it and improve it a lot

I actually agree.
As a power build it wouldn’t really affect the dagger’s viability, but it opens up the option to use it as a condi weapon.
A autoattack chain something like:

3s torment
3s torment
x2 4s torment

would be nice, it is a melee weapon so it should not be too weak.

I see a lot of good suggestions in here, I agree e.g. with that Demonic Lore ICD should be removed.
Another thing I think should happen is to remove the cast time on the teleport, it’s way too long to be useful.

The ICD of Demonic Lore really is unnecessary (at least in PvE), the Necro (and the Scourge) can’t even stack that much Torment that the +33% damage of Torment is very effective.

I’d be surprised if we could maintain even 15 permanent stacks of Torment on a boss, but let’s say we are able to do that.

Using the damage formula for Torment from the wiki, with a condi damage stat of 1600:

- Stationary target, 15 stacks of Torment
Normal: 1770 damage
With Demonic Lore: 2354 damage

- Moving target, 15 stacks of Torment
Normal: 2637 damage
With Demonic Lore: 3507 damage

This is a really low damage increase, and will net you a lot lower damage for giving up the Reaper traits, RS, and GS.

If Demonic Lore had its ICD removed (at least in PvE), then maybe the Scourge could push some higher numbers and won’t be having the Barrier-bot build be the only option, but also have a viable condi DPS build as an alternative.

Can anyone see the reason for putting an ICD on the trait? IMO it isn’t even Grandmaster worthy with it..

Brujeria.7536:

(…)
Scourge adds 8,15 perma torment and 1,87 perma burn

Revenant adds 9 perma torment and 5,33 perma burn with 2 skills.

Wow, that is really quite disappionting, I guess Scourge condi DPS will be a lot lower than I hoped then.

xikira.3264:

There are plenty of reasons on not doing raids one the person may have a busy life with work, family or college. This will cut into their time to be able to find a raid to take part in. On top of this due to the meta for raids if the class you normally play is taken then you have to play another class meta thst is not taken. That means to open up your chance to take part in the raids you need multiple armor sets as well as classes that you are skilled at. If you have a pretty busy life outside of guild wars this is hard to do.
Another reason is anxiety some people may be comfortable with doing things with a select few people but may get overwhelmed and not be able to do the raids due to new people new requirements as well as social communication.
Social communication leads to another thing alot of people require some form of vocal communication while doing raids. In alot of groups of you cant be in chat you cant be in the group. There is a huge group of mute and deaf people playing guild wars so for them to be able to find a raiding group to work with them is hard.
Let’s add the fact about how it’s hard to find a decent raid group that raids constantly. To top it off usually they want you to be apart of that guild. Plenty of people have full guilds forcing them to look to lfg for a group. Alot of the groups you find are pretty toxic making it none enjoyable.
On top of all of theese reasons you play guild wars to do things you enjoy you shouldn’t be forced to do something you hate giving up what little time you may have to enjoy yourself. For a set of armor they can easily put in all game modes.

I fail to see how all of this is anyone else’s problem? Either solve your issues so you can do what you want, or don’t and instead do something else, it’s that simple.

The crying is hilarious, just go do the raids there’s literally nothing stopping you except your own choice not to do them.

I for one am glad that raids got something nice like Legendary Armor.
I hope it looks better in game than in the pictures though. Except the heavy one they look kinda weird, I expected something more “epic”, buy I’ll reserve judgement until I see them in-game.

It would be really cool if by completing the tribulation mode collections for world 1 (The King Toad) and world 2 (The Storm Wizard), you would get an infinite SAB tonic for respective world.

Complete The King Toad collection and receive an infinite SAB world 1 tonic, which will transform you into any random enemy in SAB world 1 (including King Toad).

Complete The Storm Wizard collection and receive an infinite SAB world 2 tonic, which will transform you into any random enemy in SAB world 2 (including Storm Wizard).

When completing all bosses in Bastion of the Penitent on normal and challenge mode, you receive the item Portable Magnetite Shard Exchange

Considering the difficulty of earning the item, it would be great if it also had a Sell Tab, in addition to the various Buy tabs. It would feel more rewarding with this change, since it’s not really that useful as it is now.

