Guild Wars 2

Helbjorne.9368:

Azukas.1426:

Helbjorne.9368:

The MMR system in itself is also quite flawed. I’ve ran into Gold players that still didn’t know that as a thief they should go home

That’s not flawed MMR. The problem is you actually believing thief needs to cap home on opening split.

It was an example to show lack of game knowledge in ‘higher’ rankings. If that was your takeaway from everything that I wrote, I pity you.

Thief capping home is more of a mid MMR thing. As you get higher thieves tend to stealth mid or go far. Thief is not that good at holding home if the enemy sends someone there on initial split. At middle range MMR people seem to focus on doing home/mid splits (probably wisely so) and higher MMR tend to do 1-3-1.

This is the power wells build I run: http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vRAQNBHhF6kkGolGsmGwnGgeTsgLYTZhmQVI+KuFDjQXtAQLA-TZRRABdfEAcuMAA7PQ6pAY8HAAA

It is pretty tanky and ritual of life provides good team utility. I’ve had decent success with it and am currently in plat 3 (I have ended recent seasons with this build in plat 2).

This is the build that I use and have had some success with (currently middle of plat2 and finished there last season as well):
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vRAQNBHhF6kkGolGsmGwnGgeTsgLYQXtAQLI+K2FDjTZhmQVA-TZRRABj/AAAY/BnLDQ6pAo7jAAA

The big difference is I run spite instead of soul reaping, and (usually) great sword instead of staff (while staff utility is nice, the damage is terrible). I also run well of blood instead of consume conditions so I gain its protection, plus another way to benefit from ritual of blood. If I think I’m facing a condi heavy team I will sometimes swap to offhand dagger in place of GS (keeping axe main) and plague signet in place of well of suffering.

The OP said this was in unranked. There’s no justification for flaming someone for running any build in unranked.

CrAzY.3275:

NON PROJECTILE RANGED CONDITION APPLICATION.

Not only is there zero counterplay options besides los, IT’S THE STRONGEST ranged condition application. only thing that comes close to application or burst is engi p/p

Get a brain and fix 2 of 3 things minimum. Projectiles, Strength, Free corruption

There should never be a SINGLE AUTO ATTACK that applies 3 seperate conditions.

I think this may be the first time in the history of GW2 that scepter auto-attack was associated with burst damage. Have you actually played a condi necro? They can do a bit of burst, but it isn’t from scepter auto attack.

I actually see less hate on my necro these days. It used to be that it there were two necros on a team people would insist that one should change but I haven’t seen much of that lately. Minion necro isn’t a great or popular build, but in unranked I think you should be able to run what you want and experiment with builds. If they want to get annoying about it just block them. A further aside about minionmancers: they are viewed as weak because the pets tend to die fast if you are in big fights, but necros tend to fare poorly in. 1v1 situations.

One good reason is to get more even matches. Most games I play in unranked are blowouts. Matchmaking in ranked may get a lot of criticism but at least during prime play hours I get mostly pretty decent matches.

There is nothing you can build on necro that will frustrate three people. That said, I run a semi-tanky necro build with pali amulet, spite/blood magic/reaper, and full wells. Since I don’t run soul reaping the last balance patch was a small buff for me. I use axe/wh + one of GS, axe/dagger, or axe/focus depending on my mood.

Unfortunately it seems like unranked has a pretty high chance of blowout games which brings out the worst in people. I try to just block them and move on since toxic people are usually repeat offenders. You might consider trying ranked. Once you get placed at the right division you’ll probably get matches that are a bit more balanced.

Yesterday I couldn’t change class before the match started (and I tried to change early and was back on my original class before the match started). Has anyone else has this happen? The only thing that I can think might have caused it is I queued up and joined the match from a hotjoin server.

This has has been an issue with hotjoin forever, and with the number of people playing in “regular” rooms being so low I doubt they will ever fix it. That said the fix is pretty easy. Just prevent anyone from joining the winning team until the losing team has an extra person. They could also require playing the entire match to get credit for a daily won. Some people just like to steamroll/stack and that wouldn’t effect them much however.

Good revs are hard for me to fight as a power necro, but revs just in general are very rare in ranked. Good thieves and mesmers can beat a necro too, but one mistake and they are in trouble. Warriors can practically roll their head on the keyboard and still be challenging for a necro. And I used the term beatable because the op said necro “can’t kill anything.” Necro does have counters but it isn’t every profession.

Crinn.7864:

Jugnificent.2061:

master.1607:

Necromancer
Cant kill anything. Necro is most useless pvp class since release.

While I agree with the common opinion that necros should not seek out 1v1 fights, this is just flat out wrong. Warrior is pretty much the hardest counter to necro, but every other class (in builds that I see in ranked) is beatable.

