Guild Wars 2

I agree with OP 100%. Lack of all the active defense is what makes my gameplay unbearable. I like to solo dungeons/bosses but what if there is an attack 1shotting and appearing quite consistently? I only have 2 dodges. I can’t negate a 1shot in any other way. Other classes can chain evade/block on low cooldowns.

Think on the bright side, we finally get to do a regular amount of damage with scourge so every single pvp player will complain that they died to us and we get a nerf to lose that damage and then have no survivability !!

The bright side is you’ll maybe get to have a little fun before other players cry the balanced class is op

Arenanet abandoned the forums.
They don’t read or care about feedback of the playerbase.
There are so many aspects of gw2, broken since day one, and major employees are not aware of them, even though players reporting them for nearly half a decade.
You have to live with it, like you already do since five years.
GW2 has the worst community management I ever saw.

I just want what every class gets.
Evasion
Block
Healing skills that work
stability
VIGOR

An extra health bar is not a justification for the lack of any of these.

All our healing skills are badly designed. One is a minion that puts our skill on cooldown when someone farts AOE in it’s direction. The same goes for all minions.

We have a healing signet that that requires us to put ourselves in danger to help teammates and we get no reward for that risk. The passive basically doesn’t exist in the high burst of PVP.

Consume condition adds a condition to heal with a high cooldown and it’s only usable with the trait but that adds another condition. All conditions have this but they don’t offer anything better than other classes for the cost. The conditions don’t even synergize with how our class is supposed to be good at dealing with conditions. That isn’t a part of the class because every other class does it better.

So the non-existent condition control also doesn’t make up for the lack of other defenses.

We get no vigor. Really? Every class gets access to every boon. What did we get instead? We get to be a heavy training golem.

We get one trait that adds one stack of stability but we can’t use our utilities when we have it. We can’t use it to help heal. Bad design. In fact it doesn’t last long enough to use any skill, even our deathshroud skills. I’ve played enough games to watch every class have stability up at least have of the time.

We don’t get a block anywhere. Why? Classes burst out so much damage so quickly that I can barely cast shroud 1 before my shroud is gone. Face it, shroud doesn’t work.

I think the biggest rule of game design is that if it doesn’t work, you scrap it. But I see veteran designers make the same mistake all the time in these games. There’s always one class that the designers seem to act differently with. You know how to fix it.

You’ve had five years. Reaper isn’t a fix. It doesn’t fix the real problems of the class. Scourge is going to be worse.

Before Guild Wars 2 launch, all classes had energy costs and cooldowns for their skills but you removed it because you knew it was redundant. Now you are adding that cost back in for Necromancer. You are actually taking this class back in time.

You won’t fix lifeforce generation on a class that has no stability to allow it to generate lifeforce and you won’t even change deathshroud. You know there are ways to fix it but for some reason you feel the need to keep something that doesn’t work and for that weird reason you add another weird reason that keeps Necromancer from having actual defense. It’s also weird that for all the deliberate drawbacks it has, like self bleeding you didn’t really add anything in for it to have a reason for the drawbacks. It’s like you added the risk and forgot to add the reward.

How is this possible after 5 years? I have to ask this again because game companies seem to repeat it over and over and never learn from their mistakes. (nerf to Necro energy generation in Guild Wars 1)

How is this possible after 5 years!? 5 Years of countless feedback and players trying to help. How is it that game devs can look at one class and think, “it needs to work,” then look at another class and think, “we shouldn’t do that it would be to OP,” while the changes aren’t more OP than other classes?

It happens over and over again in these types of games. Is it some weird coincidence? Is there a purpose to it?

5 years.

Traits
I like to have a more clear focus in trait lines. Spite should be the damage line, curses the condi, Death Magic the defense, Blood Magic the support and Soul Reaping the life-force/shroud line. It is currently the case only to some extent, with many defensive traits in offensive lines, conditions in damage lines, etc… Many of the changes are just trait placement, though some traits are actually new/reworked.