Rednik.3809:

GW2 had zero raids since launch, and despite that was very successful MMO. And no one ever asked dev team for raids, simply because everyone knows that raids = WoW. No game ever can compete with WoW raids. But they made raids and… revenue crushed trough floor. So much for “endgame desired by paying customers”, eh?
And even raids was made horribly, utilizing long-dead model from vanilla WoW. No successful MMO on market is using it anymore, but hey, Anet decided that they know better. Again. You know the results.

The only true statement in your post is that GW2 did not have raids at launch, the rest is just completely ridiculous.

Rednik.3809:

maddoctor.2738:

Why?

Because I cannot find “World of Warcraft” title when I’m launching this game. Maybe you can?

Do you think wow was the only game with hard content? Hard content in GW1 was a big part of the game. The raid team in GW2 isn’t even that large, yet they do a fantastic job making the best quality content in the game IMO.

Rednik.3809:

By this logic, amount of content and development time must be proportional to amount of players intended to play this content. And if such numbers are disproportional, then corrections must be made, either by changing amount of said content, or by changing size of the target population.

I’d say it’s fairly certain the Raids are played by a higher percent of players than the percent of total developer resources spent on them, therefore they should clearly increase the development resources creating Raids.

Insidion the Insane.9752:

Also…

I would love to see those changes, let’s hope a dev is looking!

Making Combo Finishers prioritize your own Combo Fields first would solve the issue with depending on certain Combo Fields for many classes, including the Necromancer.
It would make it a lot easier to use Combo Fields as you intend, instead of the often random effect you get now when you often don’t know what your Finisher will produce.
The priority would be: “Your own Field”>"Oldest existing Field (like now)"
What do you think of that?

Yeah it’s really sad, they should probably just buff Spiteful Talisman from +5% to +15% and make the increased condition duration from Lingering Curse apply to all skills while wielding a Scepter. Let’s see where that puts us in the DPS-rankings.

Phantasms are often described as “a physical manifestation of a Hex”, so basically a DoT attack that has a physical form instead of a UI form/icon.

Regular DoTs are affected by the player’s Boons and buffs, but Phantasms need the Boons and buffs applied to themselves.

Why is it still not that Phantasms automatically share any and all Boons and buffs that the Mesmer himself/herself receives? Right now it is like “you apply Bleeds and they are affected by e.g. Might, but Torment needs its own Might stacks instead to be more effective”, which makes no sense?

Phantasms sharing Boons and buffs with the Mesmer should be incorporated as a baseline, or am I missing something?

@NovaanVerdiano It’s probably this video they refer to, getting 30.6 k DPS on average (with new engi buff) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4xGFf92ZzS0

Muchacho.2390:

Shared blood is too strong to not be a grandmaster trait. Even then is is probably to strong.

You’re right, it is a strong support trait, which Necros are currently lacking in.
Also, it is also only as strong as our self healing is, which currently is not very great. It would also be our only real way of healing someone else than ourselves, apart from Transfusion.

Muchacho.2390:

Also i am not sure if you understand this but Life siphon heals alot for a non healing skill.

Why would you call it anything else than a healing skill? You don’t use it for damage, the only purpose you would use it for is its healing.

Lahmia.2193:

Aesa.4819:

New Major Master trait taking Vampiric Presence’s place: Shared Blood
All self healing (healing and life leech) you do are shared to 5 friendly players in 600 range around you.

So new meta: 5 man sustain necros?

I assume you mean in sPvP? I guess that would present the same characteristics as e.g. 5 healer druids or 5 healer tempests, apart from that Necros lack the same mobility and damage avoidance.

The idea I had came from that Necros are pretty lacking in healing overall and healing others especially.
My suggestions make it possible to have a up-and-close melee healer that helps the party by life leeching from the enemies, and since the scaling is from Healing Power the main purpose of the attacks are to leech life (not do huge DPS) and thereby support other friendly characters in close proximity.
I think this would be a very interesting support role.

The vampiric theme could be handled so much better in game, making for really interesting support builds or playstyles. The main problems that I see are the low effectiveness, and lack of scaling.
Here I present some changes that could improve this theme:

Signet of Vampirism
Passive: Change global ICD to ICD per target, increase Healing Power (HP) scaling a little.
Active: Increase active time from 6 seconds (enough for usually only 3-4 hits/procs for 1 person) to 10 seconds.

