Guild Wars 2

It’s a big WvW nerf too, was ping ponged about mercilessly last night during our raid. Our necros all agreed it was a(nother) big nerf to Lich in this game mode.

Osu.6307:

Imo, Warrs got hit the hardest by the stab change. I run balanced stance, dolyak signet, and last stand which got me 24 seconds of stab before. Now, 5 seconds into a push I’m getting knocked around like a ping pong ball.

You’re doing it wrong apparently, you want to ditch that melee stuff, it’s sooooo 2014. All warriors should be running longbow/rifle and pew pewing from the back with the rangers and eles. Adapt or die, it’s the only way.

Belenwyn.8674:

pejot.4806:

Also, there was already soft CC for you to use, stability didn’t protect from immob/chill/cripple.

This gap will be closed by resistance.

And there I think we have our answer. You are quite right, resistance + old stability would be OP.

However they are balancing for something which is not even in the game yet, and won’t be for goodness knows how long, leaving us with this broken and unbalanced interim, and I do believe that even with resistance in the game this stability nerf will just make for more tedious combat.

+1 to this. Crafted it a couple of days ago, went raiding with my guild last night and it was two hours until anyone even noticed I had it (“does someone have the legendary wh or something?” was the message in chat).

The mist is quite cool and subtle (I like that, it’s no Moot discoball or Quip) but the active effects are utterly invisible/inaudible in normal play and the weapon itself doesn’t stand out in any way. Hardly legendary in its effects, colour me somewhat disappointed for all the hours I put into getting it.

IMO it needs the sound tweaking to make it a more audible howl, needs the wolf effect to be a bit more pronounced and the night time effect needs to come back to make the weapon stand out a little.

I’ve been seeing this a lot recently as I’ve been doing the World Boss Train™ to farm ectos. The shaman seems to be the worst, and I also sometimes see “Out of Range” messages despite standing right next to him. Perhaps that is down to the Life Blast piercing trait though and mobs standing behind him?

Never seen it in WvW though, although tbf with ~15 of us they go down so quickly I only ever get an axe #2 channel off.

Can I just register a big fat “no” to map population reduction suggestion? Organised WvW guilds want to play together on the same map, even in EU silver league we sometimes have to queue to get everyone on a BL when we are running 15-20. Don’t make it harder for guilds to play together.

We go to BLs looking for fights, lowering the map pop will reduce the likelihood of us finding them. Fewer players spread over the same map area doesn’t strike me as a good idea unless you like PvD.

Ever try taking T3 garri with 15 when it’s defended and sieged up with ACs and trebs? It can’t be done, you need numbers (and rightly so). Reducing the number of attackers will just make it easier for PPT servers to bunker up in their keeps and towers and trust me we really don’t want that. “Epic siege battles”, such fun lol

Gunnar’s Hold player, playing last night on Aurora Glade BL. I had just managed to get in after queuing and ran from the GH spawn to Hills where the rest of my guild were fighting to cap the keep. I was just entering through the broken north outer gate when I was instantly put in the defeated state without entering combat. The guards had all been killed and hadn’t respawned, there were no enemy players in sight (they were all fighting the rest of the guild in Inner) and there was nothing in my combat log to tell me what killed me.

To add insult to injury once they capped I couldn’t be res’ed, so had to respawn and run all the way back across the map a second time. WTH?

@Genotix, good man, keep it up, moar plz
@Flamey, pfft pineapples? I was juggling kittens
But yeah you SLAY mob all you did last night was sit inside your towers using cannons and ACs when it was 50 of you against just one of me. Then you glitched through the gate and I single handedly took you all down with just a flame ram blueprint whilst under the influence of my yak transform tonic. I would post a screenshot but I don’t want to blind you with my sheer power of awesomeness.
@TheRestOfTheThread, sorry, bored at work today

+1 and +lots more. When the fields are flying in a big ZvZ clash it’s really hard to tell who is up and who is not in the sea of red. Or just hide the nametags of defeated players altogether, have it as an optional setting so those who want to dance on a defeated enemy’s face can still do so if they want.

