Guild Wars 2

yup, we definitely seem OP

…underwater.

Necros definitely got more viability since the patch. OP? way too early to tell. My mesmer took some significant nerfs but some of the buffs/changes are opening up new builds that seem very promising, some of which will likely also get the attention of the OP trolls in the near future.

edit: Chasing someone underwater in DS with stacked might and chaining massive crits non-stop did seem very OP last night though. Great fun.

The nerf to BF was massive yet probably called for considering how powerful the ability was before the change. The cooldown increase is a bit of a kick in the teeth however.

Retaliation duration does need to be reduced for some abilities/traits.

The ironic complaints concerning the OP’ness of retaliation now that it actually affects mesmers are rather amusing, coming from some of the same posters who in the past were laying scorn on engineers/thieves for spamming multi-hit/channelled abilities without first checking for buffs on the target. ..

Kravick.4906:

Necro is the worst roaming class. Can you roam? Sure, but more often then not, you will fail, and fail often.

+1

not because we can’t 1v1, but due to limitations in disengaging when 1vX where you have no chance of winning.

taking into account how quickly some professions can stack boons and how hard it is to actually land this ability, a cooldown reduction or some sort of LF gain on use will be required to keep this slotted, otherwise it may turn into yet another never used utility.

Sounds very interesting. The confirmation that weakness will effect crits is also very encouraging and really should help with attrition (has the potential to make us very tough to take down considering our AoE weakness capabilities, very exciting!)

Unfortunately the Necro really suffers from limitations that were in place to stop things like Shade (cc immunity while in DS), Soul Stealer (faster LF gen) from being OP. When the powerful traits were removed, the limitations on DS were left in place leaving us more than a little broken with DS.

DS itself was never really the problem, just those traits that used to exist.

edit: just those ‘awesome’ traits that used to exist

For the Necro to truly fulfil the role of an attrition profession and compete against the invul/stealth/evade mechanics available to other professions I would like to see LF generation to be accessible to the Necro whilst in DS, allowing the Necro to stay in DS for longer periods of time as a true 3rd weapon-set. Two changes I believe would help achieve this:

1. Utilities to be visible and usable in DS. The hard work is done now that DS has moved from the custom UI.

2. Healing/regen affect LF when in DS (regen would offset decay somewhat).

Good, bad, silly?

With announced plans to overhaul Necros and give them another DS skill and possibly a new condition, it’s my hope that the developers are focused on enhancing the uniqueness of other professions and not removing things from the mesmer.

Due to time constraints and the realisation/acceptance that I’ll never reach the lofty heights of skill some PVP players achieve, I spent time leveling each profession looking for the easiest one to obtain results with in WvW.

I chose the mesmer in the end. Why? Because I like to win and the mesmer is by far the easiest class for the average player to obtain result with. In a battle of mediocrity (between similarly ‘low/average’ skilled players) the mesmer has a good chance of coming out on top, and against new/bad players its a bloodbath, pop a few clones and inexperienced players really don’t stand a chance.

As the skills level goes up, things change quite a lot and you’ll find good players of other professions giving you a run for your money. Fortunately most players are just bad/average and this works to the advantage of every mesmer especially in WvW when facing 1vX odds, there is a good chance that most of X are average at best, helping to further the confusion clones make through herd mentality of your opponents.

Put me up against a ‘good’ player of most professions and I’ll probably lose, the balancing is there, just not for the new/average player.

Jackums.3496:

NerfedWar.8749:

Just my own experience, but the main tell for me that points to mesmers being a little too strong with less counters than other professions is that I only really fear other mesmers when playing my mesmer.

Not saying that I can’t be beat by other professions, of course I can, but fighting mesmers is as difficult on my mesmer as it is when I’m playing another profession.

That’s less a product of power and more a product of play style.

…Think of it like rock-paper-scissors.

Let me rephrase in your own language. I see paper-rock-rock-rock-paper-paper-paper-scissors…. with the mesmer being the paper. My biggest issue is when I meet another paper, not a somewhat rare scissors.

Just my own experience, but the main tell for me that points to mesmers being a little too strong with less counters than other professions is that I only really fear other mesmers when playing my mesmer.

