Guild Wars 2

Mel.3064:

Can you tone down the condi spam in pvp? Even if you completly build your build around countering condis there is just too much of it. Some skills even apply multiple different conditions in one go, which is just silly.
Basically when entering a team fight you have every existing condition on you within a second and even if you manage to cleanse them once, it only takes a fraction of a moment to have it all on you again. Condis should just add some tactical spice to combat and not behave the current way by completly shutting down any build without resistance and 100 condi cleanses.

The spam of skills feels to me quite even across power and condi. It just feels like there’s too much of everything. I generally prefer the way pvp worked before HoT where at least I felt it was more tactical.

That said I wouldn’t be against some reworking of conditions even though I don’t think Anet will do it. I don’t think there is a big difference between power and condi and their effectiveness differ depending on which level of pvp you are in. It has always worked well for me in lower levels but become worse when I’ve got higher were people work better together time cleanses better.
While there is tuning to be had on skills I do believe the system we currently have is pretty balanced. I would say the real problem is that the system isn’t clear enough. It’s pretty obvious how you can counter powerbuilds but it’s not as clear how to fight condibuilds. There are ways to make sure you cleanse what you want but it’s not fully in your control which can make it feel bad to play against. The game is horrible at teaching you how it really works.
I don’t think conditions are unbalanced or too much but there is room for improvement.

Edit: made comment make more sense

sephiroth.4217:

DTATL.9641:

CitizenKing.4912:

The problem is that DoTs in games like this are meant to be a ticking clock, not a sledge-hammer. “Condi burst” shouldn’t be a thing, ever.

The entire logic behind DoT’s is that they take a while to kill the opponent, but unless the opponent has a way of cleansing or ignoring that DoT damage, it is guaranteed damage. There’s no dodging it, no kiting it, if the spell hits, that’s damage that will seem insignificant at first, but devastating later on.

Power should be a blitzkrieg, Condis should be attrition, but with the current implementation they’re both blitzkriegs and that gives Condis a significant advantage.

As is, its a badly implemented mechanic defended only by the people who stand to gain something from its current implementation.

If you don’t like it that’s fine but don’t state your opinion as fact because it just takes all credibility out of your argument. Just because other games made DoTs work in one way doesn’t mean every game ever has to work the same way. That would be amazingly boring.

That’s how it used to work in this game too if you played longer than a year or 2…. It’s also the acronym of “DoT” – damage over time.

Don’t state your opinions as fact yadda yadda credibility yadda yadda

But condies are “damage over time”, it just happens to be a shorter period of time compared to how other games does it. Just because you think it’s too short doesn’t change that it’s still a DoT because there’s still an element of time in how conditions deal damage. And yes I know they used work differently in this game. How is this relevant to my comment? Just because something is different doesn’t mean it’s not working as intended which of course if the way Anet intended it as it’s their game.

CitizenKing.4912:

The problem is that DoTs in games like this are meant to be a ticking clock, not a sledge-hammer. “Condi burst” shouldn’t be a thing, ever.

The entire logic behind DoT’s is that they take a while to kill the opponent, but unless the opponent has a way of cleansing or ignoring that DoT damage, it is guaranteed damage. There’s no dodging it, no kiting it, if the spell hits, that’s damage that will seem insignificant at first, but devastating later on.

Power should be a blitzkrieg, Condis should be attrition, but with the current implementation they’re both blitzkriegs and that gives Condis a significant advantage.

As is, its a badly implemented mechanic defended only by the people who stand to gain something from its current implementation.

If you don’t like it that’s fine but don’t state your opinion as fact because it just takes all credibility out of your argument. Just because other games made DoTs work in one way doesn’t mean every game ever has to work the same way. That would be amazingly boring.

There is nothing wrong with the concept of shroud as a defence. The problem lies in that it’s based on static numbers. This means it will always either be too strong or too weak.
In a specific scenario it will always be too strong or too weak while blocks/evades/invulns will always negate all damage that gets thrown at them which makes them, which makes them work well in all scenarios without being too strong or too weak(with a few exceptions that is scenario dependant).

Because this game varies so greatly with incoming damage between wvw,pvp, pve and even between different areas of those gametypes you can’t make static numbers work when we also have defences that ignore numbers completely unless you specifically balance the game around static number defences which Anet clearly hasn’t.

Shroud works really well in areas like fractals because you can reduce the amount of damage you take very easily by proper positioning and by dodging the main attacks that hurts. Because if you know what you are doing in fractals you can easily make sure you have get more lifeforce than you use even on lifeforce starved condi builds just because the incoming damage in that case is low. And for most pve you also have the benefit that you can reliably get lifeforce back through killing things. In most of pve Shroud is very strong because the most dangerous attacks have huge tells and are either infrequent enough to use are dodges for or easily avoidable while the rest of the incoming damage is low relative to lifeforce generation.

Now in pvp we can’t rely on people dying to keep our lifeforce up in fights so that aspect is worth mentioning in most scenarios. In pvp it’s were most evidence of the problem of static numbers are shown. In season 1 and 2 were it was a bunker meta the overall incoming damage was very low. This made shroud really good because lower incoming numbers made shroud strong to maintain due the lifeforce generation/incoming damage ratio was in our favour. The difference in efficiency between lifeforce and blocks/evades/invulns were much more even at that point were lifeforce would be better in 1v1 scenarios and blocks/evades/invulns would be better against multiple foes.

In the current meta were it’s a lot of burst and high packages of damage the ratio of lifeforce generation/incoming damage is heavily skewed against us. I know that we should never be able to gain more lifeforce than the damage we take as that could potentially make us invincible but the ratio should not be allowed to be this skewed without giving us something to make up for it which we haven’t got. This just makes blocks/evades/invulns way stronger than lifeforce as a defence because the incoming damage is as high as it is.