Having great fun in this matchup so far, and this is the most epic matchup thread in ages. But please, can we have some more zoom hacking accusations and there really haven’t been enough mentions of inappropriate golem rushes – we are Golem’s Hold after all.

Nonetheless great drama, I’m on the edge of my seat for the next installment. Sadly I’ve run out of popcorn but I’m about to phone out for pizza, anyone in?

+1 for the “fire and forget” condition damage calculations. Seems the obvious compromise to fix the damage per tick at the time of application rather than polling every player every second to update the numbers. OK it might not be so accurate but it’s a kitten ed sight better than the ridiculous situation we have now, especially when non-condition builds spam conditions like there is no tomorrow to further exacerbate it.

I would definitely agree with the lower drop rates. Doing a guild raid as a staff ele last night I reckon I got less than a third of the number of drops I would normally expect in an evening, grouped in a 5 man party. Going by the Heavy Loot Bag count I would normally expect ~50 and I had 15. Other guildies also reported the same reduced drop rate.

By nerfing the drop rate in the Crown Pavilion I suspect they have also done the same to WvW.

tsubus.8761:

After another hard night’s work, with many very, very nice fights with both WSR, and UW, I almost reached the point of having fun. Because of this risk, and the undoubtedly serious consequences I would receive from the Department of Seriousness of the Velocity Corporation, I felt forced to stop working and go home for the night.

Thank you in any case for all the great fights. I have killed and have been killed many times, but here is a nice fight that I remember vividly (VcY vs WSR): http://www.twitch.tv/tsubus/c/2635355

Regards,
Radese

I was Very Seriously on the receiving end of all that. I have submitted form AEG3557/F to your Claims Department in lieu of my armour repairs. Well played as usual.

Skoteinos.4213:

No Mesmer can survive a “melee train” … You just try to avoid it.
Over 2000 Armor is not bad for a Mesmer.
Blink and Stealth combination ..and a Hard attack is the best defence.

Thanks, that was kind of my original thought when creating the build I did as it worked a treat in PvE with all the blinks etc, but clearly I’m not up to scratch in terms of play style for Grownups Gw2 yet I was just curious if there was something else I was missing.

Personally I think I’ll take the hit and re-gear to Soldier’s/Knight’s and keep my existing ascended zerker trinks, that’ll give me something like 19.5k health and 2.5k armour which might give me more chance of overcoming my “technical difficulties”. Trouble is I’m having too much fun on my recently OP Necro main right now :p

I’m extremely curious how your WvW build actually works out in a zerg given it is almost entirely glass cannon. I’ve shelved my mesmer (who was 0/20/20/0/30 in Rampagers/Berserkers) because I was rally fodder in big group fights and have been looking (half heartedly admittedly) for a replacement build. How on earth do you survive the melee train that is the current meta?

The Boz.2038:

As far as I know, DS can tank falling damage only if the damage is less than your remaining DS. If it isn’t, it kills you just as well.

I fell from the very top near the diving goggles on numerous occasions and activated DS before I hit the ground and I didn’t die. It’s been like this for a while now, it used to work the way you suggest though.

Was that at Golanta last night? That was pretty epic, although the skill lag was also about the worst I have ever experienced. God knows how many lootbags got away because of the failure of my “F” key alone

flow.6043:

Every buff you give to an average player will be amplified in effectiveness for a pro.
So I don’t think you can sepereate balancing for high lvl sPvP and the rest, but I would sure like to hear a suggestion on that, if you could elaborate…

Sorry I’ll rephrase; it only seems to be spvp players complaining so please just do whatever balancing is required in spvp only. I can’t see how it’s an issue in WvW or PvE. The burning gives a small damage boost and helps with bleed cap problems as it stacks duration which can only be good, but I really don’t see it being OP. DS#5 if anything has had a far greater impact in the way I play.

