Guild Wars 2

Shroud Utility

• What you did: Shroud in the beta was extremely powerful. It was difficult to track and fight due to its great utility and amazing ability to escape. So when the game released their teleport was turned into a projectile, their auto was made into a slow cast blast and the life force scaling from Life Transfer was reduced. Once the community started to complain about the lack of shroud utility arena net added tainted shackles and since all shroud abilities will have a skill 5.
• What you Missed: Shroud was Way over nerfed. The removal of shade, stripping them of a solid gap closer and escape while also reducing their ability to fight large groups and reducing their scaling against those groups put shroud in a real bad spot to cause problems for years to come. The fact that Arena net didn’t let the community have a good amount of time to really play with it and get a good feel for the profession themselves lead the necromancer to being the worst profession in the game for years, with no real awareness of how bad the situation was. Tainted Shackles was a band aid on an open wound that wasn’t closing any time soon. Because of this over reaction to the beta tests the necromancer community has suffered from in game discrimination and lack of use. The Community had, unsurprisingly, Grown hostile and bitter toward the devs with their extremely conservative buffs and game warping nerfs.

So Why do I bring this all up? And the reason is in relationship to the scourge. Arena net, you making the same mistake once again with the scourge. You are listening to part of the picture without having the full context of the situation and without understanding the consequences of those actions. There are plenty in the necromancer community that absolutely despise the way Shroud has been handled and by extension wish it didn’t exist at all. Many of us would rather not deal with this mechanic because of how horribly its been handled and balanced. So Here is the last part of this List.

Scourge

• What You are doing: The interesting design space that is opened up to the necromancer by removing the shroud mechanic gives the devs the freedom to create far more interesting and unique elite specializations that have a large pool of interesting functions. It’ll finally give us the support we’ve always wanted while giving necromancer player’s a way to get rid of shroud like many of us wanted.
• What you’re missing: The part of the community that despises shroud hates it because of how poorly its been handled, not because we hate the concept itself. In fact, we think the concept is quite cool, but we’ve grown bitter toward it being balanced properly. We Approach the scourge with caution because we expect that you’ll continue to be short sighted with the balance of this elite spec making its synergy with its traits poor in comparison to what the reaper and even core necromancer can do. And from what we’ve seen so far, we are absolutely justified in our skepticism. Traits being linked to Sades doesn’t transfer over 1 for 1. Dhuumfire is balanced around being an auto attack. Because of that, linking it to Summon Shade makes it far weaker than it is on Reaper. And the same is true for other 1 skills. This is also true for entering and exiting traits that require synergy with shroud to gain their most benefit. Linking something like Spiteful Spirit, a trait that is already under used extremely weak for a grandmaster becomes even worse on Scourge with a 20 second cool down desert shroud. The problems don’t end there as Death magic gets the short end of the stick except for maybe Unholy Sanctuary which would grant barrier, but beyond that 6 seconds on those traits that grant toughness or a damage boost which were underwhelming before are absolutely terrible now. Blood Magic doesn’t escape this since Life from death offers even less control over its effect than before while transfusion, which functions on a channeling skill now has nothing to channel it, which means its healing output is by far weaker than the Reaper’s, when the scourge is supposed to be more supportive.

The scourge is likely to have more problems than core necromancer and reaper combined because of its lack of shroud. Now don’t get me wrong. I love the idea of losing shroud. But without proper balance to the traits to make sure it functions as well as core and reaper the scourge will be another tick in the necromancer balance team’s mistakes that go unfixed.

I want to love this elite specialization. Its what I want from the necromancer, on paper. So I ask that you Please please please take a long hard look at the necromancer and this elite spec to make sure that it doesn’t suffer from massive anti synergy. I want this to be amazing, not a hot mess.

Sincerely, Lily

Stability

• What you Did: You saw that even with the Foot in the Grave Change that the community was crying out for access to stability and giving you countless reasons why. So it made sense to give stability to the new Elite specialization, Reaper.
• What you Missed: Stability was needed at the core of the profession, not just reaper. The necromancer, since its supposed to be able to stick to a point and root itself there was never able to achieve this goal due to its only defenses being a damage sponge. This expressed an overlying problem with the necromancer’s defenses as a whole. Health can only get you so far. Without real active defenses it causes problems for the profession’s usability.