Anet is not really wrong in calling is really tanky because in pve were most incoming damage is pretty low we are kinda invincible. But that is only in that specific scenario. In the current pvp meta shroud makes us almost freekills because it can’t deal with the frequent and high packages of incoming damage. If they want to make the current implementation of shroud to be equal to blocks/evades/invulns they have to rebalance the whole game around it. And in that case it would just be better if they changed how shroud works and make it properly scalable.

All of this is why I have very little faith in barrier as a defensive tool because it has the same problem of balance as shroud has. I might have missed or got something wrong but it’s late and I’m tired.

Savvy.3258:

Those “applies condi on crit” traits are secondary, really. They’re quite lackluster, if you can isolate them (say equip a power weapon on a condi build and see how much dmg those “applies condi on crit” traits actually do) you’ll notice this.

Conditions are cheap, period. I don’t play conditions because it feels godkitten cheap. It’s a question of covering conditions or waiting for cleanses and gg, there’s no skill involved. Granted, this doesn’t apply to all professions as some are quite slow to apply conditions, which is how it ought to work really. It’s gradual, slow, then painful; as opposed to power which is just burst. But more and more, and especially in the demo weekend, I saw instant applications of 6+ conditions, which is impossible to work around. Even if you spam your condi cleanses, you’ll be down to 50% health and left with nothing to counteract future applications after than initial “burst”. That is absurd. Conditions are already absurd as a mechanic (“I win” vs “Cancel I win” buttons), but 6+ conditions being instantly applied… no true game of skill would allow this to become a thing.

My suggestion would be to split conditions into damaging and non-damaging to prevent condition application without the counterplay possibility. They could be named conditions and afflictions and cleanses reworked so that “removes 1 condition” becomes “removes 1 condition and 1 affliction”. That alone would make conditions manageable given the current amount of cleanses and it can still be a valuable addition to any team without it being a question of: “oh, did you run out of Cancel I wins? I win now!” Struts his skill

If this is targeted to me I’m sorry but didn’t say they they weren’t lacklustre and they are pretty minor but the argument was that more classes should be like that to incentivize the use of precision in condi builds, where I responded that it already is if you want to minmax condi output but also said that it wasn’t mandatory.

Your argument for why conditions are cheap is a very weak one. If that is your opinion sure but your argument is flawed. I’m not gonna discuss the new elite spec because they were all out of wack in some way or another. Every skill has to hit to apply conditions and they can be blocked/evaded/blinded/ignored in the same way as any other skill. There are plenty of counterplay to conditions. If you get hit by a skill condi or power you deserve to take the consequences of that. Neither power or condi dmg appear out of nowhere.
Resistance is also a 100% counter to some classes if they want to run condi as they have no reliable way to deal with it.
The only way I can agree with that feels a bit_ cheap is that some skills lack tells or has very short cast for it’s effect but is also true for power. Also very few skills can apply that many condies at by themselves, it’s usually a few skills used in quickly in succession. There are ways to cleanse what you want already and it’s not random but it’s not something you have full control over. Powerbuilds also use conditions though they generally only use the non damaging ones.

I do however agree with you on splitting damaging conditions and non-damaging ones and rework cleanses for that system. That would make the system more clear and could potentially make buildmaking more interesting as you could choose between cleanse more damaging ones or non damaging ones depending on what skills you take.

Granted, this doesn’t apply to all professions as some are quite slow to apply conditions, which is how it ought to work really. It’s gradual, slow, then painful; as opposed to power which is just burst

Just because you think it should work this way doesn’t mean it has to work that way. Anet seems to have decided that they want conditions to compete with power as another form of damage and that’s what we get.

shion.2084:

I think they did a moderately better job with the Engi and Condis. Ideally for engi you need high precision for condi. This is because the trait line that synergizes to make Condi’s effective relies on a critical hit mechanic. It’s not mandatory, but its sorta there. They could try doing this for the other classes, make Condi’s get more effective with crits and tone down the non-crit application of them.

Ranger works the same through an adept trait(Sharpened Edges) in skirmishing and necro with a minor trait(Barbed Precision) through curses. Rev has a minor trait(Rampant Vex) in corruption which works the same way but for torment and ele has an adapt in fire(Burning Precision) that is for burns. Warrior has a minor in arms(Bloodlust) with bleed on crits and mesmer has a minor in dueling(Sharper Images) that is crit from illusions does bleeds. Guardian kinda does through a major trait in Radiance(Radiant Fire) though that one has 10sec cd.
For all of these classes crits and condies are merged into(though not exclusive to) the same traitline. The only class that doesn’t work like this is thief.

Precision is already factor to increase condi dmg though it does not impact conditions as much as it impacts power dmg. To get most dmg out of most condi builds precision is needed but it’s not mandatory in the same way precision is for power. I would like to see a way for condies to actually crit like power instead of using it to apply more through traits as this would make it more interesting to have high precision, like let the numbers be lower per stack but crits when condies are applied doubles the stacks could be one way. But that would require a lot number and skill tweaking which I don’t think Anet is willing to do.

Sifu.9745:

That’s why i play condi on almost all my professions: because as you mentioned condi builds don’t require 3 dps stats. I just take condi as main stat, power or precision and toughness or vitality as secondary stats.
Condi builds have better survivability and easier playstyle. I play condi Necro, condi Thief, condi Mesmer and condi Guardian (ok, sometimes i switch to Power guard), now i have also be thinking to drop my power Warrior for condition one. My only non condi class is Elementalist but he is a healer/support Staff spec so that’s another option.
Now tell me, why would i play a power Mesmer and Power Thief, if condi is so much stronger on both? I would really like to play Power builds but they need a huge buff.
I would say that condi is the best for almost every profession, support/healing is second the best and Power is on the bottom in my hands.
My question is: why would i spent months to make power builds any good if i can learn condi in a few days and be super effective?