I’d also like to see a new set of minions to give more diversity in playstyle: for instance, summoning a set of 3 long-range minions that are weak on defense but can shoot while moving and maneuver to stay at a distance from their target, or a set of two tanky minions that are meant stun/immobilize but are slow/easily kited. Or, how about aerial minions that swoop in to inflict conditions.

hscoxon.1623:

I would love to see a boon corrupt added to minions, but I fear that would just further ensconce the awful boon-spam meta out there.

If memory serves me right back before the trait system overhaul the old Necromatic corruption trait gave your minions a 10% chance to remove a boon on hit. I don’t think we’ll ever be getting something like that or a boon corrupt on minions any time soon, I feel Anet wouldn’t like that sadly.

I would love to see a boon corrupt added to minions, but I fear that would just further ensconce the awful boon-spam meta out there.

Sup fellow necros,

minions have been a more appealing option since Anet rweorked them so they actually attack and stuff like this, but their active skills are still rly bad most of the time, and improving this would definitely be a huge step to making minions competitive.

Things like Blood fiend not healing you in Shroud, a blind in the shadow fiend that is not instant, and an immob in a 50s cd kinda makes pet skills useless in most situations. So waddaya think about reworking/improving some of the skills so minions and death magic can get a lil bit more of our dark love?

pdavis.8031:

“1. They need to hit things to succeed.”
Which class doesn’t?
This isn’t a necro specific trait, but rather one that is inherent across all classes, and a fundamental principle behind the game in general. In order to defeat an opponent you need to hit them.

“2. Necros are designed to be hit.”
Yes necros can take some punishment, and be able to use that to their advantage. How is this a bad thing? It’s a integral part of the class mechanic. In fact, with certain traits, the more damage you take, the more powerful you become.

“3. Blocks > Blinds”
I disagree. While blocks can be useful, blinds also serves their purpose. A well timed blind can render a powerful attack useless and without the cost of forgoing an attack skill. For Necro, I would much rather use blind to negate an attack than block one.

“4. It’s the SLOW class”
It is slow. But the longer the Necro is in the fight, the more powerful they become. But it takes time and skill to survive that long. That slowness makes for great defense, as they can take the punishment, while ramping up their power.

“5. Not an attrition class.”
It can be. It depends on what specs you are playing. A defensive condi necro is most certainly an attrition spec. A bursty power spec is not. It largely depends on what you play, and how you play it.

“6. Lifeforce / Shroud is the worst and laziest designed class mechanic.”
A mechanic that takes time to be able to use, and is quickly depleted. Sure it adds a bit of survivablity, but it also comes at a cost. I think it’s actually well done.

Overall, if you know what you are doing, and not playing a cookie cutter meta with little to no understanding of how it works, or how to play it, you’re going to be a force to be reckoned with. I have tried the meta builds, and they seemed lacking. In the end I made my own build and tend to do quite well. I can hold a point for a decent amount of time. Even when being focused, as well as control the flow of battle to a surprising degree. It just takes a bit of know how and watching what the enemy is doing.

I feel like every response was in response to the title of each section without even reading the points made in the section.

1. They need things to hit….. yeah you didn’t read what I wrote at all. Sure.. essentially, every class has to hit the enemy to defeat them. Thats not the point I was making. If you didn’t understand what I wrote or didn’t read it, I would suggest reading exactly what I wrote and then making a counter argument. The actual playstyle of the necromancer is based upon hitting; even as a defense. Look at all the shouts given to classes. War, gaurd, ranger, ele, necromancer. The only class that requires you to hit large numbers of enemies to maximize effectiveness of the shout is necromancers. Name one skill outside of CC that doesn’t require you to hit an enemy to cleanse conditions. Name one skill other than our healing skills that give us life without needing to hit anyone. Blinds require an enemy being hit by your blinds for you get get any use out of those blinds.

And i’m fine with this playstyle, it just needs improvements.

2. Necro’s need to be hit… “how is this a bad thing?” Again, you didn’t read what I wrote. I told you why it was a bad thing. It’s a bad thing because we don’t have enough stability. We also don’t have as much retaliation as gaurds do.

3. You are very welcome to disagree. As for me, you have not given me adequate reasons as to why blocks are not better than blinds so my opinion on that hasn’t changed.

4. Its the slow class and thats not a good thing. It just isn’t. When have you seen a necro be unstoppable in pro play even? The die in seconds. All they’re meant to do is spread conditions and die. Thats it.