Jagged Horrors

• What you did: When Raids were introduced into the game the community quickly figured out that you could spawn a load of minions from Lich form, using that elite in a surprising way that arena net didn’t intend, causing the necromancer’s DPS and defenses to sky rocket far beyond what was expect. So, it made sense to nerf it. Which resulted in you putting a time Limit on the Jagged Horrors to last 30 seconds so the build couldn’t be as dominant as it was.
• What you Missed: Jagged Horror’s life span wasn’t the problem. It was that they didn’t have a Cap. When this problem showed up in the first game you made the correct decision by giving minions a hard cap that you couldn’t break. The Horrors needed that cap. Because of this change it killed any possibility that a minion build could be viable in the future. Not to mention that Minion skills themselves were lacking in power to make them a real viable option in most if not all situations. 20 something Jagged Horrors was too much, sure but that doesn’t recognize the underlying issue that the Minion build on necromancer at the time used exactly 1 minion skill and completely ignored the rest.

The Reaper:

• What you did: When introducing Heart of thorns it made sense to have a new progression system for the player to look forward to. So it made sense to introduce new elite specializations, which was a fantastic idea. Reaper was the necromancer’s elite specialization. The Necromancer community was asking for a great set for power with an amazing cleave weapon so reaper seemed like the perfect fit.
• What you missed: The Cleaving weapon and power DPS was never that important. What was important was that the necromancer community was facing open hate from PvE and suffering in high end PvP due to the lack of useful utility and poor damage. What the community wanted was to be desired and useful. The Screams for a cleaving weapon was just a haphazardly way of saying it. The cleaving weapon was never the important part. It was always about being desired in a group. (Note: I understand that the community loves their greatsword, However I’m making a point about this.)

Dear Arena Net,

We need to talk. Many of us in the necromancer community have been fans of your game and in love with your necromancer profession since Guild Wars Prophecies. We’ve played through those Weird days with infinite minions and server crashes, the enchantments that didn’t synergies with monk skills, or their own skills, getting nerfed because of Mesmers and Rangers abusing our skills all the way to Guild Wars 2 where we had to deal with constant pathing bugs on our minions, no defenses for a long time, being a ping pong ball, suffering through being Kicked from groups simply because we were playing a necromancer. We’ve Dealt with all of that.

We had hoped we’d have more and open communication between us and you and that you’d take the time to view our concerns and take them into account while going in and testing them yourself. Not just your personal builds, but the community builds and seeing how they work, why they work and what we have to say about them. I have a hard time believing that you do all that. I suspect that you do part of it, but not all. The decisions you make are, unusual to say the least and lack perspective on the class as it stands today and foresight for the future.

We have been trying to tell you what we are looking for in the profession for years. And you seem to be the slowest to act on it and very often hear part of it while missing the reason as to why we are saying it. Vital Persistence is just the latest Example with a Long history of necromancer examples. Lets go through a list of a few note worthy examples and see your solution and show you what was the point you missed.

Vital Persistence:

• What you Did: Looking at this trait it was clear that it was by far the most powerful master trait in soul reaping. So it made sense to weaken it to bring it down to the power of the other traits.
• What you Missed: Back when the Specializations were being introduced a good chunk of the necromancer community was telling you that the reduced degeneration from the old trait and the new was Vital to the survival to the necromancer. At this time you were making a tone of things baseline and the Community has harped on this point since you implemented the trait. We told you it needed to be baseline. And when you nerfed it was met with a huge community backlash. Why? Because you acted on half the information, but failed to pay attention to what the community was actually saying about it. Now, looking at the traits Vital Persistence is still the best possible trait in the master tier…

Signet of Suffering:

• What you did: The community has been pretty Vocal about the issues with Signets having no synergy with shroud. So it makes sense to make it so it can function while the player is in shroud.
• What you missed: The Community has been screaming about this for years because of how Shroud has built in anti synergy with anything the necromancer is trying to do. We’ve been telling you that Utility skills just need to be active in shroud, no traits. This has been a another short sighted change on your part with little understanding of what the problem was. We need this sort of thing to be base line, not to have to take a trait so that it functions on the same level as other professions.