I don’t have time to learn Power builds (you need to invest too much time to make them work with a few exceptions), i play this game for relaxation and only condi and support builds allow me that, sorry to say that but it is truth. So left conditions as they are for us, casuals, and keep power for hardcore players, is that ok?

What players find easier to play is highly subjective as certain playstyles compliments a player’s skillset. Without anything to prove your point that is a pointless argument.

Dawdler.8521:

No matter how many times people say that, condi is never going to be ok for certain specs.

That’s the keywords. Can we do everything you say against condi? Sure. Burst them with power. Equip more condi cleanse. Outwit them. That works against many condi specs but not certain specs.

I know what you mean but Anet has deliberately designed classes to be weak against certain things( even though some classes are better at dealing with those weaknesses than others). Rev being weak to condis is one example I remember a dev mentioning on the forums around HoT launch(sadly I don’t have the source to back that one up so take it how you want). This game has always been a bit of rock/paper/scissors. Learning how to deal with counters is a skill in pvp. You may or may not agree with that but that’s how it is.

Dawdler.8521:

But condi stacking is all condi all day on certain specs. They overload your cleanses to the point it become impossible to cleanse no matter what you do and you counter-spec. You can be a class that cleanses a condi on every skill use, every dodge and have multiple 2-3 condi cleanses… you still wont keep up with the condi application of certain specs. Generally speaking this is why for example condi engie or condi guard arent considered that strong against eqvivalent power builds. They got great burst with a ton of damage yes, but in practice we’re talking 1-3 conditions that’s within cleansing capacity. Not 6+ that certain specs vomit out like there’s no tomorrow.

That’s a balance issue, not a L2P issue.

Look at the bright side – at least sPvP got kittening deathly chill nerfed, unlike WvW.

If you could cleanse every condi you get conditions would be useless and no one would use any condi build. Imagine if people were complaining that you can’t outheal/protect against power builds. If someone did that they would think that they are stupid because if that was true no one would ever die to power.

Conditions might not be 100% balanced but many points these threads bring up is random statistics without context and statements they can’t properly back up with better arguments than “I don’t like this”. Power builds are not 100% balanced either. The point you make about certain builds is true but the same things can be said for powerbuilds and they can be equally cancer. By knowing when to cleanse you can make a massive difference in how hard it is to kill you with condies but they should always be able to kill you in the end if you can’t kill the one/-s attacking you first.

What you are forgetting is access to stability and counterplay. Everything we have that is moderately impactful either has a big tell, long cast time or both. Without any meaningful access to stability this makes us very easy to counter especially since we’re slow. While other classes certainly also has big tells and long cast times it’s not as much as necro and they also have better ways to work around it.

Jski.6180:

It is and its crazy that you do not see it. The old chilling death was too powerful most ppl saw it so it became bleeds now the bleeds stacking to 3 makes it just as powerful as the old chilling death in many ways stronger because it lets you do more then just 1 stack of condi dmg its 3 stacks per chill effect.

The old Deathly chill was changed to bleeds because the trait didn’t stack with multiple reapers because chill don’t stack meaning only the one reaper whose chill was currently active was getting anything out of the trait. They changed it so reapers don’t have to compete with eachother to get something out of the trait. If they only wanted to nerf it they would just reduce numbers like they did before the change.
The reason it’s bleeds specifically is because Anet thought it was the most fitting condition as the other conditions did more than just damage and burn was to powerful.

Lahmia.2193:

Reaper lacks any damage increases. The only trait that currently does not benefit condi but does benefit power is Reaper’s Onslaught which, as far as I’m aware, is still a dps loss on power builds over Deathly Chill. Both power and condi builds take the same traits to max out damage.
Reaper was most certainly designed to compliment both power and condition builds.
Maybe you’re mistaking Reaper for Scrapper. Now there’s an elite spec that was designed with power (and pvp) in mind.

But that ain’t true by your logic. Scrapper benefits condi engineers as it gives them sustain they can’t get elsewhere. The problem with engineer is that their traits have terrible synergy and that condi engi cant afford to loose any traitline for the sustain of scrapper without loosing way more than what they get in sustain, this does not invalidate what utility and sustain condi engi can get from scrapper. I agree with Scrapper being a powerbased elite spec but if you look at it with “Can condi gain benefits from scrapper?” then the answer is yes which seems to be your argument for reaper.

Also, when looking at traitsynergy across necro and reaper, as you did before, you can see that Reaper’s Onslaught boosts attackspeed which increases the rate you can apply dhuumfire. So by your logic that should be a possible condi trait too. Even if you look at reaper in a vacuum then Reaper’s Onslaught gives you the possibility to use RS5+RS4 more often because of the cooldown reduction which is the best condi combo we currently have.

The problem with this discussion is that it seems that you seems to talk about how Reaper current design and how it works. And with that I totally agree with what you have said. But I argue that reaper was initially power focused which can be seen in how it worked at release, and that I don’t talk about possible utility not having value for both condi and power.
There is no single traitline that can’t add value to power or condi as utility is not about the type of damage, there is always something that can be used for both types which means utility is pointless to add to the argument because then there could never be anything that is designed for only one type when it has some utility. This might be exactly what you are trying to say but then your last post goes against that with your comment about scrapper.

Currently Deathly chill is heavily weighted towards condibuilds that I agree with and it has great synergy with the rest of necro. But when reaper was released it worked like Terror with a 4th of the scaling. Back then the difference between no condition damage and going sinister wasn’t that high and the community said it was bad during the betas(especially since BB was op) so it was changed to have much more condi scaling but that was after release. The condi side of reaper was minimal before that and Deathly chill was almost as powerful for power as for condi. The design back then made it more of a hybrid trait rather then a clear condi one. And without the deathly chill for condi which your argument is basically based around as all traits that has synergy with deathly chill are the ones you say makes it designed around condi as well. Everything about reaper was better with power at release(aside from utility which I feel is a pointless argument). So I can’t really see your argument that reaper was designed with both when everything initially pointed towards power. At best I could understand an argument with reaper being designed with power and power-hybrids in mind.

