Guild Wars 2

“Chronophantasma: Increased Daze duration from 1s to 1.5s
Did anyone try spamming Illusionary Berserkers with Continuum Shift and Chronophantasma? This specific combo isn’t the only reason we are adjusting this trait, but we are watching the types of spikes that are coming from Chronomancer in general.”

Shh don’t tell people about this.

Bhawb.7408:

Minions don’t remotely die instantly in PvE, they have higher base HP (and in many cases armor) than players do. Utility-skill minions have base 17k HP, elite/heal minions have 22k base, and that is increased to 25k and 33k respectively. There is almost nothing in the game that does that much damage in a single hit.

The reason MM isn’t used in PvE is because the utility they bring (distracting the enemies) isn’t particularly necessary when you can just bring them into a corner and murder them in half a second. In addition, you lose the ability to run the standard glass cannon build when running minions. The first issue is an issue in the design of PvE and won’t change until we get more difficult content, at which point being able to summon 141k HP worth of meat shielding is potentially relevant. The second issue might be fixed in this current trait rework, as minions won’t actually compete too much with DPS loadouts, as you can still go two other trees and those extra trees don’t add a ton of damage.

Excellent point, but even if it’s not a single hit. If the minion dies before the Cooldown has finished you’re still left without a minion and a wasted utility slot.

Great points for the remainder, content where a meat shield was useful would be a big promoter of this sort of play style.

OlliX.1705:

Interesting idea, but as long as minions have the same awful AI they have now it’s still not gonna be very good.

Agreed, in Gw1 the minions at least attacked as soon as the MM attacked. Minions just be standing around while I’m auto attacking mobs lol.

EDIT: In fact, the minion just purely has full cooldown when they die. Which although isn’t often in general pve, in boss fights and dungeons with deadly aoe, this happens quite frequently making the point of having minions a burden rather than an asset.

Necromancers in Guild Wars 2 are completely different from their Guild Wars 1 counterparts. This has it’s strong points as it creates a distinct playstyle and feel compared with their predecessors. Many of the aspects of Necromancer need work and I’m sure many players agree with that sentiment. I don’t intend to cover all of the avenues of the profession in this thread, but I do want to make a suggestion.

With the reveal of the core specializations, it’s apparent that MM necro is being buffed slightly. However, I feel the core problem with MM being unviable in almost every aspect of the game has not been addressed. Minions simply die too quickly in dungeons, zergs, and other high end content where deadly AoE skills litter the ground. The whole reason to build a MM necro is to have a large uptime on minions, however; long cooldowns mean the quick and timely demise of our minions leaves us naked and lacking in DPS.

One potential way to address this issue is to buff minion health and defense to make them more durable. However, I feel buffing them enough to make them viable in these end game scenarios would have negative side effects. PvP skills and PvE skills can be separated and that is one way to solve the issue, but I feel it still doesn’t quite fix the problem. With super tanky minions, you would risk trivializing most general pve content because minions would be invincible to all but the strongest of mobs.

So how do we solve this problem to make MM necro a viable and most importantly a fun build choice to make. If I had one wish for a change to minions, it would be this: Remove minion Cooldown timers entirely, instead replaced by a life force cost. Precise balancing aside, this would make it so that given the necro has the life force to spare, they can constantly have minions up. So what does such a change do to make the play style more fun?

Personally, when I think of Minion Master, I think of Guild Wars 1. The point of sacrificing utility slots for minion summons, is to have those minions out dealing damage and contributing some of their utility to fights. I want my minions to always be alive and I absolutely hate waiting on a cooldown timer to summon a new one. I think this change solves the problem of the waiting without making minions too overpowered. As I mentioned, the exact life force cost would need to undergo balancing. Additionally, minion damage might be scaled back slightly to account for the increase in uptime. You also don’t need to buff minions up to make them as tanky either, if they die the MM can summon more if they have the life force to spare.

It feels like Staves were made for MM necros as well. The idea of sitting in the back laying down marks and firing claws from a distance while your minions are in combat seems natural to the playstyle. Marks as well as the auto-attack can generate life force which means a MM has methods for fueling their army.