Foot in the Grave

• What you did: After the change to Stability being a stacking boon you missed that of all the traits Food in the grave was completely forgot about, and it seemed to be the absolute only ability to be forgotten about so you made a quick fix to make it a stunbreak while entering shroud. Which turned out to be a good Decision.
• What you missed: This was just yet another accumulation of a major issue that the necromancer suffered and its tale is extremely Similar to Vital persistence with a band aid solution that fixes that particular issue but missed the reason it was a problem in the first place. The Necromancer community was Miffed about not having access to Stability in the first place and having to take a Sub par Grandmaster to not suffer being a Ping Pong ball the entire time. This change was good but it didn’t recognize the overlying problem that the community was crying out about.

A while back Arena Net said that they wanted the traits to have a sense of permanence and to make the character feel unique in the way they played. I had to bite my tongue for a long time on this one because I didn’t and still don’t agree with it.

As a Guild Wars one player, I loved the ability to change everything about my character from the skills, attributes, armor and weapons without the need to involve gold of any kind. I found it to be one of the most revolutionary things about the game. It let me not only do what I wanted, but also experiment with new builds, new ideas and new concepts. I had friends who would make new builds and I would do the same. We would share them and see how they worked in parties and with our own play style.

It also frustrated me when you guys announced this and gave PvP players the ability to reset their traits outside of PvP. You guys basically said that this is more important to PvP players then it is to PvE players. Which was a real slap in the face because the ability to play anything I wanted in GW1 was one of the reasons I stayed with the game so long.

Because I had so many option in GW1 at any given time, I found it necessary to go out and buy multiple sets of armor and weapons to fill those rolls. And I enjoyed it. I loved being able to look fabulous no matter what I decided to do and always having the right gear to be able to do what I wanted. It made me feel legendary! In GW2, I don’t get that feeling. Sure I might feel elite once I get a legendary weapon and the rare armors. But this isn’t the same as feeling like a Legend.

You guys may believe that it makes the player feel like an individual but there are several, blinding problems with this assumption. Players in PvE are going to optimize their traits regardless of what perimeters you try and put in place making the environment just as stagnant, if not more so because of the lack of experimentation, with a small handful of builds being used. Not only that, but the players should be getting the sense of Individuality from the customization, armor, weapons, personal story and their name.

There is no acknowledgment from NPCs, or really even players, that you use a particular trait set up over the other. No villagers who are disgusted by the fact I use necrotic skills on my enemy, making them rot before their eyes. No admiration from them when I use a protective spell to shield them from harm. Without the acknowledgment from other characters in the game, this concept falls even further flat then before. Even my profession isn’t acknowledged in my personal story. Aside from the very beginning.

I am fully aware that I can retrait. I know I can do it for a gold fee. This to me is not the same as carrying a full wardrobe on my character and having a party member ask me what I’m going as and I have the thrill of responding with something like “Anything you want.”. Now if I want to play how I desire to, I have to spend something like 100g on trait books and waste space in my inventory just so I can get the experience I desire. And I can’t have them saved at hand so it will take me 5-7 minutes to set up rather then just 1 minute and go.

I also feel less inclined to want to collect armor like I did in GW1. I Feel that there is little to no point in doing so. Especially seeing as I’m locked into a build. Which means, I don’t feel Legendary or fabulous.

Make them locked in Dungeons only. I understand the need to maintain balance for Dungeons. I really do. This way we can’t just change them in a dungeon and abuse the system. Outside of dungeons though, I don’t see a reason to be afraid of any balance issues.

I look forward to hearing your response. I still do love the game, and you guys really put a lot of work into it. Please take this suggestion into consideration.