Warrior is actually one of the easier matchups of the current common classes. Mesmer, AS LB druid, and Thief are total shutouts any for necro. A rev that knows what he is doing is a shutout for power necro, and a uphill fight for condi necro.
Warriors are generally a shutout but it depends heavily on circumstance, condi necro can get traction on a warrior if he can get a corruption chain going.

Ele, Engi, and DH are easier fights for necro, but they will usually end up a draw. DH will typically win against a necro but it’s not a shutout.

“beatable” is a terrible term. Everything is beatable, that doesn’t mean that hardcounters don’t exist.

master.1607:

Necromancer
Cant kill anything. Necro is most useless pvp class since release.

While I agree with the common opinion that necros should not seek out 1v1 fights, this is just flat out wrong. Warrior is pretty much the hardest counter to necro, but every other class (in builds that I see in ranked) is beatable.

Simple answer is if you can’t avoid the MOA while on rampage pick another elite. Transformations will always be a MOA magnet.

I played for quite a while before rolling a thief even though the profession fascinated me. They can definitely be challenging to play well in PvP and aren’t the strongest class by any means but they fill the niche of decapping and +1ing very well. Starting out you probably should avoid most 1v1s unless you know you can win ahead of time. I haven’t encountered any hate for playing a thief but most of my recent playtime with one has been in unranked trying to get the Capricorn meta achievement. Also, I have usually switched to another class if there are two thieves on the team as thieves really do not class stack well. I would say that sticking with unranked and hotjoin would be the best idea until you feel at least decent with a class. I played a ranked game with a bad thief the other night (couldn’t even down a named on Forest of Niflhel solo) and it was very frustrating.

Why doesn’t this heal get used more often? This heal gives the ability to load up on life force before a fight, which is a common complaint about the necro profession. Having guaranteed 10% life force before any fight at the start of a match is pretty handy.

If they would block people from overloading a team that is leading that would fix most of what is wrong with hotjoin. Force people to stay in spec for 5 minutes if they spectate and you get rid of most autobalance abuse. If a match is 4 v 5 with people sitting in spectate keep feeding autojoiners to that server until the match is full. In the server browser show how many are playing and how many are spectating. There, hotjoin is now mostly fixed. Why Arenanet won’t do any of this (especially my first suggestion) irks me to no end. I’ve gotten where I tend to avoid hotjoin (which is wise with how it is currently) but when practicing with a class I’m bad at I’d really rather be able to play on hotjoin without it always being a blowout one way or the other.

One simple fix (that I know has been mentioned before) is to just prevent people from joining the team that is winning unless it is short one person. Block people from rejoining the game for ~5 minutes after entering spectate and you’ve solved most of the problems of hotjoin. Can anyone name what would be a downside to stopping people from overloading the winning team?

Rednik.3809:

Removing hotjoin rewards because you worried about some random guy win-lose ratio? Really?

“Practice” isn’t any good for practice when 95% of the matches are steamrolls. I think even if you removed rewards from hotjoin I think some people would still abuse the system just to stoke their ego. Blocking joining the winning team when the teams have an equal number of people would fix a lot of the problem.

Laraley.7695:

Lol. Yea, having something that procs every 20 seconds while you don’t have to do anything is completely the same as having to go to air and make your play around every 5 seconds. Also, it only hits around 1-2K, seeing as ele has no AA that would hit 7K when might is stacked, I don’t really think you can compare this.

Explain how you are finding necros hitting 7k in sPvP with auto-attack. I fight them all the time, and the ONLY time I see them hitting anywhere near this high is with lich (with its long cooldown and not that hard to avoid projectiles). If you exaggerate less it might be easier to take you more seriously.

iKeostuKen.2738:

I can agree with the chill of death thing. Atm its a bit hectic, also not sure why a class with 2 hp bars really needs to hit for high damage.

I know this will never happen but I almost wish the would do away with deathshroud and just give us vigor, invuls, reflects and blocks like other classes. Deathshroud doesn’t prevent all damage like those skills do, making them MUCH more effective in anything other than a 1 on 1.

Here’s a couple more ideas: instead of removing rewards reduce the difference between a loss and a win. I don’t think the reward track progress is the main thing that causes bad behavior in practice (its so easy to hit your cap for a day even losing a good bit) but I’m sure it certainly encourages it. My next idea is to place low rank players in their own servers. Yes I know rank doesn’t always mean skill but it isn’t really fair to have noobs facing teams of very experienced people. This would also allow for a better chance of balanced games for higher rank people who are messing around in practice.

