Showing Posts Upvoted By Ramoth.9064:

Scourge come 22nd

in Necromancer

Posted by: Kam.4092

Kam.4092

I don’t see it being touched for a while, because the “testers” during the demo were mostly garbage, and didn’t have enough of a brain to not stand inside of Sand Shades. The average player in this game is absolute garbage, and just expects a free win for trying.

Specs like Scourge prevent this attitude. It’s going to be Dragonhunter 2.0.

I see it getting nerfed in PvP, but not in WvW unless it’s split balanced. I don’t see it being touched in PvE for weeks until it’s been properly tested in Raids and Fractals. I expect them to remove the ICD on Demonic Lore, and nerf our AoE. I mean the AoE cap, not nerfing Dhuumfire. The main OP factor in Scourge is its AoE in WvW and PvE. In PvP it’s going to be a noob killer, which will get it a lot of hate.

Also I don’t expect for Scourge DPS to be higher than Reaper on the dummy. Reaper does lik 33k. I expect Scourge to do a consistent 30k-31k. I may be wrong though, it depends. Even if it did like 28k I’d be happy, because Reaper just sucks with its Combo Fields, which can’t be realistically maintained in PvE.

I wouldn’t be surprised if there wasn’t a balance patch on launch. We will wait and see, but it’s not worth worrying about. Call me optimistic, but I see Scourge being balanced more fairly cause it doesn’t have a second health bar.

I have the most fun on Necro, and will in the Expansion for sure as well. I know some take the game way more seriously than others, but for me, I mainly do Fractals, WvW, and open world events, which Scourge will be amazing at all of those.

I understand people’s concerns with our past, but it’s not healthy to always be in fear of nerfs, or talking about nerfs, etc. GW2 is an MMO with multiple game modes now, and split balance is a thing.

People should be excited about Path of Fire, not dreading it.

I’m excited

(edited by Kam.4092)

Is shroud really that good?

in Necromancer

Posted by: Lily.1935

Lily.1935

Is shroud really as good as arena net suggests it is? Is it the be all and end all that puts necromancer above the rest in terms of defense? So much so that just having it makes them the most sustainable unkillable force in the game? Does shroud make up for the lack of damage, utility and support?

Well lets answer those question.

Does necromancer have the best defenses?

Well lets look at all the types of defenses in the game, including barrier, and make a comparison to those defenses. Figure out their role and how well they function at keeping people alive.

Passive defenses: Passive defenses are defenses that don’t require skill use or timing to achieve their goal in keeping you alive. These would be things like Toughness and Vitality. Passive defenses are the lowest skill means of defending oneself and often the last resort for a player to use. Because of this, when they are built into a build they are put in there knowing full well that their active defenses might not be enough to keep them alive. If a play can avoid investing too much into passive defenses in order to maintain their utility, control or damage they will prefer to do that. But sometimes its unavoidable. Passive defenses can be good to fill holes in the player’s defenses but in GW2 especially shouldn’t be your primary means of defense. Passive defenses can only go so far in protecting you and these defenses are meaningless if this is the only way you choose to defend yourself.

Active defense: Active defense is an extremely broad catagory of different defenses that require more from the player. some active defenses are extremely complex in their usage while others are far more straight forward. Some of them people might not even consider as a defense but it is imperative that we recognize these as defenses as well for the purposes of its comparison. Lets go through them.

  • Dodging: Dodging is likely the first active defense a player in GW2 will come in contact with. It is one of the most powerful defenses in the game as well as a good skill tester for players. Timing is everything for this defense and players who use this properly can avoid attacks that could fell a player wearing full soldiers gear. Although Dodging has been modified for some professions to improve its use, the vanilla dodge is still a powerful tool that also rewards high skill play. Example being the jump dodge.
  • Blocking: This is more straight forward than dodging, but its defensive capabilities are lower than dodging at the same time. Blocks such as Aegis or counter attacks only block a single attack while projectile blocks and channel blocks can shrug off large chunks of damage for their duration, much like dodge. Though, blocks have more counters to them, such as unblockable attacks or traits that trigger if a skill is blocked.
  • Invulnerability: The absolute strongest means of defense, there is almost nothing in the game that can interact with an invulnerable target this defense is usually linked to a long cooldown skill or has some negative to it such as mist form or elixir S. Their duration also tends to be much shorter than blocks as well.
  • Stunbreaks: Inaction will lead to death regardless of how tanky you are. And because of this, defending against hard crowd control effects are extremely important for a player. In PvE these are less important because of the predictability of NPCs, but against players they become far better. If you are stuck flat on your face you can’t activate most other defenses so these are important to have to prevent you from being burst down quickly.