Not saying that I can’t be beat by other professions, of course I can, but fighting mesmers is as difficult on my mesmer as it is when I’m playing another profession.

Bhawb.7408:

They don’t want us to have finishers, especially on weapons, since we are in the contending for most combo fields possible.

I think they should remove one or two fields and add one or two finishers so that we have more diversity of play. I really enjoy the added dimension combos add to the game and it’s a pity to be so restricted when solo.

The Kay.6539:

Hello guys, lately I’ve ….

I have 4 level 80 characters with full exotics, but only 3 pink pieces of jewerly spread across them. The classes are: Warrior (cookie cutter zerker), Elementalist (d/d jack of all trades), Engineer (boring grenade spammer) and my necro, which is by far the most powerful class I have.

The Kay, whilst I applaud your enthusiasm for the class, stating the necro to be by far your most powerful class seems strange if not disingenuous, and as much of a troll post as those claiming we are brokenly underpowered.

Many of us here love the concept and play-style of the Necro, but it’s hard not to see and feel the need to discuss shortcomings when you play the class on a daily basis (the same applies to all classes).

The Necro is very strong in many facets of the game, but there are issues that should be discussed.

1. the variety of possible play-styles and builds.
2. the concept of a second on demand health bar with a separate skill-set.
3. Minions, I love the idea, I like the variety.
4. Luring people looking for an easy necro kill whilst WvW roaming and killing them with my norn wolf and snow leopard forms.
5. Finding fun ways to make the most of the wurm teleport.

Can’t see any reason not to give mesmers a signet with a speed enhancing passive (and the usual mediocre active). It’s offset by the need to drop another useful utility, a decision other classes need to make.

If I’m running around solo or with a couple of friends then I use a siphon based build. Your health won’t budge against a couple of veterans and it’s pretty effective in 1v1s if you time your boon removal and condition transfers correctly.

Unfortunately in 1vX or XvX minions drop way too fast from all the splash damage, no need for anyone to target them, they drop like flies.

Biggest issue I find with the necro is the poor disengage capabilities unless you utility-up fully for spec-walk/worm to juke your way to freedom. Having a core weapon based defensive disengage (think mesmer staff) is on my wish list.

Thanks Targuil! Finally an explanation why my necro bites the dust so quickly in downed state compared to my other toons. Looking forward to a response on this one (or better still a fix

a balanced approach would be to provide a +25 passive signet with a weak active like many other classes. We don’t need anything more or less than this. We’d have to give up a slot then like other classes.

Off topic…. I prefer Norn for WvW . The cooldown is long, but the 1600 unit Dash followed by Prowl (stealth) is a life saver when running into the zerg when roaming.

yup it’s pretty good now. You also need to take into account the hits the minion takes on your behalf.

lets hope it is intentional…

DS was changed some months back, it’s a nice buff and makes the necro the best base jumper in the game
I guess those who play WvW picked up on the change quite quickly due to the amount of cliffs and others missed the change.

I find that in group battles and sieges (attack & defence) , clever positioning of the Flesh Worm can be one of the greatest survival assets to the necro when the kitten hits the fan. I carry Wormy everywhere I go and place him way back out of range to use him as a quick escape mechanism. Doesn’t help much with roaming though…

For roaming I usually drop WoC and Chillblains then leg-it towards the nearest choke point or cliff. A timely knockdown from the Flesh Golem can save your hide (even if it doesn’t, it is therapeutic seeing those chasing you on their kitten for a couple of seconds).

Whilst I understand the concerns of the OP, I also appreciate the strategic trade-off decision one needs to make on a regular basis and to whether to slot a 25% signet or something else.

Biggest gripe I have is that we don’t have the facility to quickly switch pre-configured sets of weapons and utilities when out of combat.

Thieves are undoubtedly annoying what with stealth, burst, mobility (and of course culling)…

however,
I believe the main reason they are labelled as being OP is due to how devastating a fully geared lvl 80 can be against up-scaled players.

Other classes obliterate up-scaled players too, but you can normally see them and at least have time to react and fool yourself into thinking you have a chance…

The impact of a good thief putting you into downstate (and stomped) before you can even see your opponent can leave a rather bad taste in your mouth (even when you expect to lose due to level/gear differences).