5. Not when every other class in the game can be attrition. Devs try to specifically make us attrition while at the same time offering all other classes attrition specs that out-attrition our own. The only difference is they don’t die in the first 5 seconds of a fight from getting 5-man focus fire.

- Btw; requiring a guard or ranger to babysit you and continue to res you doesn’t count as attrition.

6. If your simple explanation was the entirety of the mechanic then who could disagree? Surely no-one.

Silv.9207:

Another thing to change is Corruption Skill set Self Inflicted Conditions.
Basicly no one use that set of skills and they’re not so strong (compared to other classes skills both in effect and cooldown) to need a counter back.
I would like to see that self inflicted conditions removed and added only if you use the trait to reduce they’re cooldowns (removing the other trait self inflicted conditions. Why I have to be blinded when I active my healing skill?). At last that trait can self inflict more stacks/different conditions.

Keeping the self inflicted conditions on the trait would still make it a backwards designed trait. Even with the idea that corruptions + transfers re a thing you’re 33% cooldown redction makes it harder for transfer skills to keep up. The idea is backwards in itself because what makes transfers good are xtra pressure and a reduction of pressure however the added corruptions only increase the pressure on the foe but do not make it less. So the advantage you get from transfers is limited.
Even by basic trait design the MoC is designed badly. Most traits involving skill sets give a 20% cooldown reductuion and a bonus effect. However MoC gives 20% cooldown reduction and a bonus effect of an additional 13% cooldown reduction plus a negative effect. So in that regards they underperform however the devs are most likely not willing to give another positive effect to corruptions because they clearly balanced corruptions around the trait (looking at you consume conditions).

Everything wrong with necromancers

1. They need to hit things to succeed.

In many situations; you can have the least available condition cleanse in a fight. It’s true.
Unlike every other class in the game, you rely on hitting enemies to cleanse your conditions. If enemies step out of range of your skill, block your skill, evade your skill, or are currently invulnerable to your attack or conditions or you are blinded or some freaky targeting glitches your cast, or your attack becomes hindered, or several other things; you will not cleanse any conditions. This is why Consume Conditions has become such a staple on necros and also why Staff 4 has been one of two reasons the weapon is ever used (the other being Staff5).

Shouts are also a very telling example of how we are constantly penalized for our class theme. All shouts are only effective in larger fights while warrior shouts are always effective no matter the enemy/ally count effected just like guardian shouts are always effective no matter the ally count effected. Necromancers are the only ones who are penalized for using them against a low number of targets.

2. Necros are designed to be hit.

We are second to the least stability in the game. We are also the class that is supposed to be hit. We are essentially penalized for a playstyle fundamental to the profession. Get rekt necros.

Blocks, Invuln, Evades etc are always going to be better than pure health/armor. Throw in lack of mobility and you have a class that can’t even move half the time. while being pummeled to death. Why? Cuz lifeforce and shroud. I’ll get to that later.

Less retaliation than guards. Guards also have the most blocks which is non-compatible with retaliation. It doesn’t even make sense.

We have only 3 skills that deal with being hit. Spectral walk. Spectral armor. Signet of Vampirism. Three.

3. Blocks > Blinds

You need to hit enemies with blinds for them to work. Blocks work automatically.
Blinds are never successive. They always happen in 1 second intervals at the most. Bocks can be successive; preventing X number of attacks for X duration. Blinds can never do this the way they are now. GG blinds.
If anyone says “yeah we have blocks but you guys have blinds”; promptly facepalm and link this thread to them.

4. It’s the SLOW class

Everything about this is bad. Not a slow build. Not a slow spec. The entire profession is slow. This deserves a slow clap

Slow animations / telegraphed abilities along side nearly zero stability is just Anet telling everyone to focus and demolish the necromancer first. They are the easiest ones to kill and will probably not even get a single skill off if focused hard enough.

Slow projectiles make dodging a piece of cake for enemies. In fact, necromancer attacks take so long that the mathematical chances they are interrupted are so high it renders necromancers activating the least amount of skills in the game. Enemies will activate their skills up to four times as much as you will in any given game.