If there is something you think I’m missing please tell me, I don’t mind being proven wrong but the way you have brought forth you arguments so far it doesn’t hold up.

I don’t want to take away the fun others have with their legendaries but as others have said please let me turn off other players weaponsounds. This is one of the reasons I mute the game.

While we’re on the subject of sounds can we maybe move footsteps and and similliar sounds away from the effect slider? These sounds are great for immersion but they are so quiet compared to the skillsounds. Because skillsounds are everywhere and quite loud I have to turn down the effect slider which means I never hear footsteps which is a shame since someone did a great job with them. So please move them to environment sounds or make a new one for skillsounds.

My reasons are class balance, no class ranking and skillspam.
I play mostly with my necro and to solo-queue just ain’t fun with the current balance and the people I used to play with has stopped playing or don’t have time when I do. The game does not punish you enough for playing poorly which is a problem that comes from powercreep that came with HoT(and the trait update but I kinda liked that change). And at last passive defences that you have no control over and of which you can’t see the cooldowns.
I really think the rewards are fine as long as the enjoyment I get from pvp is what matters. Reward tracks are good enough as rewards from pvp but I can’t enjoy it right now and no rewards will change that.

Lahmia.2193:

Crinn.7864:

Lahmia.2193:

And where is is stated that Reaper is supposed to be a power spec? Or is it just that you want it to be a power spec?

Reaper has exactly 1 condi damage trait in the entire traitline. In addition all of Reaper’s Shroud’s skills and all of GS’s skills have really high power coefficients. None of the shouts are condi either.

Moreover at a synergy level reaper synergizes better with power builds than condi. (see the interaction between Blighter’s Boon and the spite traitline.)

See Dhuumfire and Deathly Chill to see that you are wrong there. Add Chilling Darkness into the mix and EVERY reaper’s shroud skill does condition damage.
Clearly you are ignoring how much synergy the Reaper line has with other lines to boost condi builds.

But Dhuumfire and Chilling Darkness are not Reaper traits. Just because there are core traits that have synergy with condition aspects does not mean Reaper wasn’t made with power in mind. Chilling darkness can have value on power as it gives more chill to snare its foes with so it’s not like it’s exclusively a condi trait. Dhuumfire is only better as RS1 has a higher attackrate than DS1 and has more reliable cleave. So just because something attacks faster its made for condi because Dhuumfire? that’s a bit of a stretch.

The only skill in RS that has a damaging condition on by default is RS4 which is also utility at the same time because of reduced healing. Fear, chill and blind are equally good for power. The only way to make them work for condition builds is to modify them with traits. These traits will still exist no matter what elite spec they bring out(except for Deathly Chill which is the only pure condition damage trait in the reaper traitline). Doesn’t that make it so that every elite spec will be condi focused in your eyes as those traits will always be there?

Lahmia.2193:

Kydar Schattendolch.6879:

IMO, they should rework this trait completly. Reaper is supposed to be more or less a Power-Spec, and the trait shoulddo at leaest some dmg everytime chill is applied.
On the other side, this is as well a really boring trait XD

This would be more in line with the idea of this spec IMO….but, there are many other opinions on this^^

And where is is stated that Reaper is supposed to be a power spec? Or is it just that you want it to be a power spec?

Anet said that is was power focused when they were showing it off before HoT. Reaper was supposed to be a melee power brawler. Not that that means that every single thing about it should be power only but that is what they said. Kinda funny looking back at it as an attempt to fix powernecro but it ended up boosting condi necro even more.

If we could just get a decent auto with a condi on it that would be nice and the only thing it needs really.

What’s the problem, everyone can swap to a support or make a better comp. No one ever does it but you can do it. This is what the community voted for. If they they stopped class stacking people would queue on a rev or something to get in matches faster then swap back to their dh or thief. The community wanted this for some reason and now they have it.

There is one and it’s working as intended but the population is small which forces it to sacrifice quality for ok-ish queue times.

The problem with matchmaking in this game is that a lot seems to thinks that they are the ones rising and falling and that the rest of the people are at the place they should be a.k.a. their rank is static. The reality is that in every game some people are most likely going down in rank because they got too high or going up in rank because they are too low according to their actual skill. The matchmaking can and should only be matchmaking people with their current rank/mmr and not make guesses to where they actually should be. Leagues will never have perfect matchmaking because of this but it will get better as the season goes along as people play more matches and finds their appropriate level. What could be done though is try to make the matchmaker better at getting people where they are supposed to, which is quite hard to do.

Another problem is player skill. There are multiple skills that makes a good player in pvp.
Awareness, mechanical skill, class knowledge, rotation knowledge and the ability to synergize with other people(most likely a few more but these are the major ones I see). Most people are not equally good in all of these and we have all seen people lacking that lack in one or more of them. Someone can be really good at playing as a team with other people but lack the mechanical skill and class knowledge and when they up in a team that are filled with people that lack awareness and are not that good team players that person can become dead weight. But with a decent team that person can perform quite well. This also makes the matches become a bit random as it’s not always that you get a team that work well.

the last problem is team composition and builds. A team that has a good composition will have an advantage over a team that doesn’t. While not a clear win it adds a lot in that teams favor. When class balance is off, matches can swing even more towards one side.