State of Power Reaper

in Necromancer

Posted by: Sephylon.4938

Sephylon.4938

Same as before; out performed by every other power spec out there and not worth taking.

Oh no, VP nerf, wat will we do...?

in Necromancer

Posted by: Sarrs.4831

Sarrs.4831

Hey, that’s a FANTASTIC POINT about the damage being low. Lower than Dagger auto-attack even.

Since the changes were made to promote, in ArenaNet’s own words, “Build diversity”, I think they should put some time and attention into Reaper Shroud — you know: the big, shiny, new attraction for Heart of Thorns — to make the Shroud-focused build competitive with other power builds.

In the name of Build diversity, of course.

Then it would be more than just aesthetically pleasing; it would be yet another diverse build that Necromancers could use in all aspects of the game. No more delusions, no more low damage, more diversity!

Fantastic suggestion, guys. Brilliant!

?

It has nothing to do with build diversity.
It has to do with bad play.
You are playing badly.

I get that you’re trying to be funny/ironic but you’re just completely off base.

Nalhadia – Kaineng

Wardrobe save feature suggestion

in PvP

Posted by: Rukia.9860

Rukia.9860

you know your game is going downhill when the biggest failure in gaming history has something you don’t xD

Wardrobe save feature suggestion

in PvP

Posted by: Dawdler.8521

Dawdler.8521

Oh.

I thought you where going to say an OP necromancer.

necro Axe and dagger cannot be hit behind

in PvP

Posted by: huluobo.7036

huluobo.7036

So you’re having problems with Thief?

If you want to hit an enemy in melee who’s weaving in and out of you, you can stand still, and let go of your Right Mouse Button, then hit your Axe skills. The skill, without RMB will track your target while channeling automatically.

If you’re fighting a Thief with Pulmonary Impact, try to blind/daze/fear before attempting a channel, and check if he used Steal as well. If he’s just spamming Headshot, sheathe your weapons and try your best to kite and not get hit by his Dagger autos. Let him burn his initiative then you can cast safely for a period.

For Invulnerability, just wait out the CD, don’t try to hit them in melee. If it’s a Warrior with Endure Pain/Berzerker Stance, kite it, use jump puzzles, stay as far away as you can. If you can’t, control, shroud, or dodge his skills to wait it out.

For Blocks, you have a lot of unblockables in your Staff Marks and Warhorn. If it’s a Guardian who popped his blocks, use your Staff marks, chill and kite him out, or use your Axe 2 and wear out his aegis/focus.

You don’t just stand there and tank a 1v2 1v3, you run around obstacles, slow them down, and try to buy time. If you can’t kill anyone in a 1v2, you don’t need to try. Just hold out until teammates come.

That’s also quite a lot of games played (and you’ve posted many entertaining threads), shows your determination. I think if people piped in to help, and you take something away from the advice, you’ll pull ahead of the 50% winrate you have.

You’re just arena dogs

What's the deal with Druids being nuts?

in PvP

Posted by: Stand The Wall.6987

Stand The Wall.6987

Its not the nuts, its the seeds.

best

Team Deathmatch for PvP – Raise the AoE cap for WvW – More unique events for PvE

Personal opinion

in PvP

Posted by: EnderzShadow.2506

EnderzShadow.2506

How pleasant would you like me to be while I give your company criticism?

I personally feel that you are showing disrespect to the pvp focussed areas of the game and show a strong preferential treatment towards the PVE areas of the game.

While all classes have bugs that have never been fixed, (mainly effecting the pvp crowd) pve content is fixed quickly.

While loads of pve content is created, very little in the way of PvP has been implemented.
The changes you implemented in WvW were highly criticized and for good reason.

The most competitive and dominant PvP team has all but abandoned the game. No word from you? No one trying to get more sponsors to foot the bill for the events?

Everytime you balance the game, it’s clear your devs don’t play the same game as the playerbase. It’s shock and awe with the amount of things that get broken with the atrocious coding of your staff.

ANET – Get on the ball. Make something happen. This game and the business it created is slipping through your fingers.