Life Siphon
Increase HP scaling

Transfusion
Now also heals self.

Vampiric Presence
Merge with Minor Master trait Vampiric
Increase HP scaling substantially. I mean (33 + 0.005*HP), really?

New Major Master trait taking Vampiric Presence’s place: Shared Blood
All self healing (healing and life leech) you do are shared to 5 friendly players in 600 range around you.

The idea I had came from that Necros are pretty lacking in healing overall and healing others especially.
My suggestions make it possible to have a up-and-close melee healer that helps the party by life leeching from the enemies, and since the scaling is from Healing Power the main purpose of the attacks are to leech life (not do huge DPS) and thereby support other friendly characters in close proximity.
I think this would be a very interesting support role.

Please give me your feedback, and I’m also curios to see what ideas you have that could improve the vampiric theme

This thread is among the most stupid I have seen in a while. Many people are busy during the weekends and instead raid on the evenings during the week, stop being so egoistical and don’t speak for other people.

flow.6043:

@ Life force:
Before anyone who doesn’t play necro gasps in shock at the seemingly long list of buffs, necros are actually long overdue for a life force pool nerf. There’s a bug since mid 2013 that reduces all sources of damage in Shroud by 50%. Or in other words, necro’s life force is acutally double of whatever number is displayed on the lf bar.
A bug that should be fixed, obviously. So if that happened some extra healing wouldn’t really be that outrageous anymore.

Afaik, what is stated in the wiki is intended:
“While in Death Shroud, direct damage is halved, except when the hit depletes all of the life force.”

Silv.9207:

“Gain life force as you take damage. Removed when you enter Death Shroud[sic]. Also applies protection.”

Yes: removed when you enter Death/Reaper Shroud.

You are wrong, the +LF buff is still active in DS/RS and this is as intended. It was changed to be this way a long time ago.

The hard mode was better than I expected, it was a lot of fun! Having raid-quality encounters in the fractal is amazing, and these bosses were actually more fun than some raid encounters, really good job on this fractal hard mode!

I also like that there is an achievement and exclusive weapon skins and title for those who manage to complete the hard mode, it is always fun to show off some prestige of having beaten something hard.

This condi necro nerf in raids was totally uncalled for, the DPS wasn’t out of line with any other.

What are you talking about, no nerfs?

• Lich Form—Jagged Horrors: These minions will no longer lose health over time and will instead die 30 seconds after they’re summoned.

That change by itself is a HUGE blow to Necros in Raids and FotM.

Not to mention the Warlock has a really hard time hitting anything that isn’t a stationary golem on a perfectly flat surface.

It is really wierd that there is such a high gap between the DPS numbers, many other classes have both high DPS and burst and support. I hope they make some improvements soon.

Yes DS definitely needs to be improved a lot, it’s so terrible compared to RS and everything else in the game it’s not even funny.

I agree, having the only thing left for the collection completion rely on a 1 week timegated RNG is really frustrating..

STIHL.2489:

Aesa.4819:

STIHL.2489:

Blaeys.3102:

If this is the planned path for future raids, I, personally, would rather they abandoned them altogether. That said, however, I would prefer that they look to solve this issue instead – and offer raids in a way that doesn’t create those barriers.

The raid team has moved on to other things. Personally, I would rather Anet just go back to focusing on re-building a solid lateral end game then mess with raids any further.

Yes they moved on to making new raids, which is awesome considering the quality of the content and that so many people enjoy it

I love your hopeful optimism, but the AMA made it clear they have moved on to doing something else. They have also made it clear that there is no raid development in the works, and that the only time a new raid might come out is with the next expansion.

So at least you will have that to look forward to buying.

For now, Raids are done.

Time to Move On.

https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/a-raiding-retrospective/
“So keep on theorycrafting. Our next destination may surprise you.”
“As we move forward with raiding…”
“And while this is not the end, we all realize that this was at least the end of the beginning.”
They are hardly done with raids.. Not to say they will release another one next week, but they say they are continuing working on them

ezd.6359:

Negative. Those who earn theirs kills using LFG spend more time and apply more efforts. While those who have static groups have all very easy. And in same time they will be able to craft armor while others will continue to spend hours, days and weeks in randoms lfg groups.