I’ve said this elsewhere but if the balance problem exists in high level sPVP then fix it there; leave the rest of us alone please. Don’t balance the rest of the game based on a tiny minority of elite players.

Anchoku.8142:

Hanzo, it sounds like you are disappointed by Dhuumfire. I tried it out, myself, and found it synergizes best with the Curses line’s Lingering Curse scepter condition duration buff. Add a slice of pizza and some condi duration runes with proc on crit sigils or just sigil of force. Scepter, to me, seemed like a power/axe build equivalent that plays a bit more like conditionmancer.

Dhuumfire does very little, if anything, for MM, wells, and spectral skills. It has some potential with corruption utilities, specifically BiP and Epidemic, but if you are running axe the trade between axe training on a powermancer hybrid and lingering curses on a conditionmancer hybrid may not be significant.

Dhuumfire buffed another hybrid variant for those who want to run scepter and slipped axe training down to master level for those who like axe. The change did enable more damage overall but it is not an OP buff as many had hoped.

Wait what? Lingering Curse affects on-crit effects? Now I never knew that, I thought it was just a base increase to conditions applied by the Sceptre ie these ones http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Scepter#Necromancer_Necromancer

sorrow.2364:

I DON’T CARE!
This topic isn’t intended to discuss about if the Necro is OP or not, but still each post you make you keep bringing the discussion in.
Is it that hard to understand?

I don’t even think the Necro is OP, but people and top grade players do. So get used to it and face the eventuality of a nerf.

I proposed quite a simple fix and the rest of it was arguing why it only needs to be for sPVP. Sorry should have written it better, it just annoys me that Anet always seems to balance for the elite pro players so the post turned into something of a rant.

sorrow.2364:

Why people keep arguing about if condimancers are OP or not?
Don’t do in this topic.
It’s 99% sure that the nerf is coming, it doesn’t matter if it is needed or not. I made this topic just to suggest a way to fix the problem without putting necromancers again in the lowest grade of the food chain.

Because I disagree whether the Necro is OP or not. In small scale PVP then yes I can see how it is OP in the hands of a skilled player. However in WvW it certainly is not. I run in an organised guild and our raid leader asks for (and I quote) “8 guards, 6 warriors, 2 spots for other melee like ranger/gs or d/d ele, 3 staff ele’s, 2 mesmers, 4 necro’s/rangers/engi’s/extra ele”. If we were OP then surely he wouldn’t be putting us in the afterthought category? I certainly don’t feel OP when playing, I do better when on my Staff ele and I don’t hear anyone calling them OP or asking for nerfs?

In PvE we now have access to a damaging condition that stacks duration so we don’t have to worry about the bleed cap quite so much. Why is this so bad?

So then it’s an sPVP problem, so solve it in sPVP by doing to Terror what they did to Confusion and halving its damage. No need to mess it up for everyone else who finally feel as though they are finally in a good place.

If it’s an sPVP problem then nerf it in sPVP, if that’s where these elite players complaining of OPness exist. The rest of us mere mortals who have struggled with underpowered and poorly synergised builds for months finally have some toys to play with, don’t take them away again please.

Frenzy/Bull’s Charge/100 Blades does a ton more damage. Backstab/Cloak and Dagger/Heartseeker does a ton more damage. Mind Wrack/Blurred Frenzy does a ton more damage. Are you going to nerf those too?

RcKelly.9263:

[Lion] Recruiting.

Troll post is trolling. Good one, I lol’d xD

flow.6043:

Bump for Great Justice.

Also, if unblockable was merged with reduced cooldowns, considering how powerful the 30Spite/30Curses combo with burning and terror has become, I think that Staff Mastery would be a too easy pick if it was an adept trait.

I still believe that the greater size should standard, but a merged Mark trait would have to become master tier then.