Was that polite enough for you?
Does this offend the sensibilities of your delicate player base?

Shadowbane DarkAges Of Camelot WoW AION WarHammer GuildWars2

See a quitter. Report a quitter.

in PvP

Posted by: Fluffball.8307

Fluffball.8307

The report button works like the pedestrian crossing buttons when they’ve been turned off. Doesn’t do anything but it makes people feel like they have some control to keep pressing a useless button.

Alacrity should of never been added

in Mesmer

Posted by: Nightmare.1234

Nightmare.1234

I play a main Mesmer and refuse to use a chronomancer because of the inclusion of alacrity. people will see it as a great thing because it helping with improved dps. but it not healthy for the game as it makes people want chronos over standard mesmers.

chrono is great and with its f5 does it really need another way of refreshing cooldowns.
its main application is through traits (except the one phanstam) so it can be easily removed or replaced by more quickness application.

some people want it nerfed but nerfing it will make it pointless and will weaken chrono it just needs alternative traits that give the chrono something different in place of the alacrity. also I bet this unique ability hard balance for anyway since it given to others

if some traits where changed this is what I would do.

flow of time – grant yourself super speed when shattering 2 seconds (giving you 6 seconds max)

improved alacrity – change it to time heals all – when you have quickness you regenerate health per second

swap the phantasm to give quickness instead of alacrity

and then just change well of recall to something unique like teleport Mesmer to the well centre when it ends just like a blink maybe blasting the radius on arrival for blast finisher.

Mesmer/chrono will always be wanted for quickness application but they don’t need reduced skill cool down also.

if some of these elite specs were culled back a bit ( the heavy dps bringers) then maybe they could reduce the raid boss health pools a bit and make all the classes a little more wanted ( not every build but back to how it was before HOT minus the ranger and necro hate)

I cant see this happening but I still wish they never added it in first place.

Death Good

Well of precog nerf

in PvP

Posted by: Chip Skylark.2367

Chip Skylark.2367

Stop patting Anet on the back please. This should have been nerfed before league even STARTED. It should have been nerfed on day 1 of Heart of Thorns.

It was the most obviously overpowered ridiculous insult to PvP I’ve seen in a long time.

The devs should not be rewarded for screwing up and taking their sweet time to fix something this obviously broken.

Open letter to Josh Davis

in PvP

Posted by: Vieux P.1238

Vieux P.1238

Guys guys, the day that they truly listen is the day that we all stop playing this game. Mark my words..

One Hero Point Temporarily Disabled

in Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns

Posted by: OnionXI.6735

OnionXI.6735

Druids were using it to gain astral force

I kid

Delete the guild missions !!!

in PvP

Posted by: Nina.4317

Nina.4317

Hi, is it normal that PVE braindead ppl ruin pvp player experience?

The don’t want to win and just here on the map to summon heroes

Attachments:

Slow-Bug on Unrelanting Assault (Avoid it!)

in PvP

Posted by: Nocta.5274

Nocta.5274

So many words and I had to watch the video to understand the bug. Holy hell get to the point when reporting an issue.
If you report bugs this way, I’m not surprised they never get fixed lol

- Unrelenting Assault deals no damage if the revenant is affected by Slow.

Here, ONE line. x_x

Characters :
Nooctae ( Thief ) / Encelya ( Engineer ) / Jane Crimson ( Elementalist ) / Kowywr ( Revenant )
Europe, Vizunah.

Visual nerfs [Merged]

in Guild Wars 2 Discussion

Posted by: Celestina.2894

Celestina.2894

I’m pretty sure it’s for esports spectating and not for performance reasons, which is even worse. I’m not sure why they would think that it’s particles of all things that’s keeping GW2 esports from being a thing.

Honestly they need to just give up on esports already. That ship not only sailed, but it was never docked for GW2 in the first place.

Or at least do what FF14 does and allow US to select if “visual noise” is reduced.

Specializations Discussion: Curses

in Necromancer

Posted by: Bhawb.7408

Bhawb.7408

This is the second of the 6 part installment of me writing a lot because I have too much free time. This time we’ll be talking about Curses, and I imagine this will spark a fair bit of debate.