I’m pretty sure most people who have a static group now started out in LFG and then slowly built their group from there by adding people to their friend list, what’s keeping you from doing the very same thing?

STIHL.2489:

Blaeys.3102:

If this is the planned path for future raids, I, personally, would rather they abandoned them altogether. That said, however, I would prefer that they look to solve this issue instead – and offer raids in a way that doesn’t create those barriers.

The raid team has moved on to other things. Personally, I would rather Anet just go back to focusing on re-building a solid lateral end game then mess with raids any further.

Yes they moved on to making new raids, which is awesome considering the quality of the content and that so many people enjoy it

MasterElements.5023:

Put a small cooldown on exit from shroud of 1 second /fixed

No..
Put F1 for enter, and F2 for exit /fixed

This has been happening at least ever since the Raids came. If the casting of Lich Form skill 4 (jagged horrors mark) is interrupted by something (e.g. Gorseval slam), it goes on full cooldown and you can’t cast it at all, since Lich Form runs out. I still don’t see this in the bug tracker.

@Jelzouki
I’m pretty sure this thread has a Raid perspective, not a sPvP perspective.

1. Full damage all ranges.
Faster attack speed (to match RS1) for better trait synergy, lower power scaling a little bit but not too much (it isn’t that strong right now anyway).

2. I don’t mind it as is, but having it a targeted teleport or leap/dash would be nice.

3. Since it’s single target it needs to have a bit more duration.

4. Apply 6 seconds of Bleed on each hit (like Soul Spiral with Poison) making it useful on Conditions build (it also hits 9 times, compared to Soul Spiral’s 12).
Increase Power scaling making it useful on Power builds.
Make it a whirl finisher (sucking vortex).

5. Needs to be a lot stronger, or have the Recharge reduced by a lot. Double everything on this skill and it’s still barely worth casting.

flow.6043:

Patch July 28, 2015

• Corruptions: Self-applied, nondamaging conditions from these skills no longer have their durations increased by condition duration stats.

Tooltips always include condition duration, but the actual self inflicted non-damaging conditions are not extended, with or without MoC.

Yeah this is correct.

I wonder if it’s possible to balance the Corruptions without using self inflicted conditions? They are good when used e.g. in Raid for extra damage, but otherwise they are mostly a hindrance, and either way they require another skill (transfer or cleanse) to “make the skill work”, which by design is pretty iffy.

It seems you can’t give the DPS test golem boons, so I’m not sure if it was updated or not. What I do see however is that the tooltip damage of the Focus #5 skill and the Spinal Shiver trait does not match at all, the trait is lower on all points.
Have anyone been able to test this?

Bhawb.7408:

+Follows stealth(? assuming RF doesn’t, not sure of its mechanics)

I’m pretty sure RF actually does that, as it is a channeled skill.

You also forgot that RF has the ability to pierce to hit more than 1 enemy with Lead the Wind , while the Axe 1 and 2 are always bound to be single target only.

Axe 2 also hits 8 times, while RF hit 10 times, which could be beneficial in situations where number of hits are important (future raid wings?), I’m thinking of e.g. the Legendary Imbued Shaman of the Volcanic fractal where number of hits are the what breaks his shield when moving to a captive.

Bhawb.7408:

2 Torment for roughly 8 seconds is the best solution imo. Torment has the best thematic fit, since Reaper is all about anti-movement, plus it allows for a bit of counterplay and thought behind either running and taking Torment or not moving and taking on Reaper in melee.

I agree with this.
Torment is as close to Weaken Knees we can get, and we should have more of it IMO (I would like to see Death Shroud #5 buffed aswell, in this regard).

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

Increased the cast time, but the projectile moving soooooo much faster I would say makes up for it.

Yes it is a lot better when used in range, however I find myself using it quite often in short ranges too, and it is really noticable in those situations.

Bierzgal.2341:

You can disregard the “All boons” chart since it’s not very realistic. The “Normal boons” tho is pretty good and informative. Keep in mind that it is impossible to properly measure a Condi Necromancer on the Training Dummy. Having only 5 horrors that don’t get healed makes a very big difference. On some boss fights you can have even around 15-20 of them. Not beeing able to bounce conditions with Epidemic is also a loss.