Agreed, but what about keeping them as they are and just moving them to the 5/15 point minors? Killing 2 useless traits ftw! Don’t think it will happen though, from what I’ve seen almost all weapon cooldown reduction traits are majors (the only one I can think of that is not is the Mesmer’s Ilusionist’s Celerity which just got bumped to Grandmaster).

spiritus.7983:

this funny enough is a problem, the roaming guilds are looking for fights and swords on the map. When one orange swords pops up you atract guilds from miles away.
From your point of view its “OMG they blobing”, from our point of view “Rush it before other guilds gets there first”… but most of the time we get there almost the same time.

lol it’s WoW mob tagging on a grand scale.

Not quite sure how that makes me feel :p

/againnotserious

Blake.2973:

Thank you. I use bip for the might (with sos it ’s amazing 13 stacks ). I mostly roam but i slot epidemic when in large battles (siege ). I will try this chill when you blind ab!
Ty again

Pfft, Might is for Guardians/Warriors/Eles

In all seriousness if you are running with a decent group then Might stacking and sharing should be the responsibility of the above professions. Stack on a fire field and get them to repeatedly blast it and you’ll soon have group wide 25 Might with no need to worry about self-generating it.

Blake.2973:

I was thinking of something like this for wvw, after i’ve tried both burning and terror build ! Both are really great and i wish i could benefit from both.

I was thinking, however, at somethnig like this : http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fQAQNArYWjMaF7pbeb87JApCPD9oXdrN6BxBnMA-TMAjKWQMtA

(PS i know my build editor is not updated) : with the food i have +70% condition duration, so i wonder if it’ even useful to go for the necromancer runes, and i’m thinking of keeping my undead set fot the condition damage bonus. My fears last for 1,75 sec, is it really useful to go for +20%, as i ’m not even sure i would get another tick ?

I can swap for spectral walk instead of BiP for roaming/runnig long, but the new “Signet of spite” is really a “i win” move for condimancer, so i can’t get use to plya without it !

What do you think about this “Pyroterrorcondimancer” build ? (that would be “Terror, fire and blood” )

It depends on how you play in WvW I would say, it looks decent for roaming. If you are part of an organised group then my criticism would be around the utility choices:

• BiP is single target and needs to run a long time to be worth it. The stacks will usually be cleansed quickly thus not giving the full advertised damage.
• Some kind of stun breaker like Spectral Walk is a must IMO.
• If you’re running Plague consider switching out Haemophilia for Chilling Darkness – it can make #2 pretty awesome (as long as someone doesn’t strip your stability and root you ). With the DS and Weakness buffs it might be worth thinking of Weakening Shroud in the Adept slot as well. More Bleed duration doesn’t help that much.
• Finally no Epidemic? I know it’s not as good as it once was but it’s still one of our stronger skills, especially if you’re nailing someone with your Signet of Spite, follow it up with Epi and double your fun.

@spiritus The trouble is there are so many of you and so few of us you’ve run out of people to fight, so you’ve started on yourselves in desperation.

/notserious

Well the trouble is we only ever really have one organised group of the type that CHvc, FURY et al are looking for so it’s inevitable that they will all descend on us once we’ve been spotted.

I am going to try 30/20/20/0/0 in WvW and see how that pans out in zerg v zerg fighting. Staff/Scepter/Dagger with a Rabid/Carrion mix and undead runes. Spite: V, VII, XII; Curses: Chilling Darkness/Terror (I forget which numbers they are since the change); Death: II, V.

Take Spectral Wall, Spectral Walk, Epidemic and Plague as utilities. As Staff gets much more use in WvW zerg fights than Sceptre/Dagger it seemed (to me at least) sensible to trait for that over 30 in Curses.

Dingle.2743:

ThiBash.5634:

Theoretically it should also double the effects of glyphs if you cast those while under the effects of 2 (or more) attunements.