Curses
In stark contrast to Spite, our best line and one of the best in the game, we have Curses, a line so mediocre that even most condition builds find themselves having difficulty justifying it. Curses focuses on condition damage and critical hits. Somewhat uniquely because of the presence of its minor traits that focus heavily on dealing more condition damage, it is a line that primarily appeals to condition damage builds, with a small potential draw to crit-heavy builds, and has very little overall appeal to non-condition damage builds. I’ll talk about the major traits, which have quite a few issues holding back the line overall.

Finally, I’d like to take an idea from Bluewizard, who suggested in the Spite thread to have traits that functioned based on consumption/transfer of conditions. I really like this idea, but I think its better suited towards Curses, so I’ll be talking about it here.

Minors
Overall I think the minors are relatively fine strength wise, however I want to point out that because they focus so much strength into condition damage, this trait line becomes particularly weak to non-condition damage builds. Think of going into this build as a crit-heavy power line, what do you get? You get an adept minor trait that gives you little worth mentioning, just a tiny DPS increase. You also get a GM minor trait where some of the power is in precision to condition damage conversion, again something that really does nothing for you.

This is a big contrast to all our other lines, which have minors that are useful to any build that goes into them (ignoring balance issues). I don’t necessarily think it will be changed, or that it even has to be changed, since it is hardly unique to Necromancers (and arguably Curses has far stronger minors than comparable lines in other professions), but I think its worth mentioning because in an ideal world this line would be equally appealing to all crit-based builds, not just those focused on conditions.

Edit: as others have pointed out, the minors are probably fine. Bleeding deals at least some damage in crit builds, and the rest still work fine in any crit build.

Adepts
Frankly speaking, Plague Sending is the only useful trait in this tier. It is not just very strong, able to transfer conditions (and stun break if you get lucky with a pre-cast effect), but also has built in synergy with Signets of Suffering, and a number of traits that work with conditions inflicted.

Chilling Darkness is a bit of a sad story. Once a trait that was quite powerful in combination with specific setups, it is now completely awful. Part of the problem is the huge ICD, 5s means that Plague and Nightfall are the only abilities that can apply it multiple times per use. However, we’re actually one of the worst professions in the game at directly applying blind, with most of the sources of it coming indirectly from the accidental corruption of fury now and then. There are a number of options with how to deal with this trait:

  1. Revert it to how it used to be, 1s chill with no ICD – potentially too strong if Well of Darkness ever becomes useful, with Plague, WoD, and Nightfall on Reaper becoming huge sources of chill. Also hard to balance between the different chill sources.
  2. Keep it as is with the ICD, but just buff the chill duration to say 3s. This allows builds that have just a few sources of blind to still see meaningful chill, but also makes the different sources of chill more even. This is probably the easiest option.
  3. Completely change its functionality. I’d be interested to hear options, but we could just completely change how this works and look to solve some other problems within the profession. Things like blind application, some crit amplifiers, we could get creative.

The last trait in this tier is Terrifying Descent the unfortunate hold over from ANet’s insistence that we must have falling traits forced on us for some inconceivable reason. As most people know, the problem is that these just don’t do much of anything in 99% of the game, because taking fall damage is something that isn’t really happening regularly in combat; it is pretty specifically something that only sees niche use in WvW. However, since these traits seem mandatory, I think we are forced to do something similar to Cloaked in Shadow where the fall trait is rolled in to a related normal trait. Options include:

  1. Keep the trait functionality as is, roll it into Fear of Death and replace with something new. This allows for Curses to get a new trait, and we roll more fear traits together. Of course the reverse could also happen, keeping this trait here and bringing Fear of Death into this tree for Terror synergy, which would allow Terror builds significantly more freedom of build options.
  2. Combine with the buffed Chilling Darkness, change it to cast Well of Darkness on fall damage. This also opens up a trait in Curses, but doesn’t worry about the balance effect of changing Terror setups.

Either way, it needs to be rolled into an already functional trait, and then cause a skill that is related to whatever that trait does. But as long as it exists on its own it does nothing but take up a slot, and remind us that traits still really need work.

Masters
This tier has another issue of just having one realistic option in Path of Corruption, and outside of that this tier just doesn’t really have appealing traits. Unfortunately it has two awkward traits, one of which is a mediocre trait that relies on a poorly designed utility set, the other is a trait that was nerfed multiple times directly and indirectly because of its synergy with things completely unrelated.