5. Not an attrition class.

Whatever anyone has ever said about the necromancer, it is not an attrition class. It is held back by devs constantly trying to fit them into this design while simultaneously making other classes/builds more effective in long-lasting fights. I’ve personally played guardian enough to know that this is a fact. Every other class has the ability to last in long fights; and last longer than any necromancer can. This is a fact.

All other classes have manageable ways to allow their other skills to come off cooldown in time for another volley of unavoidable damage.

6. Lifeforce / Shroud is the worst and laziest designed class mechanic.

Not only is it restrictive to our utilities and healing; lifeforce/shroud bar is the entire reason we are left without a million other things. No bocks, invulns, stability, evades, dodge support, stealth, or any real damage mitigation. This one mechanic has its own list of bad things:

- Can be moa’d to nothingness. No other class mechanic in the entire game is so vulnerable to moa.
- Shroud bar is not an equivalent to blocks or invuln. Shroud doesn’t scale as well as invulns or consecutive blocks vs high number of attackers. it will always be weaker.
- Is worse than healing. Look at a ranger and how well they are able to continually heal themselves with no class mechanic required. they are also allowed to use invulnerability and blocks and evades even though, essentially, gaining lifeforce is the same as a ranger constantly gaining health.
- Locks us out of our own utilities. What more can you say?
- Attacks are too slow.
- Life force depletion rate. As stated, rangers heal life just as much if not more than necros gain lifeforce. Thing is; rangers health does not constantly deplete like it does for necromancers shroud. So even after building up all that lifeforce, its just going to be taken away from you passively.

3 condis on you.
The trait has a seperate cd.

TimHellen.5903:

If it’s separate and independent but same cool down time, doesn’t that mean you can actually have 2 plague signets, one that’s “auto” and one that’s manual?

Yes.

I can see it now:
We felt that Necromancer had too much condition damage and boon removal, so we reduced it where we felt it was necessary
Signets of Suffering: This trait no longer corrupts boons. It applies 3 stacks of vulnerability instead.
Corrupt Boon: Reduced boons corrupted to 2
Removed boon corrupt from scepter auto
reduced base torment on scepter 3 to 1 stack
added 3s icd to deathly chill

And if they stream it, they will do a mic drop
(plz don’t do this)

Well, in keeping with our class the 2 missing elites must:
A) not be worthwhile
B) have a disproportionate cooldown in relation to the effect received

Well: pulses weakness and does 500 damage/sec on full power build, 180s cd

Signet: passive increases healing power by 180. Active is a teasing 1s protection, 1s resistance and 2k heal that scales .01 with healing power, 300s cd

I would be open to employment with Anet, just saying

Simply put, a bit more condi damage isn’t as good as additional stacks. If each bleed tick is say 100 damage, increasing it by 50% (more than 50% more condi damage) would not be as good as having an additional stack. That is what condi duration adds.

There is value in stronger condis, but it’s limited. A stronger condi might be better in a PVP setting where the condi’s are being regularly stripped before their duration is up. It’s also better in a burst damage situation. But, when burst damage is all that matters typically power damage will win out, or really it’s just so trivial of content that it doesn’t matter. If a boss lasts more than a few seconds then suddenly you’re in that ’i’d have additional stacks if I had max duration’ situation and duration is better.

But the clock decides what you can and can’t play, which is what the OP was talking about. Your happy happy joy joy platitudes don’t change that.

After the second attempt at exploring the HP under Auric Basin after meta events, and being mercilessly forced onto another map for a second time before the final meta event, I just want to reiterate how frustrating anet has made map exploration with this expansion – literally more frustrating than back when we had to explore WvW forts for credit.

Between the lack of raid accessability, dungeons, 4 maps with gated exploration, and 45 day breaks between being able to work on the pvp legendary, it feels like FOTM is the only thing anet has right at the moment.

tl;dr: Thanks for wasting 90 minutes of my time (twice in a row) attempting to explore AB.