All of these factors makes matchmaking really hard especially with a quite low population. Even a perfectly balanced match rank/mmr-wise can swing massively towards one side as the other 2 aspects are off. Could the matchmaking be better? most likely but it’s not easy to fix as a lot comes from the low population in pvp.

sneakytails.5629:

" Condition application tends to be much higher than skills that remove it, and condition damage attacks tend to get shorter cool downs because of the compounding nature of the attacks mean there is a period of time the opposing player has to recover. The problem here is it that it’s fairly easy to outstrip all but the most robust defenses against conditions. Because condition damage maintains pressure for a period of time without player input, the condition player can maintain offense while still defending."

---

After playing condition builds, and playing a lot against them, I feel this pretty much rings true. There seems to be an imbalance right now between cooldowns for the defender, and how fast the condition build can keep re-applying the damage. It does feel like the fight is “on rails”, or on a timer so to speak. Its not enjoyable to play, or play against.

There are problems with that quote.
All sources of damage need to be higher than the ability to mitigate it or fight would last forever. It has to be higher than mitigation + heals or we get back to the bunker meta where nobody dies. Some classes are also made to be weak against conditions as other classes are made to be weak against cc or power-damage etc. You may or may not want that to be a thing but the devs have confirmed that this what they wanted.(probably to force power, condition, debuffing and cc to never be the best choice in every scenario instead of it being about playstyle)

sneakytails.5629:

Because condition damage maintains pressure for a period of time without player input, the condition player can maintain offense while still defending."

This is also looking at it the wrong way. Both power and conditions has to hit with their skills. Power deals it damage all at once and if you go down you do it right away, but condies gives you the chance of fighting back. Against condies you cleanse to take LESS damage and against power you use protection(or similar effects) to take LESS damage. And cleanse give you the ability to get rid of all the damage although that is not realistically a thing that happens. There is little imbalance here and conditions are even potentially weaker as the effect takes longer and can be fully mitigated. (I wont mention blocks, evades, invulnerability as they stop both incoming condition and power attacks).

What I can agree with is that condition skills usually have less noticeable tells which is not a problem with conditions themselves but the skills. Some skills are also doing too much even if it’s about raw damage output or skills that do too many things at once but there are examples of that for both types of damage.

trixantea.1230:

Is it possible to add a sigil that grants 1 stack of stability for 1 to 3 sec on swap?

While a sigil like this would be really nice to have I don’t think Anet is going to add one. That sigil would be or at least very close to mandatory on classes that lack reliable/easy access to stability and it’s clear from these changes they don’t want that.

I pretty much like these changes but it’s hard to see the outcome looking at this in a vacuum. I do believe there needs to be 1-3 more on hit sigils though I’m not sure what they would be. None of these sigils are that interesting for supportbuilds either.

Dadnir.5038:

I’m sorry crinn but for me you sure have a lot of experience in PvP (except perhaps the fact that you don’t understand that blinding your foes is the sae as a “block”) but your understanding necromancer’s survivability is to shallow in PvE.

…
A block/evade/blind happen to be a 100% mitigation over 1 or more incoming attack. The real worth of block/evade/blind is that it also nullify any incoming hard CC and that’s why it’s vastly superior to the shroud where you tank (and ot mitigate) the icoming attacks.

While a blind technically does the same thing as aegis it’s noticeably less effective. In pvp blind are either ignored through resistance or easily countered by attacks with multiple hits or just fast attack (the latter also applies to aegis which is why it’s also not that great unless you can use it instantly). You also got to actually hit with it to work . In pve blinds are mostly useless for those that are affected by it and the things that we would want to blind usually won’t be affected and take breakbar damage instead while a block will always work (unless damage is unblockable ofc).

Evades,blocks,invulnerability will always be way superior as a defence than blind as it’s a lot more reliable as they apply to yourself. Yes blinds negate 100% of an attack when it works but it’s only situationally useful. You are technically right but looking at how reliable they are as defences, blocks/evades/invulns not the same as blinds. I would not put them in the same category.

As others have said, the way shroud works is the problem.
Necro survivability only works well with a lot of smaller packets of incoming damage, which makes it really strong in open world pve, pretty decent while zerging in wvw with and within a tankier meta in pvp. It can’t deal with high spike damage aside from our 2 dodges. As the amount high damage spike increases , necro survivability gets worse. Blocks, blinds, evades and invulnerability don’t have this problem as it’s always 100% effective no matter the damage.

Sure we have blinds but in PvE this doesn’t really work as the bosses/champs don’t get affected by it as it only reduces their breakbar rather than making them miss. In WvW we can’t apply enough blinds to be able to rely on it reducing damage as unless you are roaming and fighting smaller groups, there are way more people than we could apply blinds to(compared to blocks,evades, invulns which apply to yourself). In PvP blinds are mostly ignored with resistance and/or attacks with multiple hits which makes it situationally useful.

If shroud were less passive(with no cd or very low cd, kind of like a engi kit so we could swap into it absorb and leave) and could only lose, let’s say 25% of it’s max from an attack and/or second it would actually work a lot better and the devs would have a point.

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

Realistically, how can a skill named “Nightfall” have any combo field type but Dark?

Not that I disagree but that logic doesn’t apply to to other skills such as well of blood which realistically should be a waterfield rather than a lightfield. Could we please maybe fix that?

Aktium.9506:

On the bright side of things, both condi and power specs have similar dps benchmarks now.

Awww yeah! we can now fight with condi mesmer for a spot in the team!
Future is looking bright.
uuh, wait a second…

But seriously though it’s nice that neither condi or power is massivly better than the other. So we are at least balanced by ourselves.

Hesacon.8735:

DTATL.9641:

While I can’t complain about buffs it’s sad to see that there still are no changes to Deathshroud which is the main thing keeping me from using core necro. Some of the other buffs don’t fix the reason the skills were hardly used.

Which is weird, since death shroud is the main reason I prefer necro to reaper. Reaper shroud and the traits have always underwhelmed me, though the ferocity buff makes a compelling case to try it out on some fractals.