Soulwatcher.2604:

VOLKON.1290:

Soulwatcher.2604:

VOLKON.1290:

Soulwatcher.2604:

VOLKON.1290:

Soulwatcher.2604:

VOLKON.1290:

Soulwatcher.2604:

VOLKON.1290:

Soulwatcher.2604:

Rannulf.9417:

Soulwatcher.2604:

Thorp.7250:

Soulwatcher.2604:

So you want the item prices to keep going up and you want to make less money to buy the items?

I don’t recall saying that at all.

Prices only go up to a point which people are willing to pay. It is called a relative value.

If you flood the market with gold you inflate prices to unobtainable levels for new players. While it might make you feel all warm and fuzzy inside seeing big numbers it ruins the game.

The cost of crafting materials should always be less than the items they create. It wasn’t like that before.

I never said anything about flooding the market with gold. And its already to the point where is hard for new players to buy items. Anyone trying to buy exotic’s at level 80 today is going to have a very hard time.

no their not, exotics are easy, from lvl1 to lvl80 you gather nodes, ore, plant, trees whatever and you sell it, you will easily get more than enough to buy a full exotic set, so please don’t spout you bullkitten.

Kind of hard to sell materials on the trading post when most of them are the same price or less then a vendor would give you. Or did you not bother check that?

Use those materials to craft your own exotics, or use karma to purchase them. Gold really is a minor currency in the overall scheme in this game. You can have millions of gold and still be unable to buy the Orrian exotics.

I have 530k karma the Orr exotics are junk for a necro.

Oh… you’re one of those people that thinks they need to specialize into certain builds, aren’t you?

I’m using pretty much no more than one piece per vendor in addition to balancing my traits across multiple lines rather than fill a couple to 30. So far there’s nothing I can’t handle being balanced. (Mesmer, btw)

So no, the Orr exotics aren’t junk, you’ve just convinced yourself that they are. In that case, people can still craft exotics quite fine using nominal amounts of gold. You haven’t changed the fact that gold is only one currency in the game, and not the most important one at that.

My necro destroys, so I guess my build must be working!

Based on your evident skill at dodging I’m inclined to believe you.

For give me I was wrong I forgot about all the massive damage healing power gives…….

Dodging of the fact that gold is at best a secondary currency in this game and that it’s not difficult to be decked out in full exotics without having to spend much, if any, at all. As long as you have enough for travel and repairs there’s no limitations that are placed on you for not having a ton of gold.

Oh, and there’s more than damage in this game.

DId you even read my first post? Go back to the first page, I said you can make enough gold to buy what you need but you will never be wealthy or rich.

You’re doing an impressive job at missing the point. You could have a million gold, but you still wouldn’t be wealthy or rich. Gold is only one of many currencies in this game, and certainly not the most important.

I 100% agree with what you said but whats wrong if I want to put the time and effort into making a lot of gold? As the game stands right now you can put all the time in the world into the game and your not going to make a lot of gold.

If whay you say is correct then Anet are doing a good job of ensuring that the purchasing of gems are an attractive but not essential option for players and a source of income for themselves = continued support and development of the game.

Add in Chillblains for poison field and your exploding minions will give you area weakness. Necrotic grasp will also proc condition removal for as long as the well on blood light field is active.
Finally drop a well for a dark field and minon explosions will proc blindness, whilst necrotic grasp will do some life stealing.

Combos are awesome! Just wish we had fields on our other weapons, not just staff.

@Jay (OP):

I’ve played with similar builds in the past and I haven’t really had the success you’ve been experiencing. This may well (very likely) be down to a lack of skill/experience on my part is terms of positioning/timing.

Would be great if you could post a video of the build in action, will help loads.

Finally, many thanks for contributing your experiences with the build, my Ele play is way behind my Necro at the moment and I’m trying to learn from you more experienced players (so many skills and combo options! my Ele would love a skill cooldown addon lol).

@Force.5861: I can be a bit dim witted sometimes I think the shock of seeing Rick after all these years was just too much!

check the wiki, there are some notes with regards the stacking (or not) of passive and active move speed buffs.

Force.5861:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQw4w9WgXcQ

this video demonstrates the moves my elementalist has and the voiceover helps explain my tenacity and my desire to not give up on my opponents.