Instead the reverse happens for some glyphs, which simply can’t decide which function to use and don’t do anything (Elemental Power does this, and possibly Renewal)

Well that sucks, but it would explain why I’m not getting attunement swap boons when switching when it’s on my bar. I just came in here to find out if a new bug had been introduced in the last patch but it seems I’ve now got the answer.

EDIT: scratch that, I’ve just noticed I borked my traits up, nothing to see here.

FWIW https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/pvp/wuvwuv/Crashes-in-WvW/2079878 at least they have acknowledged it.

Also see discussion here https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/pvp/wuvwuv/Disconnecting-in-WVW/first#post2077600 which relates, seems it it quite widespread.

FWIW I’m not getting disconnects when this happens, I get a CTD. And it doesn’t appear to be just in WvW either, I had crashes in Orr too.

LordPhantom.1678:

-rebuild doesn’t seem to be a valid command line option.
Did you mean -repair?
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Command_line_arguments

Doh, yes sorry…

I didn’t suffer this in WvW (Whiteside Ridge as well) but I had it every 10 minutes when I was doing some world completion in Orr earlier; thought I had a corrupted client so did a rebuild and it seemed ok after doing that – start the client with the “- rebuild” command line switch. Could be complete coincidence of course.

If you’re running Plague elite then consider Chilling Darkness from Curses rather than Master of Corruption; I swapped it for Haemophilia and had a blast with it last night when running with our guild group, it seemed pretty effective. The corruption skills are on quite a low cooldown anyway and are quite hit and miss these days so IMO it’s not worth building around them.

Andele.1306:

Lingering curses goes over the cap since it increases base duration of condis on scepter not actually giving condition duration (thus also increasing the efficiency of the cond duration you already got), hemophilia on the other hand is just pretty boring/kinda useless in comparison to how other stuff could impact your gameplay).

!Ding! Lightbulb moment – LC increases base duration, thanks for that I finally understand how that trait works now. I think you’re right, Haemophilia is heading for the trash.

Is Chilling Darkness > Haemophilia? Honestly curious as it is something I have been thinking about swapping around but haven’t got around to trying. I know conditions do drop off quickly in WvW so I haven’t really gone out of my way to stack bleed duration (20% from points in spite, 36% from pizza, 33% from Lingering Curse all of which come “for free” with the build I run) but with Haemophilia I on top I think that takes me over the magic 100% duration – if Lingering Curse is multiplicative? – which is supposedly the “holy grail” so we get an extra tick from Barbed Precision right? What are your thoughts? Am I just plain wrong (as usual)?

Crossplay.2067:

…good stuff…

Sharper Images will make your clones inflict bleed when they crit and that pairs well with Empowered Illusions which gives them 15% more damage.

…other good stuff…

??? I thought that the only thing that affects bleed damage is the condition damage stat, and that %dmg increase traits only affect direct damage. Certainly that’s how it works for all the Necro traits. Is that different here?

I am doing something like this myself, using staff/sw+focus battle/bloodlust sigils and 3xHoelbrak and 3xFire runes and the might on dodge food. 0/20/20/0/30 traits to give a total of 60% Might duration. Rampager armour/weapons and ’zerker trinks for that glass cannon look (my other 80 is a condition necro so I wanted something very different to play from that).

Seems to work ok although if I switch sw+focus for a GS then Mirror Blade really gives a major boost to it especially as I take Illusionary Elasticity. I just can’t stand the lack of swiftness getting around the map though so I don’t use that very often.

As I suck at playing this game though it’s hard to tell whether it’s good or not though

DanyK.3842:

We run exclusively by ourselves and had 8 people last night… all that aside we did get run over by WBC and infantry while trying to take cliffside. That was 30 of you vs the 8 of us then. Anyway does WBC do GvG fights? We’re a small guild and it’s just for fun and experience.
I really don’t get the hostile attitude towards fights at windmill. We just want to replace a FUN feature that has not been made in this game.