I think this one change could improve the fun factor of MM builds by a lot and I think additional uses for life force should be considered for other skills. As it stands, the only use for life force is in Death Shroud and for many necro builds including MM builds, hopping into death shroud creates an awkward change of pace in the class that doesn’t feel quite right outside of a few scenarios. Right now my build revolves around using DS purely for a fury buff before swapping back out to using daggers. I don’t stay in the form for more than a half a second and I certainly don’t use any of the life force unless I need another health pool.

Please share your thoughts on the coming buffs to minions and even provide your own insights that could make the necro more exciting to play in pve content.

I think anet really needs to wake up and realize the lack of challenging content for small coordinated groups is really hurting this game. I’m back playing gw1 because it has Hard Mode and some dungeons that are still freakin hard as hell. Sure I have some builds that make this content “easy” but that’s because the builds I use are well optimized by myself and the community. I want new, different, and challenging content. I won’t return to gw2 until that happens.( though I may log in to get the living story unlocks so I have em for free.)

OIIIIIO.7825:

Dungeon Team disbanded as far as I know.
Sorry Mate

T_T

Then I guess there is nothing left for me in this game…

Hey, Anet…are there plans for more instanced and organized content for smaller groups on the horizon? The stuff we have has kinda gotten stale and itd be nice for once if a small guild of friends could have something to do other than your zerg bosses.

Just wondering if there were any plans on the horizon.

I love my FT build. Puts out some intense burn damage ticks AoE style. Nothing that can compete with Zerkers though. I haven’t tried any power/crit based Engie builds though I have done one with my Necro. My experience with the Engie is small as it’s only my most recent level 80 character to be fully geared in exotics and tested in dungeon runs. My love is for condi builds as my warrior runs one, my Engie does, and my Necro did for a while. They are all great but just a bit outclassed.

I mean, lets be honest here. The Meta absolutely hates any Condi build in PvE. I don’t want to play a grenade based Engie. I hate having to continuously spam the 1 key in order to continuously throw grenades while 2-5 cool down.

I also absolutely love the flamethrower, but as things would have it, the flamethrower is a condition based kit. I want my little Asuran to be able to burn things to a crisp to his hearts content, but I can’t do it and feel like I’m being helpful to the group. I will say that burn damage is one of the better condi damage types. It doesn’t get erased when another source of burn damage is applied. However, Condi dps is still outclassed by Zerker geared players. I know condi damage is pretty good against large groups of mobs but the advantages still don’t seem to outweigh the advantages of just taking another direct damage player.

Is there anyway you guys over at Anet can look into possible re-balancing of the system so players can play the way they want to play and not the only way the game will allow them to play?

Possible suggestions – So I don’t have to include the words PvE in every point, Just assume every point pertains to PvE, none of this is to apply to PvP.

- Rework how conditions function

- Rework Dungeon AI to make running super squishy Zerker setups harmful to all but the most experienced players

- Rework Dungeon encounters in a way that make all Zerker teams disadvantageous(i.e. Add monsters that gobble squishy zerkers up for breakfast)

— As a supporting point for the previous one, try for a balance where having all of one type of build is disadvantageous. Punish groups running all Berzerkers, or all Condi, or all Support, etc.

…well that wasn’t many but now on to specifics

- Rework how conditions function : I don’t mind that you punish the overuse of conditions by overriding and stacking. This is actually good because you’ve already prevented the possibility of an all Condi group being viable. Conditions could probably do with a bit of tweaking however. Burn damage ticks far too slowly for you to get in enough damage. Bleeding is an example of a fairly good condition. Bleeds tick really fast and should expire quickly having dealt their full damage in a short period of time. Poison should have additional benefits. Its tick damage is low and the penalty to healing is exclusive to PvP uses. Poison could also reduce the attack damage of enemy mobs to make spreading and keeping up poison beneficial to a groups survival in high dps situations. Confusion expires far too quickly to be of any use on mobs that may not even attack in the duration given. Perhaps increasing the duration or having conditions expire when an attack is made and just allowing them to stack up to a certain point as an example. I think thats most of the damage related conditions. All of this is merely an example scenario to get the creative juices going.