Master of Corruption is just a huge mess right now. Firstly, it has the issue of having an incredibly weak effect, it basically just a CDR trait that gives higher CDR than normal, with a very significant downside, while other Master tier utility traits give 20% CDR plus other effects with no downsides. Secondly, it is designed with the same problem that Corruptions overall have, a positive effect that is too weak paired with a negative effect that is too significant to leave alone, but on a skill not strong enough to warrant taking other mechanics to offset.

Fixing this trait isn’t easy, because it probably needs to be paired with a set of changes to Corruptions, which is beyond the scope of what I’m trying to look at here. An easy option to retain its current use but make it more appealing is add functionality that all self-applied conditions are also applied to the target, including the additional ones. Still very “Corruption-y” but actually has meaningful power to make up for the downside.

Terror is a classic Necromancer trait. Once a huge facet of most condition builds, it is now so poor that even Deathly Chill builds, which should get amazing use out of it, don’t pick it up most of the time. This is largely due to a wealth of direct and indirect nerfs, starting with the introduction of Dhuumfire. First 17% damage reduced, then Nightmare rune nerfs, general duration nerfs when Spite was made to no longer give up to 30% condition duration, and finally the change that made conditions do partial ticks. Some of these changes are irreversible, however two good changes would be the incorporation of Fear of Death into the Curses Adept tier, and reversion of the 17% damage nerf. These shouldn’t be too strong, since most of the abuse cases of the old Terror builds are gone, and requires a large investment that precludes other strong choices.

Grandmasters
Hey look, another tier with only one real option (as I see it, not sure what PvErs would say)! Of course that option is Weakening Shroud which is a really strong trait, not to mention one that laughs at Spiteful Spirit from our Spite discussion. Our other two options are interesting, because they’re not bad ideas, but fail because of comparative power, or how they function in game.

Parasitic Contagion is a classic example of a “win more” trait, which is to say a trait that is extremely weak or even useless in bad or average matchups, and then only becomes good or great when you are already winning. This same problem is why all but one of our pure on-death traits were removed, because the only time deaths happen frequently enough to be strong is when you are already winning the encounter, and the trait’s influence is meaningless; you were winning before it proc’d. This is where I’d like to adapt Bluewizard’s suggestion to reward condition transfers, and suggest a few ideas for how to make this meaningful in far larger variety of situations, without it being just a win-more trait.

For effects, something similar to Bluewizard’s suggestion. Specifically I’d suggest something like gaining some kind of offensive buff. Think an offensive version of Corrupter’s Fervor, that would be non-specific to damage types, to allow this to work for all damage types. A precision buff would probably work well, since it helps any crit build, and also we’ve seen how interesting traits that reduce reliance on crit can work out. Might of course could also work, or a buff that specifically boosts direct and condition damage, so that it doesn’t favor one type of build.

The idea is to make the effect proc on transfers. This would have synergy with Plague Sending, and also general synergy with Corruptions which want to transfer often, and there are a lot of other smaller interactions with other transfers. This could also be tuned between a non-stacking buff that only has its duration refreshed, encouraging a certain cadence of usage, or a stacking one similar to Corrupter’s Fervor.

Regardless, the idea would be to open it up as more of a general condition option, and also smooth out how it works. I’m also going to propose a condition-related heal for Blood Magic, which we can discuss later. The reason I’m not retaining the heal is because Curses is related to offensive conditions and crits, not healing, and Weakening Shroud provides a defensive option already.

Finally, for those brave souls who’ve made it this far, we’ve got Lingering Curse. Lingering Curse is primarily based on increasing durations, which is a fine way to continue for this trait. Unfortunately, I’m not entirely sure on how to fix this trait; maybe I’m even wrong and this trait is fine. The problem I see is that for a duration trait, it doesn’t actually do that much. As an example, Chemical Rounds provides the same condition bonus, without the damage, as an adept. My suggestion would be to remove the condition damage bonus, since it conflicts with the idea of going heavy on damage, and open up the weapons it works on. This could be all weapons, giving any weapon skill 50% increased base duration conditions, or keeping it on specific weapons. I’m honestly not sure though, I think the idea of duration is fine, though fairly specific to PvE, but I don’t think this really delivers on a power level, and as someone who has no real desire to use this trait I’ll defer to you all on ideas to fix it.

Anyway, that’s it for Curses. This was probably the longest, and also the one I was least sure of, so I’ll be interested to know what you guys think.

But of Corpse – Watch us on YouTube
My PvP Minion Build

(edited by Bhawb.7408)