…

you’ve linked to a Rick Astley music video…

Just want to congratulate the OP on a most entertaining video. Inspired me to take a break from my Necro and dust off my Ele.

Will be taking my Ele out for another spin tonight. I learned a few tricks from your video that I can’t wait to put into practice.

Many thanks again for the inspiration and, great work!

Some other games have forced simplified geometry/reduced particles/reduced draw-distance when going via the Cider wrapper, giving the impression of similar FPS under bootcamp and osx (all an illusion really as what is being rendered under coder/osx is much less GPU intensive).

Not that I really care as I just want a playable GW2 OSX experience, but comparing screenshots from GW2 running max settings under Windows/Bootcamp and the same settings under Cider/OSX seems to indicate that the Cider wrapper does not apply (or does not support) all the DirectX effects/shaders by default anyway.

Myself, I’d be happy with some heavy-handed performance tweaks for when I don’t want to reboot into Windows to get a quick GW2 fix, even at the expense of the game looking like a low poly EverQuest or similar.

I’ve been wondering whether going through the Cider wrapper results in pretty consistent 10-15 FPS drop rather than it being percentage based.

This may explain why whose of us running systems that get a playable 30ish FPS in bootcamp find the game unplayable through OSX, whilst those on higher end specs getting 50+FPS in bootcamp still get a good 40FPS under OSX.

2010 Macbook Pro (2.8 Ghz core 2 duo, 8Gb Ram, nvidia 9600, game installed on SSD) here, performance is pretty much as expected for a Cider wrapped app on my system (based on experience with CoH and WAR):

FPS taken in Citadel in a closed room facing a bunch of NPCs, same location and facing for both samples.

• Cider Min settings (best performance) – 13FPS dropping to 6-8FPS as I spin around.
• Bootcamp Win 7 (same settings) – 32 FPS dropping to 26-28FPS as I spin around.

Not at all surprised by the performance I’m getting but very surprised by the figures being posted by some individuals, especially on iMacs (see the OPs (Enoch) quoted FPS).

Looks like there is either:

• some sort of bottleneck in the Cider wrapper on older systems or graphic cards that isn’t there on newer systems.
• people have poorly configured windows systems that are giving them lower FPS, skewing the reported results.

I guess there could be loads of reasons, just very surprised at the variation in reported results.

Looking forward to getting home this weekend where my i7 iMac will be put to the tests to see if it gets similar results to those posted here.

vince.5937:

Giddeon.3429:

My favorite part of this thread is someone whining about being corrected that WINE (Wine Is Not an Emulator) is not emulation and then tries to argue that it is emulation anyway.

Doesn’t matter what someone named it, its primary function is emulation as definable by any dictionary. :P

I’m happy about the mac client too. I just don’t want the issues seen with other Transgaming ports to crop up here as well.

Hehe, this goes back to the early days of Wine when it should have been called WINVM (or WINVM Is Not a Virtual Machine), but that’s just not catchy

So yes, Wine does ‘emulate’ an ever increasing number of Win32 APIs but as a lightweight translation layer rather than a full blown system emulator. Bottom line, it IS an emulator of sorts, which is why even in their docs you’ll see them refer to Wine as “Wine Is Not <that kind of> Emulator”.

Just about to test on my macbook now, fingers crossed it works well !

Enoch.1058:

I have been using Wine (the foundation of Cider) for years to run Windows game in Linux and Mac. Indeed, it’s how I ran GW1 for a long time. Your mileage with compatibility layers will vary depending on the quality of the source application. Cider is a very straightforward piece of software and a lot of the performance issues, crashes, and memory leaks ….

Cider was a branch off a VERY old version of Wine and today they are very different products. Based on experience with WAR and CoH my expectations are pretty low… but one always hopes to be suprised

I’m looking forward to comparing the Cider wrapper performance against Wine/Crossover.. should be interesting. Hopefully TG’ing have added some value in terms of performance/stability above and beyond acting as a simple executable wrapper…

DS Wish list:

1. Life Force regens when out of combat.
2. DS ability 1 (Life Blast) casts quicker.
3. DS ability 2 (Dark Path) casts quicker.
4. DS ability 3 (Doom) fears for 2 secs AoE.