- Rework dungeon AI : A tricky one indeed. Rather than completely changing dungeons as a whole, Maybe adding in a mob or two with the sole purpose of tracking down the player with the lowest max hp (usually a zerker player) and making their life hell. Another example might be a mob that applys boons to allies consistently, maybe mob specific boons as well like a retaliation that freakin hurts. This would of course directly punish direct damage setups, but that is the point after all. There can be many different approaches to this one.

- Rework Dungeon encounters : Also tricky. One thing to take note of is how squishy zerker players are. They don’t have any vit increases aside possible traits which are often left out. Implementing something that causes attrition amongst players may work. If all zerker groups are dieing a lot then we are off to a good start on fixing group compositions. Of course, we don’t want something that will punish a group of zerker players that is experienced and well coordinated. However, more consistent damage mechanics might give support based builds more love and viability in the dungeon scene. I’ve got a healing Guardian build that is quite remarkable in the amount of healing and survivability it brings. Conditions and small amounts of attrition damage don’t phase the groups I’m running with which leaves players to get downed by just purely taking a big chunk of damage to the face. However, this build isn’t really needed and I don’t often find groups who like the build because it’s so easy to survive as a squishy anyway.

There is no easy answer, but I just want to point out that over there at Anet, you mentioned you were designing the system so you didn’t have to have a particular class make-up. However, although not forced, the meta has kind of tossed aside support and condi builds in favor of all Zerker all the time setups because they are fast and they work without any real drawbacks.

When Drakkar reaches 50% The debuff will temporarily disappear and he becomes stunned. Players get an opportunity to attack him. However, during this phase waves of 3-4 mobs will also spawn and head to attack the turrets. Its important to split the party in half. One group intercepts waves while the other hits Drakkar. Once Drakkar hits 35% hp, the Debuff will be applied again. However, the waves will continue(though at a reduced spawn rate) to spawn and move towards the turrets. Party members have to deal with the mobs as well as be able to time the use of the elixir turret to remove the debuff stacks. The turrets reduce Drakkar’s HP by 5% every 30 seconds. So 3 ½ minutes after Drakkar hits 35% hp he will die and the party will be victorious.

Loot rewards should reflect the effort required for this raid. Though the time to complete the raid compared with other dungeons, the amount of coordination and difficulty present should be significantly more overbearing. Rewards equal to three paths of a dungeon would be a good start as well as a random higher quality drop. Be it a few ectos/lodestones/exotic gear/etc….

Again, just a fun little example I thunked up a while ago XP. I would really like to see larger group dungeon-style content get added to GW2. I feel like it would fill that hole in my renown-heart personally.

and sorry about the message flood couldn’t post it all pls don’t hate me!

Phase 1 – NPCs begin setting up gear and cannons with which to fight the dragon. Mobs will start spawning in waves of 10 at set intervals so its important to kill the mobs quickly. The two Lieutenants of the Drakkar beast itself will also create aoe fields around the players. One lieutenant will create wells that cause chill and poison while the other will create fields that cause knockdown.

Phase 2 – Phase 2 begins as soon as the NPCs have finished setting up the equipment for the fight. The two lieutenants will voice some dialogue(no freakin cutscenes) and enter the fray. Both are Legendary mobs. They share mechanics similar to the lovers but there is a twist to this fight. When phase 2 starts there will be two golem suits available to the party as well as 2 repair kit bundles. 2 players need to jump into the suit and intercept either boss. The golem suits are equipped with a pull, a type of taunt, and 3 damage abilities. The repair bundles have 4 support abilities and a heal for the golem suits.

Both lieutenants have their own individual phases. Every 25% they gain a new ability to use and their damage increases. The two bosses must be tanked by the golem suits apart from each other because they both share a close range aoe in common that will hit everything in range, including the other lieutenant. If the aoe hits the other lieutenant their damage gets buffed by 10%. They use this aoe every 15 seconds and the fight will last for several minutes. Do the math. The aoe will do a moderate amount of damage to any party members not paying attention. It should do at least half of a scholar classes HP if their HP resides around 15-16k. Of course the range of the aoe is denoted by a red circle and is also hinted at by an animation. Players will need to dodge at the proper moment to avoid any damage from the aoe.