I’m a bit on the fence on this. On the one hand, I’m a bit peeved at the amount of HP required to unlock a Elite spec. It seems like unneccesary padding to extend the time to play. I want to run around as a Chrono and Scrapper!
On the other hand, when GW2 first came out I had to earn the skills as well by playing the game. And this is basically a similar situation.
I dont mind spending some time getting the HP for the elite specs, exploring the jungle and going to the HP around the maps. Its more that as a relatively casual player (1-2h every other day) gaining sufficient HP will take a long time over the alts.
The casualness seems to have gone a bit. But then again all the Maguuma area’s are accesible to all my lvl 80 alts. So map content wise I still can do anything I want, just not with all the skills at that time.

What this does is extend the amount of time I can spend playing the game. It artificially extends the amount of content in the game, and in a way that is what I bought when I added HOT to my account. In Value to cost ratio, GW2 (and GW1 before) have an extremely high value (time played/enjoyed) vs cost.
Just compare going to a movie at €10 for 2 hours. Or GW2 at €50 for 1200h.
So in that sense, i’m fine with as it is.

Just for comparison, going back to GW1, there was also the requirement to buy the new skills when a new campaign came out. And each profession had to buy the skills again. So decking out alts took a long time as well.

“Never preorder” – Confucius

Had I known that after purchasing HoT you wouldn’t even get the full experience due to locks on mastery skills and what have you, I would have never purchased it. I really don’t want to have to horde Hero Points. I was really expecting to be able to use the new content right off the bat, considering I spent a considerable amount of money on the expansion. When I logged on and saw that I still couldn’t use any of the new weapons for any of my classes, then noticed that you have to grind Hero Points to gain access to such feature, I immediately felt that I just wasted money on something for nothing. Especially since I am a casual player. Sorry, but it’s just not the right thing to do in my opinion, and I feel like I have to rant about it. If you’re going to lock the content, at least make it easier to access.

The thing is, this suggestion would be open to exploitation – as in, the point of having them is you earn what you got.

If I only had say, 18 Mastery points, the refund option would allow me to first of all, get Ley Line gliding masteries, get some content done, then without further effort, I can then fully max out another set, say Exhalted to defeat the champion or whatever, then without more effort, the Nuhoch champion, all with the same 18 Mastery points.

Whilst others have been earning the full amount of mastery points fair and square. to just getting the mastery points, but also earning the XP!

Just want to say that I wish I had the option to refund and respend my Mastery Points. I admit, this is because of a personal mistake on how I spent the points, but the option to respend would be nice.

When HoT came out I knew little about Masteries, like most people, and I didn’t think much about how to spend my mastery points. Notably, the Tyria ones. I got all of the pact commander ones and then started splitting between Legendary and Fractal. I didn’t realize at the time, however, that I would be short for the last couple tiers of each. In fact, I am 8 Tyria Mastery Points short of the last tier of Legendary Crafting, which is realistically probably the mastery i want most.

Look, I get I made a mistake and didn’t take the proper time to read through the masteries and count my points appropriately. I own that. I’d just like the opportunity to fix my mistake. Even if it were through some insanely priced item on the gem store that allowed me to respend my mastery points once. I have to think I’m not the only person out there who wishes they had this ability.

I prefer to play solo, and join in on whatever events I run into. One thing I’ve noticed is that most of your Mastery XP will come from events – and those events will require more people. I don’t see the events scaling down to one person killing mobs and stocking up rally points by him/herself.

The storyline you can probably solo – I haven’t had much difficulty getting from breadcrumb to breadcrumb.

Getting hero points for your elite specialization – for that you will definitely need a couple of people, at least. You’ll also need a level or two in Gliding Mastery just to reach some of them. Each hero challenge is a group event against a champion mob – you won’t be soloing those, that’s for sure.

OP hit the nail right on the head. And the fact that Anet did not disclose that this game cannot be soloed is nothing more than corporate greed. be seeing you.

Soon, there will be less people and then it would be more difficult.

Solo players cannot advance in the new content, and any decent publisher would disclose such a fundamental change prior to taking your money.

+1 every kittening event i go to you need more people the first map is like empty wtf

It was populated, we were finishing off the meta boss.

Look this expansion has been out for 4 months which means quite frankly you should be well past the bug phase. I do not appreciate putting an hour plus into a Meta event in Dragon Stand only to have the map randomly close with time to spare on the clock because your programmers are amateurs.

Please get your crap together, I frankly feel embarrassed for your staff.