I too prefer deathshroud to reapershroud but it’s not hard to see that you shoot yourself in the foot by using it. The only good skill is doom, the rest are clunky and underwhelming. It’s also hard to give up Chilled to the Bone! the only real access to stability outside of shroud. I wish deathshroud was better.

While I can’t complain about buffs it’s sad to see that there still are no changes to Deathshroud which is the main thing keeping me from using core necro. Some of the other buffs don’t fix the reason the skills were hardly used.

Well of darkness is still not worth the slot. 5 aoe blinds are not worth taking before our other defensive skills.
Spectral wall is fun but rarely practical.
Spectral Grasp is still to slow and unreliable for it’s cooldown.
Deathly chill is still bleeds.
Reapershroud buffs are nice and Reaper’s Onslaught is better but I can’t see this being enough to make me want to use shroud offensively.

And at last core necro still only has 1 second of stability outside of shroud or transforms.

But hey at least power reaper got something which was more than I thought would happen. Gonna be more fun using that.

Would probably be better to ask this in the necro forums but sure.
They are quite similar and kind of do the same thing. The Corruptionmancer is a more solo queue friendly build as it has better sustain with more LF from Soul Marks. But to get that it also gives up some ability to apply pressure. Procmancer is relying a lot more on your teams ability to keep you alive.

Personally I never thought the additional sustain was worth the pressure you lost. Procmancer is more of a gamble but when you actually get a team that can support you, you can be dangerous. This gets more frequent the more you can play with better players. At the same time if you don’t get a team like that it’s even more likely you’ll end up being dead weight for your team. If I feel like most people run around like headless chickens and I can’t team up with someone then I wouldn’t go for Procmancer. That is my reasoning.

In the end it’s all about what you can preform the best with so I don’t think it matters as long as you play the thing that makes you the best you can be.

Exedore.6320:

• Because you can’t change profession or build to make a more balanced team comp, winning or losing becomes more based on luck with matchmaker.

It’s already luckbased. In my experience, when people swap to counter/stop stacking it’s like a 50/50 chance that they are actually good enough to use the class they swap to. half of the time they are can’t play it properly/good enough which make you lose anyway.

• Profession stacking actually gets worse because players avoid queuing as professions with clear-cut weaknesses (thief loses to DH, Necro gets farmed without support, support ele needs good DPS, etc.).

This is pure speculation as Anet never stated how they would implement this lock. They have mentioned soft caps on class stacking and other thing they could do. Having a soft cap could actually get rid of people swapping between the flavour of the month because of longer queues. This is also pure speculation.

The main problem with this poll is how it’s extremly vague. We have no clue to what will happen after if it goes through. Anet has only mentioned a few things they could potentially do. If they actually said “if this goes through we have this list of things we want to do” then this poll would be way better as we would actually know what we voted for long term. Vague potential changes are not helpful to make people decide. This change without any of the other possible changes would most likely make things worse.

Edit: format

2 things that are not really mentioned in this thread.

1. Single target dps with axe compared to dagger is not massive but let’s not forget that dagger auto also hits 2 targets. While this might not be relevant for all situations it’s still a big difference when it is.

2. You can run whatever you want in fractals as there is no time limit or dps-check you need to pass to clear it with the exception of scale 100 challenge mode. Sure some people might not want to play with you if you play something awful, but every build can be used for fractals. Power necro works fine for all levels of fractals. On a scale of terrible-bad-average-good-optimal, powernecro would land around average to good.

Edit: better sentences

I’m just gotta put this here for those that believe macros is the only way to execute 4-5 actions in less then a second. This is a recent video by Lord Helseth which I believe needs no introduction. You may or may not like him but his video about the importance of proper keybinds explains this pretty well and also shows examples on mesmer in the video.

NeXeD.3042:

DTATL.9641:

macros ain’t against terms of service as long as long as it’s one click of a button equals to one action in game. As long as you follow that rule you are fine. So the likelyness of me getting banned for that is minimal.

excuse me sir i was being facetious

I know but I’ve seen enough people on the forums to know that some will actually believe you. So I still think it’s worth pointing out.

macros ain’t against terms of service as long as long as it’s one click of a button equals to one action in game. As long as you follow that rule you are fine. So the likelyness of me getting banned for that is minimal.

This actually happens to me quite often but I know that it’s basically my own fault because my hands get a tiny bit spazzy when I focus and from adrenalin(which is in almost all cases is because of pvp).

I solved this by myself by using a macro on my keyboard and it works really well. Replace the standard click with a macro that does the same thing but adds a delay. 0,2sec worked well for me. Never had any problem since. if you own a mechanical keyboard with a software that allows for this, than it’s worth a try. Might fix what you are experiencing or prove that it is a bug.

edit: spelling

For me staff is only used for a few reasons.
1. Lack of other condi weapon. Offhand dagger can work as it lets you stay with scepter but OH dagger ain’t as reliable to hit with.
2. Being a good source of Life force when traited which is very handy as scepter has bad LF gain.
3. Being unblockable while traited in this blockspam meta helps a lot.

The damage has always been poor and probably shouldn’t be too high since it can be unblockable. What I want from staff is reliability.

I wouldn’t mind if we just replaced the auto with another mark. Make it half the size of the other marks. Keep the cast time and damage, give it a short bleed or torment, maybe reduce the life force gain to 1,2 or 3% as it counts as a mark. Suddenly we would have an auto that actually hits, is a bit of aoe instead of piercing and is a bit more condi friendly. sure you would have to click it every time like engi grenades but I don’t think that’s a problem.
The only problem would be that it can’t hit structures but I think that would be solved if it automatically popped on placing.

It might be too reliable for an auto. I just thought about it so it might not be good but I like the idea at the time of typing it down.

