Guild Wars 2

Remember when warrior and necro were bad for months? They were not being played on the top level teams and warrior was extremely bad. Defektive and symbolic wrote up a bunch of topics about what each class needed and the devs didnt listen. They gave us burning and healing signet… This was a Bandaid fix with no real balance solution.

Honestly, i would take the 50% health trait to use the minions as a buffer for your zerg. Each hit they can absorb for your team before they die should be thought as healing. They will be taking hits that would otherwise hit your team due to aoe cap and other mechanics. I will say that staff auto attack with pierce will give you all the life force you could ever ask for in wvw. Also, i would use the minions for the field and not invest in the damage trait. Minions dont cleave and dont attack frequently enough to benefit from the 30% damage trait in a zerg scenario. You will do more damage by dropping 10 from the spite tree and picking up 50% crit in ds.

I like the idea of your build though. Hope i helped.

All the pve achievement chasers have higher ranks than me. Having ascended weapons which are a huge deal (don’t let anyone tell you otherwise) combined with higher stats through karma training leaves a very bitter taste in my mouth. I have been playing WvW for almost 1000 hours on my necro and have less to show for it than some pve farmer who put up a birthday bonus and karma trained 1 day. I have no ascended weapons/gear and i dont havent finished getting the PVD karma train buffs. 450 stats for PVD karma train… and people on here defending it PVD reward from already decided thursday matches!?!?!?. A bunch more stats for PVE fractals and farming…. And people have the nerve to come on and say “No big deal”…L2Math guys.

The people on here defending these buffs are the same people who get angry at us on our own server when we ruin the karma train by wiping the enemy karma train…This kind of PVD achievement stat creep is killing wvw. Our own frigging team is telling us not to kill the enemy so they can get their shinies on all their alts…A disgrace to WvW. And the fact that you can buy WXP boosters for stat increases is nothing short of P2W (Pay to win). Come on people and wake up… Too much carrot-chasing makes bad pvp… Is it really necessary or strategically important for a queued map to kill the worm or harpy? Nope but yet you see it all the time. Wake up guys

I agree that cc is already strong. I just think the current blob wars 2 involving guilds running 30% guardians just for stability as a counter to all the cc spam isn’t good gameplay. Also having 100% of the effective builds being focused on power damage is also weak.. My whole suggestion was in hope of finding a way to spread the blob out. As people have mentioned, cc is already overwhelmingly powerful. Would removing AOE stability force the Zerg to spread out more in open field fights to avoid these overpowered cc?

Chris.3290:

SYG usage is key in zerg combat and given that it can be stripped fairly easily and has a long cooldown, I don’t see that much wrong with how it works now.

Besides, hammer warriors (which I play for the record) already get enough hate for being OP’d; this change would just make them God Mode, even with the upcoming nerf.

I agree that SYG is “key” in zerg combat. That one skill alone is impacting WvW zerg battles more than anything else IMO…And thats my problem with it. I disagree on the “long cooldown” and the idea that it “can be stripped fairly easily”. There are way too many cover boons in a zerg to reliably strip stability in an aoe manner. The whole idea of an AOE Stability nerf is to make CC “godmode”. This would make people spread out and lead to better gameplay IMO. You mention that hammer warrior skills would be OP. So would spectral wall, static field, guardian wall, and about 40 other cc abilities. Thats the point. It will change the way the game is played. I understand that SYG is a “key” component with the current melle train, spam 1, AOE condition cleanse, AOE boonstack meta. Maybe making AOE CC “godmode” through an AOE stability nerf is a good thing that will spread people out and lead to better gameplay?? I would like some feedback on the part i bolded though because thats really the question im asking.