Nothing against you guys windmilling away to your heart’s content – indeed you seemed to keep the Arborstone zerg nicely tied up down there for a while

What was a bit dull was turtling south of Bay and trying to draw us out of the keep so you could farm some badges. We couldn’t leave you to go off and do our thing because otherwise we would have come back to a green-painted keep and we don’t like green, it clashes with Fror’s socks. So we had to sit there and look at you looking at us looking at you….

DanyK.3842:

Whenever is Tz outmanned tho? :P
Also the fight in front of bay gate on WSR border seems to be a week-long fair. Good place to farm kills but gets boring especially because you WSR guys always run back to the siege as soon as you see us even when we run around 1/4 of your numbers.

Come on people we need GvG’s! I’m sure anyone can get 10 people together to have fun with us.

Cya on the field!

Your phrase “great place to farm kills” says exactly why we end up back behind the walls; if we don’t we just get farmed and that’s no fun thank you. Getting flattened by FURY (to pick last night’s steamroller du jour) when running with the pugs gets old rather quickly, we just don’t have the number of organised guilds you do. Quite frankly we’re all a bit busy trying to hold on to what we’ve got and not end up in T9 so we don’t have resources to go on the offensive and certainly not GvG

Sounds as though you have similar thinking to me; I love the staff and didn’t want to give it up, so I ended up with Staff/Sword/Focus and 0/20/20/0/30 traits. Rampager’s gear/weapons and Berserker trinkets. A lot less survivability than yours for certain but with Decoy/Mass Invis/Chaos Armour/Chaos Storm/Phase Retreat I find I’ve still got enough (with some condition damage for the lulz) but have burst when switching to the sword.

Oozo.7856:

Not sure what is going on here. I’m seeing retaliation hit people in the 350 area on my NECRO which is condition spec. It seems to be doing more damage to me.

I was getting 420 ticks on my Mesmer while running away with just my frickin’ clones hitting, y’know the ones that do approximately zero damage? A few people in our guild said they thought retaliation had been buffed – perhaps it’s just because we can actually see it now.

When I was fighting ranged I would tend to use Blood is Power/Dagger #4 on one of them as that very quickly gave them 4 long lasting bleed stacks backed by 10 Might and a blind, they would go down quickly and allow me to focus on another mob.

More importantly though, kite them through line of sight denial. Ranged will move if you LOS them, so run behind something so they are forced to move to hit you, you’ll probably find they’ll clump up at a spot where they can see you again and allow you to effectively AoE them.

Thor Rising.7850:

Highest I’ve ticked at is around 155, usually in the 120-130 range though. I need to get a sigil of corruption though.

Don’t forget that vulnerability adds damage to your bleeds. 20ish stacks of vulnerability makes a huge difference in your condition damage.

Wait, what? I thought nothing affected condition damage ticks other than the condition damage stat itself and Vuln/%damage increases from traits/runes/sigils affected direct damage only.

(it was a long time ago but…) I seem to recall struggling at low levels until I got my Flesh Golem who could then tank for me. Things became a lot easier after that, so it may be worth considering running with one of the melee minions until you get your elite.

I regret not making my condition Necro Asuran – pain inverter would give easy access to one of the best conditions in the game and one that Necros don’t have without corrupting a boon. Condition burst!

I do love my Asuran Mesmer though, purely for the aesthetics.

It’s fair to say that any server coming down from the current T7 matchup would dominate T8 and Dzagonur are no different. I think WSR vs Arborstone vs Blacktide would be an interesting one but with T9 being what it is that won’t ever happen.

Welcome to T8 chaps, although I get the impression you won’t be here for long. From my point of view fighting VcY was hard work and costly in terms of repair bills It’s clear to see you guys are much better organised than most guilds I have seen at this level, IMO we can learn a lot from you although I won’t be sad to see the back of you when RoS tiers up as it’s pretty demoralising to be downed in seconds when you come calling. “Here comes the steamroller” was all too evident in guild chat last night!

@Nymph, to us at this level 30 toons is a blob :p