Shadowstep.6049:

Brockolosso.8316:

Yeah, lets implement massive penalties for players having a reallife

yeah let’s punish 4 other players because 5th guy on the team has a cat

Sorry for derailing.
I don’t know if I’m too tired but your sarcasm made me laugh which happens very rarely on this forum.

Yeah, I like the actual Icon a lot more but the colors need to be more distinctive from each other.

Ensign.2189:

Polismassa.6740:

2) Your rating is not a pure measure of your skill MMR in a team based game is, and always will be a measure of your ability to win matches.

Just to build upon this:

There are a lot of different facets to ‘ability to win matches’. Players can be good at winning duels or winning team fights or picking winning fights or fighting on the right points or rotating between points or playing good builds for the meta or swapping to the right build for the match-up or filling in effectively to balance your team composition or playing hard every game or not tilting or encouraging teammates and keeping people focused.

Or a whole lot of things I didn’t mention in that run-on sentence above.

The difference between a pro-level player and an experienced but middling journeyman (say, gold level) player isn’t that the pro is a bit better at all of these things. It’s almost always the case that the pro is good at almost all of these things, while your middling, experienced player is good (sometimes even pro-level!) at some of these things, and just a dumpster fire at others.

Good but not great players include people that can beat everyone they face in a 1v1 but are constantly engaged in bad fights (trying to kill a guardian on a fully capped point with their thief), people who can’t win a duel for the life of them but pick teamfights they can contribute to well, people who know a single trick (condi mesmer that always goes far!) that sometimes dominates and sometimes feeds, people who often play well but tilt and throw as soon as something goes badly (thus losing games that could be recovered and won).

The really insidious part of this? If you are one of those players, you’re probably really focused on the parts of your game that you are good at, and blind to those that are holding you back. You’re also blind to the good things your teammates are doing (that you are not good at), while their flaws (in areas that are your strengths) are on full display.

Which is why you think your teammate (with the same MMR and similar match win performance) is terrible, and why that teammate thinks that you are terrible. It’s why there’s a pretty big range of play (generally the 75th to the 95th percentile, roughly) that is just an utterly miserable rage-fast, a bunch of skilled but fundamentally flawed players picking at each other’s faults.

If you want to get better, don’t look at that ‘scrub’ with the same rating as you in disbelief. Figure out what he’s doing that you aren’t – because, odds are, that’s what’s holding you back.

This is a great post that a lot of the people on this forum needs to read. Paired with the post it replied to this is pure forum gold. People should have to read this before posting.

Necro damage output was hurt by the latest patch and has reduced our damage on bosses. This doesn’t have a huge impact on fractals as a lot of it is trashmobs and the bosses die quite quickly anyway. Even before that patch necro damage wasn’t that great.

That said, necros are picked a lot in high tier fractals. This is not because of it’s amazing damage. If you want optimal runs you don’t touch necro. What makes necro picked for fractals is how safe it is to play. The viperbuild can stay safe at range while dealing ok damage. It has decent utility with condi transfers and CC. But most importantly pretty good sustain for fractals(which is quite funny looking at pvp). And epidemic is great for dealing with adds.

So yes viper is still viable. It’s just the slow and safe option rather then the optimal one.

Crinn.7864:

DTATL.9641:

Justine.6351:

So no more -50% dmg while in death shroud?

edit: Just realised this might not be what you meant, but I’ll let it stay.

The 50% damage reduction doesn’t mean anything. Everything about shroud is percentage based except for receiving damage. This means that they could double the amount of life force and remove the -50%, or reduce the amount by half and upp the reduction to 75% and it would still be the same for gameplay. It just arbitrarily ended up this way.

No it’s not the same. Life Force amount does not scale to damage taken. Damage reduction does scale to damage taken.

Swapping X life force for Y damage reduction is only “the same for gameplay” at a single set amount of DTPS. Any more DTPS and Damage reduction is more valuable, and less and LF is more valuable.

I’m not sure what point you are trying to make. Everything that gathers lifeforce is done by a percentage not amount of lifeforce. A skill that generates 1% will always have to hit 100 times before it’s full no matter what amount you actually have. The same for life force degen while using shroud. It is a set percentage. This means it will always take the same amount of time to get from 100-0 even if you have 1000 lifeforce or 10000000000 lifeforce. The only thing that doesn’t apply to this is damage taken thats based on the amount of lifeforce we have.

So if we have 10k lifeforce and we have 50% damage reduction, a hit of 1k dmg will be reduced to 500 damage only counting that damage reduction. The thing is if we double the amount of lifeforce to 20k and get rid of the damage reduction we’ll take the full 1k damage. The result would be the same as the percentage of lifeforce actually lost is the same. This is the point I was making. The damage reduction is just how it arbitrarily ended up paired with the amount of life force we have. Unless there is something I missed, which I might and feel free to correct me if that’s the case, the damage reduction is just arbitrarily put there.

edit: grammar

Justine.6351:

So no more -50% dmg while in death shroud?

edit: Just realised this might not be what you meant, but I’ll let it stay.

The 50% damage reduction doesn’t mean anything. Everything about shroud is percentage based except for receiving damage. This means that they could double the amount of life force and remove the -50%, or reduce the amount by half and upp the reduction to 75% and it would still be the same for gameplay. It just arbitrarily ended up this way.

To add what Zero said. Necro can be really good against bad players. Necro is a class that’s easy to be effective with. This is also the place where facetanking damage actually work. A lot of people that are usually bad at dodging, either because they lack experience or are just bad. And when people that can’t dodge or utilise their skills properly the one that can facetank the most usually wins. This is very good for necro as our main defence is basically about facetanking damage. This will become less effective as you increase your mmr and you face better people.

Also if you are facing people without elitespecs as reaper you have an additional advantage. Elite-specs are in general always better then the core class. And while reaper is one of the weaker ones it does cover some holes in core necro, like stability in shroud.