They did mention that 1 “hamster” adds around 0.5-0.8 dps. When you do the math, Condi Necro looks pretty good.

You also can’t account for Condition manipulation, like all the opportunities in Salvation Pass, which can contribute quite a lot of damage if you soak them up and send them back.

Marjory’s Dagger
I will try with another dagger and see if it changes and then get back here with the results.

Edit: Yes it seems it is the skin that changes the graphical effect, I’ll see if I can update the wiki to show that information.

Also regarding the skill itself, it feels a lot more clunky to use now after they increased the cast time>.>

Dagger offhand skill #4, that transfers conditions.

I’m pretty sure it used to look like a dark cloud of flies (or something) that gently zig-zagged while traveling to the target. Now you just throw the dagger you have equipped instead.
To me it really lost a lot of flavor, can we have the effect back, or at least an option to show the lost effect?

Note: It’s the same both with, and without, the Effect LOD box active.

It means you can’t kill invulnerable targets (like Mat with bubble, Jade Maw, etc.) with lifesteal procs.

ronpierce.2760:

Not all of us are being as negative as you think. Most of us are on the “right change, but a bit undertuned” boat. And it is. We’ve offered many subtle changes to make it viable again, but it gets a bit frustrating to deal with people who ignore real math and prefer to substitute it with unrealistic hypotheticals. To say it’s fine or especially some how a “possible buff” is just entirely wrong, even if you can get moments where the bleed stacks deal more damage than a single tick of chill would have, it’s still by FAR a numerical nerf.

This has even been admitted by Devs who said “We realize this is a large power swing, and we’re keeping an eye on the trait.” (Paraphrased).

Very well said, I agree 100%. I hope the Devs listen to feedback and make appropriate changes.

I still really dislike the Whirl Finisher nerf though, it was one of the only useful Finishers we had and was really useful in PvE and Raids. I feel this was only done to avoid causing too many Chill projectiles with RS5 —> RS4, and a not well thought out at all.

The Stability change I can understand, even though I didn’t think it was that overpowered to begin with (especially since Reaper is supposed to be Melee and in the thick of things), but I think just increasing the Recharge would have sufficed, hitting both the Duration and the Recharge is quite harsh. It also already had the restriction of being in-Shroud-only, and now after the nerf it’s half as effective 8/20=0.4 vs 5/25=0.2

Another change I dislike is the Duration nerf of the Ice Field from RS5, now it is much harder to get both RS4 and RS2 off (maybe impossible? I haven’t tested it yet), which reduce synergy overall.

If it did (I’m not sure), it sounds like a bugfix.

Infusion.7149:

Infusing Terror didn’t need upped cooldown IMO

Soul Spiral nerf seems okay unless you relied on stacks from fields very heavily

It hurts a lot in PvE/Raids though, totally unneeded IMO, not like we have many finishers to begin with.

In a Raid setting the changes lowered the Condi Reaper’s DPS slightly, however you can now stack Reapers without overwriting the damage.
With full Raid buffs and 100% Bleeding duration the new Deathly Chill applies roughly 2900 damage over 16 seconds according to my calculations, so unless you manage to apply Chill every 3rd second it is a DPS nerf compared to the old trait.
It is IMO an unwarranted nerf to PvE and Raid players, but I agree with the idea of the stacking/overwriting problem.
I think it would be better if the trait applied e.g. 2 stacks of 8 s torment instead.

Edit: I also think the Whirl finisher nerf on RS4 was totally unneeded, we barely have any finishers at all, why nerf the only useful one we have?

Dreaming serpent.5197:

Bhawb.7408:

To clarify, it would take at least 4-5 bleeds to make up for the loss of the chill damage. Meaning unless you can apply 4-5 chills every 8-16s (depending on bleed duration), you are losing out on damage. Burning has 2.5x better condition damage scaling, and 6x higher base damage, so for a given condition damage you need roughly 3-4 bleeds to match burn damage.

Dear Bawb, I’d like to present Rune of the reaper and shouts. This is turning out to be a buff

While it could work in sPvP, it will not work in Raids.