I know this has been complained about many times before, but it would be great if practice/hotjoin was fixed to make it actually useful for learning and tinkering with new builds. As it stands now I would say 3/4ths of the matches are blowouts from imbalanced teams with one team often perpetually down a person. I personally always try to join the losing team, but even that doesn’t help because you’ll usually have someone just teamswitch from the losing team to the winning team.

Here are a few things that could improve the situation:
-Make it so that you cannot join a team that is winning, unless it is already short a person (also block teamswaps from losing to winning team).
-On the browser list show how many people are actively playing and how many are speccing. So many times 10 people are on a server, but you have one person perpetually speccing and one team never fills up.
-In order to get credit for a win, you have to be on the team before the match starts (no waiting to see which team is going to win before joining)
-This idea is probably a bit trickier: if a team has an extra person, they can only have as many people spawned as the other team. The person waiting in limbo only spawns after a teammate dies (and their spawn timer expires). Then the person who just died has to wait for someone else to die. This will suck if your team never dies, but it will give people an incentive to be on the “bad” team so they don’t get stuck waiting so much.

Sagat.3285:

Jugnificent.2061:

I don’t think I was blinded, but it wasn’t a case where the conditions transferred and then got cleansed- I was still taking damage from a bleed, poison, and torment after the putrid mark hit the thief.

Krait runes then if the new conditions are different then the one before. It triggers on elite skill use and applies bleed,torment and poison. Was it a team fight?

I believe it was krait runes that applied the initial conditions, but it was just me vs. one thief.

I don’t think I was blinded, but it wasn’t a case where the conditions transferred and then got cleansed- I was still taking damage from a bleed, poison, and torment after the putrid mark hit the thief.

I was fighting a thief and had several conditions on me that I tried to transfer with putrid mark. The mark hit and damaged the thief, but the conditions did not transfer. Is there a legit scenario that could cause this to happen, or was it just a fluke/glitch?

Laraley.7695:

Jugnificent.2061:

Laraley.7695:

No, my problem is that I can 1v1 the most power necros, I just do not like they can hit that hard with a trait without any way to avoid it. It’s just plain wrong. I had a game against 3 power necros and all I died to were passive procs. People always complain about IP and passives but leave this one out. It’s not ok to have a such thing in the game. Add an animation and time window to dodge it, then I don’t care.

And it’s hard to one hit a power necro with full DS.

You say you can 1v1 power necros but have an issue with more than one? Boon-happy eles are pretty much the only class that necros provide a hard counter to. I think a lot of classes could say something similar about other classes. Do you just want to be able to have massive sustain in all group fights?

I already answered that. You can have no problem 1v1ing something and still not like something about that class. Those two don’t have to corelate.

Necro is hardly a hard counter to eles.

Fresh air is far from having massive sustain.

So you’re complaining one necro skills is overpowered if there is more than one necro on a team? I honestly don’t know all the different ele builds, but most eles I face in matches seem to have pretty good sustain. Being a hard counter may be debatable, but eles are probably the class I fear the least to face in a 1 on 1 (and I’m far from a great necro).

Laraley.7695:

No, my problem is that I can 1v1 the most power necros, I just do not like they can hit that hard with a trait without any way to avoid it. It’s just plain wrong. I had a game against 3 power necros and all I died to were passive procs. People always complain about IP and passives but leave this one out. It’s not ok to have a such thing in the game. Add an animation and time window to dodge it, then I don’t care.

And it’s hard to one hit a power necro with full DS.

You say you can 1v1 power necros but have an issue with more than one? Boon-happy eles are pretty much the only class that necros provide a hard counter to. I think a lot of classes could say something similar about other classes. Do you just want to be able to have massive sustain in all group fights?

lighter.2708:

Because non of those burst healing are actually enough burst healing

the thing is, with sd thief, you can dodge/stealth to cover the burst healing CD down time, mesmer can kit/stealth to cover heal down time, engi can low CD block, stealth, CC to cover healing skill down time.
and reason why shelter is so much better then signet heal from guardian, because shelter can block way more burst damage that signet heal (even alot) still can’t be compared. what warriors can do? nothing, use your heal and then get kitted to death, endure pain has long cd, limited dodges, telegraphed CCs, you can do nothing to cover your heal CD you take all the damage and die, that’s why warrior was completely dead back in 2013

warrior does not take healing signet because it’s better, warrior take healing signet, because it’s the only heal, because all of them active heal are incredible bad.
you see, healing signet was also completely un usable before the buff.

Defiant stance blocks all damage for 3 seconds, shelter blocks for 2. Defiant’s initial heal is less, but any damage taken is given as a heal instead (and it lasts longer) so it seems like a fair tradeoff. Healing surge is ~6k to ~10k heal- if that isn’t burst healing I don’t know what is.

lighter.2708:

Jugnificent.2061:

YuiRS.8129:

Zerker Warrior is incredibly glassy. Thieves, Mesmers and Guards are much tougher thanks to their class skills. Armor and extra 5k health does nothing.