As people are pointing out, the problem ain’t the amount you can gather from each node daily. All that would do is make the mats even more useless. If you really want those node to a better investment you want to add worthwhile sinks for those mats to make the mats more valuable, not inflating the economy with those mats even further.

Yes we are arguably the weakest class right now but this is not the bottom. We’ve had it a lot worse before. Doesn’t mean they don’t need to fix kitten, just that if I have to compare the spot we are in now to where we have been before this is almost nice.

Zero Solstice.9754:

Muchacho.2390:

DTATL.9641:

Zero Solstice.9754:

DTATL.9641:

Zero Solstice.9754:

DTATL.9641:

While axe may not be the best dmg-wise(typical necro problem), all I want is to make skill 2 actually follow foes like ranger longbow 2. One dodge/sidestep and the whole thing misses which is pretty terrible.

It does track targets, in stealth and everything.

Maybe I make it bug then because it sure don’t always do that for me. It just seems like the “cone” in front of you where it hits is just really narrow in comparison to LB2

Just make sure you aren’t holding right click if you want it to track perfectly; the skill will get cancelled mid-channel if they break camera:player model interaction (i.e. they run through your character to get behind you).

Yeah I know that though I find it strange that it does as the skill doesn’t require a target to activate. Not that it matters much and all the other channelling skills that I can think of works that way too.

Actually no. Life siphon (dagger 2) only needs facing at the start but during the channel facing isnt required. That why it is annoying to go from dagger to axe. You are so used to the fact that you channel works no matter the facing and then with axe it suddenly interrupts the channel.

Channels don’t require targets to cast; you can easily use Life Transfer, Spinal Shivers, Rapid Fire, etc. without actually targeting anything. In fact, I highly recommend the Allow Skill Retargeting option if you aren’t using it already, as it allows you to maintain a channel and use the ability on a different target than originally selected.

I was talking bout the automatic skillcanceling when target goes out of sight. skill retargeting don’t fix that

Muchacho.2390:

DTATL.9641:

Zero Solstice.9754:

DTATL.9641:

Zero Solstice.9754:

DTATL.9641:

While axe may not be the best dmg-wise(typical necro problem), all I want is to make skill 2 actually follow foes like ranger longbow 2. One dodge/sidestep and the whole thing misses which is pretty terrible.

It does track targets, in stealth and everything.

Maybe I make it bug then because it sure don’t always do that for me. It just seems like the “cone” in front of you where it hits is just really narrow in comparison to LB2

Just make sure you aren’t holding right click if you want it to track perfectly; the skill will get cancelled mid-channel if they break camera:player model interaction (i.e. they run through your character to get behind you).

Yeah I know that though I find it strange that it does as the skill doesn’t require a target to activate. Not that it matters much and all the other channelling skills that I can think of works that way too.

Actually no. Life siphon (dagger 2) only needs facing at the start but during the channel facing isnt required. That why it is annoying to go from dagger to axe. You are so used to the fact that you channel works no matter the facing and then with axe it suddenly interrupts the channel.

ah yeah totally forgot bout that one. I was thinking bout similar skills to axe 2 and I’ve always thought of it as aoe like DS4 even though it isn’t. My memory ain’t good enough to remember all skills which is why I wrote those I can think of but I should have remembered that one. A bit embarrasing.

Zero Solstice.9754:

DTATL.9641:

Zero Solstice.9754:

DTATL.9641:

While axe may not be the best dmg-wise(typical necro problem), all I want is to make skill 2 actually follow foes like ranger longbow 2. One dodge/sidestep and the whole thing misses which is pretty terrible.

It does track targets, in stealth and everything.

Maybe I make it bug then because it sure don’t always do that for me. It just seems like the “cone” in front of you where it hits is just really narrow in comparison to LB2

Just make sure you aren’t holding right click if you want it to track perfectly; the skill will get cancelled mid-channel if they break camera:player model interaction (i.e. they run through your character to get behind you).

Yeah I know that though I find it strange that it does as the skill doesn’t require a target to activate. Not that it matters much and all the other channelling skills that I can think of works that way too.

Zero Solstice.9754:

DTATL.9641:

While axe may not be the best dmg-wise(typical necro problem), all I want is to make skill 2 actually follow foes like ranger longbow 2. One dodge/sidestep and the whole thing misses which is pretty terrible.

It does track targets, in stealth and everything.

Maybe I make it bug then because it sure don’t always do that for me. It just seems like the “cone” in front of you where it hits is just really narrow in comparison to LB2

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

DTATL.9641:

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

Axe is actually a decent ranged DPS weapon now. Ghastly Claws hits harder than Gravedigger if you land the full channel, so that is definitely not insignificant at that range. I’m about to calculate its new power coefficients.

This statement tells more of the state of greatsword and gravedigger especially than of axe. Gravedigger that was supposed to be the crazy hardhitting skill that is super slow and easy to avoid/block/interupt and look at it now. You could say that it dug it’s own grave. Ba dum tss! I’ll see myself out.

Gravedigger does still hit like a mack truck. It’s easy to land hits of 10k+ with it (I rarely see those numbers because my Power armor is Zealots, not ’Zerker) and 15k is not out of the realm of possibility.

and considering the time it takes to actually hit with it and aftercast that’s kinda average.

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

Axe is actually a decent ranged DPS weapon now. Ghastly Claws hits harder than Gravedigger if you land the full channel, so that is definitely not insignificant at that range. I’m about to calculate its new power coefficients.

This statement tells more of the state of greatsword and gravedigger especially than of axe. Gravedigger that was supposed to be the crazy hardhitting skill that is super slow and easy to avoid/block/interupt and look at it now. You could say that it dug it’s own grave. Ba dum tss! I’ll see myself out.