Aside this aoe ability, they each get 4 skills to use against their target. At first there is only 1 skill (it should be noted that these 4 abilities would preferably be randomized each run through so the order in which they gain them isn’t predictable). Before using each skill the lieutenant’s will gain a boon corresponding with that skill. It is important for the party members using the repair kit bundles to grow accustomed to these and know which icon relates to which ability. Shortly after the boon appears the lieutenant will release the attack on his target which should be the golem. These attacks will deal massive damage unless the person using the repair kit uses the proper 2-5 skill to protect against it. The 2-5 skills for the repair kit all counter one of the lieutenant’s abilities and should be used as soon as the boon appears on the given lieutenant. The heal skill cannot be spammed and has a cooldown long enough such that it can only be used once during the fight. The heal will repair enough damage to negate a successful ability attack from the lieutenant. With all of this taken into account the fight doesn’t get any more complex.

Phase 3 – Phase 3 starts when the lieutenant’s are killed. Drakkar will descend into the lair. Players discard the golem suits and bundles at this point. The fundamentals of this fight revolve around surviving as long as possible. About a minute after the phase starts, an aura similar to the one the Claw of Jormag uses will be applied to all players. It will begin to deteriorate their health. At the same time the turrets the NPCs set up will begin firing on the dragon. The battle becomes a fight of attrition. Every 60 seconds an elixir type turret will become available for use by the party. This elixir turret has one ability that is ground targeted. The turret will charge up its ability and fire after 5 seconds. The remaining 9 members of the party need to get inside the indicator circle that appears in order to receive the boon it gives that will remove the damage debuff for about 5 to 10 seconds. The 10th member who used the turret won’t get this buff so its important to alternate players who use the turret.

The Debuff stacks in intensity. After 60 seconds there will be 6 stacks on every player. It is important to remove the stacks with the elixir turret. Once the stacks reach 12 the player can no longer heal and will be taking a ton of damage every tick of the debuff.

Maybe not big raids but organized dungeon styled environments for groups of like 10…

Personally I feel like this is something GW2 is missing. Guild missions are Okay, but they just aren’t quite the same. I need me some organized, elite mission, super hard, 10 man, awesomeness… I even had an idea for an example raid.

Dodge: Can dodge twice at 100% endurance, each consuming 50%. Endurance regens at a rate of 5% per second. Every 10 seconds a new dodge can be used.

Vigor: Doubles endurance recharge rate. Every second of vigor regenerates 10% of total endurance.

Raid – Drakkar’s Reach
Description – This is an elite dungeon or raid that requires the coordination of 10 players to effectively succeed. Drakkar’s Reach is all about the norn fighting back against Jormag and his champions. This raid is just a starter raid with only one encounter. The rest of the story is told through the 5 man dungeon and its 3 paths. For those brave enough to challenge Jormag’s Champion “Drakkar” as it has become known, this elite dungeon for 10 is meant to push the party’s limits.

Upon entering players get access to the usual repair anvil and a few NPCs one of which will start the dungeon. Players must make their way through a path to get to where they will fight the beast. There will be a couple initial trash pulls on the way to the fight area. The trash should consist of at least one champion mob with 5 or 6 Elites mixed in. Their abilities should be run of the mill for their type whatever it may be.

Once players clear the trash they will reach a clearing where the fight will take place. The clearing will have two rises on either side of the entrance. These rises are where cannons and turrets will be placed in typical dragon fight style. The fight will consist of 3 phases in total.

considering turrets would have a 100% dps uptime, as opposed to a zerg trying desperately not to die in the mass of death that is tequatl’s feet. I wonder if using the roughly 9-10k dps of the 6 turrets is a better option for killing him.

As it stands the strat on my server is to say “screw the 1 ability use the 2-5 to support zerg” but the stacks don’t actually decrease damage and the turrets do 2k damage per shot roughly every second.

Should we be using the turrets to apply dps to the boss or solely using them to support a zerg standing at Tequatl’s feet?

EDIT: Perhaps a bit more abstraction is necessary.

Can we kill the boss if we defend the turrets while they damage the boss. Or, is the Zerging of his feet the easier way to go about the fight so we can defeat him. I realize part of the fun is in finding this out for ourselves. But I fear the nerf threads will keep arising if some glimmer of hope isn’t spotted.