Lol wut? You forgot to mention healing signet, this adds a huge amount of tankiness. Thieves and mesmers can be pretty evasive, but I can sneeze and have a thief fold up and die. That will never happen with even the glassiest warrior. Guards are pretty tanky with their cooldowns up, but once they blow them they die pretty fast. Also, if you are running hammer the interrupts and knockdowns provide quite a bit of damage mitigation. The only thing warriors have going against them is their low mobility if not running swords makes them easy to target (even if they aren’t the quickest kill).

because healing signet is burst healing that suits perfectly for zerkers.

There is a lot of burst in sPvP yet it seems like every warrior I ever see takes healing signet. Defiant stance and healing surge both seem like better choices for healing when being focused, but they are never/rarely used. Continuous passive healing is just amazingly strong and warriors just don’t die fast enough (even if full zerk) to make the burst healing better.

YuiRS.8129:

Zerker Warrior is incredibly glassy. Thieves, Mesmers and Guards are much tougher thanks to their class skills. Armor and extra 5k health does nothing.

Lol wut? You forgot to mention healing signet, this adds a huge amount of tankiness. Thieves and mesmers can be pretty evasive, but I can sneeze and have a thief fold up and die. That will never happen with even the glassiest warrior. Guards are pretty tanky with their cooldowns up, but once they blow them they die pretty fast. Also, if you are running hammer the interrupts and knockdowns provide quite a bit of damage mitigation. The only thing warriors have going against them is their low mobility if not running swords makes them easy to target (even if they aren’t the quickest kill).

pdavis.8031:

While necro doesn’t have the stun breaks, invulns, damage avoiding mechanics as the other classes, they have some awesome things that work really well. If coordinated. (i.e. wells minions, and condi pressure. @ Drarnor yes I lumped them together because those are some of the tools that the necro has at his disposal. And yes they can and do work together.)

How exactly do they work together? If you are specced to do good damage with wells, your condi pressure will be negligible. I guess you could run flesh golem + one or two wells + celestial and do all of those things but you won’t do anything very well.

I agree totally with what Bhawb said. No other class folds up as quickly under focused pressure as necro. If you run plague that buys some time but at the expense of losing basically all offensive power.

Supreme.3164:

Unless you equip multiple condi removals ( like 3+ condi removal skills/traits ) you won’t even be able to touch your average condi necro, you get fear chained, chilled, crippled, weakened, blood, poison…without you being able to do anything.

Based on what is necro weak?…I don’t see how necro is weak in his role therefore I have suggested that buffs should only be directed to create another role for necros…not buffing the current one….hell no and same goes for Mesmer using shatter build, there is a price to pay for what you bring to the table

If condi necro is so overpowered why isn’t every necro you see running condi? It seems like maybe 25% of the necros are condi, less then 10% are MM, and the rest are power. I tried running condi for some time, and while it could be strong in some situations it seemed lackluster in your average group fight where everyone jumps on the necro first. At least with power you have a chance to do some decent damage with DS before you get trained down.

Necros are weird (and sort of like rangers) in that they can wreak havoc on you if you ignore them, but they aren’t nearly a threat if you focus them. Rangers, however have the ability to use stone signet and stealth to deal with focus fire. It seems like every other class has defensive abilities that scale infinitely. Channeled blocks, invuls, vigor, reflects, stealth all can prevent a HUGE amount of damage and it seems like every class has access to a little or lot of this other than necro. Necros have access to protection (which can be stripped, and doesn’t block all damage), AOE blind (which can be walked out of), and plague form (which gives a lot of survivability at the expense of doing essentially no damage). Necros can do well in WvW because of the huge amount of life force always being generated gives them a lot of sustain. This doesn’t happen so much in PvP unless you’re lucky enough to be fighting a group that doesn’t focus you in a team fight.

JakobGW.5730:

I’ve noticed that you guys say this a lot: that you have a large amount of PvE’ers. It certainly seems like you’re implying that this is the reason you have bad players. . . .

That’s all and well, but I can tell you that we don’t even consider guesting on TC anymore when we (God forbid!) have to PvE karma train in Orr. We never see anyone there. Hell, just yesterday we tried to guest on TC to run a few quick CoFs and, of course, the dungeon was contested and no one was anywhere on the map to un-contest it.

In my experience, you have no more PvE’ers than any other T4 server and above.

If we so tragically fail at WvW and PvE, we still have RP to fall back on! (Sorry for feeding the troll :\ )