Is it possible for the instigator of spam in chat to get banned?

For example, the Instigator says they will give 100g to anybody who guesses a number between 1 and 100,000 and if they guess the right number they get the money. The result being a chat that is impossible to use because it just becomes flooded with numbers.

Is being the cause of this spam a ban-able offense?

Cmon lads, at least test this stuff. This dungeon is so horribly broken I want to cry. If this isn’t what your devs are working on right this minute I am going to lose it. “Oh we have certain priorities, different bugs get different priority”…Yea well if you don’t have this up there in the top 10 as game breaking bugs then there is something wrong with your system.

I saw you posted something about tweaking spawn rate of mobs for path 1. Admittedly it was very slightly better. But grinding through the infinite waves is not what I would call enjoyable or something that I was choose to do over doing another dungeon. That’s just bad design. Here’s a suggestion. Only spawn waves after one of those barrier gates is destroyed. Not on a timer. I don’t know what system you want to put in but I think spawning a wave after destroying one of the barriers is a neat little mechanic that paces a group, yet doesn’t get rediculously overbearing when you have to fight a champion monster…

Path 2 we didn’t try but waiting for word on said “fix” for it to try it again. As you know, mark II golem insta death stuff is gay. But I loved the fight overall before. It required some skill and coordination to pull off smoothly.

Path 3…well its broken in its own ways but don’t fix it till you fix path 1 and 2 because the last thing we need is you guys breaking all 3 paths of the dungeon…so I’d recommend just leaving the bugs in that path until you get the first 2 paths sorted.

Please move this up in your list of priorities!!! thank you.

I’m just curious to hear what others think about the recent buff to the Mark II golem in SE path 2.

Our group entirely clad in exotics, orchestrating over vent was absolutely slaughtered by the outgoing damage of the Mark II golem. Has anybody else had any amount of success with this path so far?

I should mention we were unable to see either golem past 95% hp because in order to survive the endless spam of the electric field ability you have to be paying attention 100% and that makes it impossible to also focus the right target in between invuln swaps……

I have a suggestion to Anet…Stop buffing these dungeons. Why don’t you just focus on releasing new dungeons and buffing those to be harder instead. Fix the dungeons we have now so that groups are able to do them at least…then add in new impossible dungeons so we at least have the old dungeons to run…If this keeps up we won’t even have the dungeons we have now to run because everything will be broken and impossible.

I concur with this statement. They messed up their patch notes on the first run through too. Said Caudecus Manor at first but now it says Sorrow’s Embrace so that’s nice.

A bit more dangerous is an understatement. Our Pioneer Dungeon group as I call it in full exotics were getting straight slaughtered by this encounter. Our tank warrior who build vit and toughness with 2 regen consumables was dieing even minutes after the fight started because the Mark II golem still spams that electric field ability.

Ability pretty much one shots my necro, and it takes 1/4 of our tanky warrior’s hp with just a single attack…he sometimes fires multiple at you at a time which will insta defeated anybody hit by it….anybody who is defeated is permanently removed from the fight because you can’t graveyard zerg this event since there are no waypoints at all nearby…

Please fix this anet, at least test your updates with a crew of guys who didn’t design the fight that don’t know some “specific way” of beating them.

Hey our group got together for Sorrow’s Embrace tonight and we cleared path 3 before trying path 2. We got to the last encounter in the 2nd path and noticed a strange occurrence. Before the patch, the Mark II golem’s electric attack only caused damage when passing through the edge of the ability. Tonight however, it was causing damage to us even while standing in the center of the static field.

This made the event impossible to complete for our group because even while strafing and running around you would take about 1/4 of your health after getting hit by a single electric attack. That was 1/4 of your health for our sword and board warrior who is very tanky, he also had 2 regeneration consumables activated too. I took around half of my hp being a necro. Of course you could dodge out of it but he was spamming the ability every few seconds. and sometimes you would get several of the circles stacked on top of you.

None of these other details were ever an issue on our first couple of runs through this particular encounter. The only thing that seems to have changed, and for the worse, is that we take damage even while at the center of the static field.

Since this change wasn’t included in the patch notes I am assuming it is an unforseen bug and posting it here. Answers would be much appreciated