Prysin.8542:

Stability, how to counter it: spam immobilize
Result: a zerg rooted and ready for bag-picking

EDIT: http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Immobilize
Here is a list of all skills that apply immobilize. Now you can find a profession with the most effective spammage of this condition and stop the zerg entirely. Personally, i bet the ranger will be your best bet (Krytan Drakehound, Muddy Terrain and Entangle… in theory that should root 15 people max)

Immobolize is a strong condition. However, there are very few classes who can apply it in an aoe manner. Oh, and like i said its a condition. Its gets cleansed quick and hasnt been a sucessful counter to large zergs stacking up. Poor rangers can be useful when using entangle on the backline stragglers though.

Most people agree that zergs in WvW are too strong. Such a large number of people in such a small area. We know that Anet said that they wont increase the 5 man AOE cap due to server limitations. We also know how bad condition builds are due all the aoe cleanses in such a confined area. We have plenty of tools (cc walls) to punish a blobbed up zerg that are hard countered by AOE stability and high stability uptime on the zerg.

I dont think all aoe stability should be removed. However, i think there is way too much stability uptime. I think they should nerf the AOE stability spam (mostly Stand Your Ground). They would need to offset the nerf with a huge buffs elsewhere and im fine with that. Reducing what i like to call as “random” stability would require players to be more aware of their positioning and would be less likely to blob up. This could open up more condition build viability as well as open up the potential for other skills such as hallowed ground/Well of power to make organized pushes through chokes (the one at hills lord room comes to mind).

This is coming from the perspective of an experienced WvW necro. As a necro, we benefit most from aoe stability because we get tossed around like a rag doll if caught out of position. I like to think im looking at this with an unbiased opinion. Just try to picture WvW were zergblobs dont clash with 80% stability uptime. What if those warrior hammer ccs actually tossed 5 people? What if those AOE necro marks actually feared 5 people? People would spread out. You would actually have to bring your own stability and ranged classes without alot of stability would actually play at range opposed to the outer limits of the zergblobbing melle train.

Would be interested in what you guys think. I hope guardians dont take this as a personal attack.

Pendragon.8735:

Something not addressed.

Even with scaling for multiple hits, or AoE vampiric, siphon is not a good solution to sustain, because without stability, escapes, or invuln, the Necro is still put on lockdown by multiple enemies focusing him. If he can’t hit people, he can’t sustain, and if he is focused, he can’t hit people. He’s getting stunned, punted, knocked down, immobilized, etc.

I think manacraft kind of touched on the issue:

ManaCraft.5630:

Kraag Deadsoul.2789:

A necro who’s siphoning “insane” amounts of health is also facing an insane amount of opponents (5 or more) and taking damage from them while siphoning.

The latter part of your argument (of which the above is merely a brief extract) operates under the assumption that for each additional opponent, the necromancer is taking damage from that opponent. This, however, is only true if 1) you’re the only target present against multiple opponents or 2) you’re at the receiving end of an organized effort to burst you down.

In the first scenario you’ve put yourself in a bad situation and quite frankly deserve to die. Your defensive mechanics are meant to be inadequate in that situation. The second case is really what’s interesting here. Theoretically, life siphons could become a defense against focus fire. The problem, as I’m sure you’ve guessed, is that in order to be functional under such circumstances, life siphons would have to generate an incredible amount of life over a period of a few seconds. Of course, in turn, that makes siphons hugely overpowered in cases where there are multiple opponents present but the necromancer isn’t taking damage from all (or even any) of them. And outside of organized PvP, these situations occur all the time.

The true solution to your predicament is not life siphons. What you’re really asking for is a panic button. And one of the reasons why good panic buttons scale for damage taken rather than damage dealt is that it keeps them from spiraling out of control under certain circumstances. Mist form, for example, is just mist form, regardless of whatever interactions take place between you and your opponents. Now I’m sure we can agree that necromancers are woefully underequipped in this regard – to a certain extent by design – but life siphoning is not a good candidate for burst defense, and you would probably be better off looking elsewhere.

2/2

I bolded some of the key points he makes. Yes, necro is vulnerable to cc/stunlock/punts/immobilize. Yes, necro lacks extra dodges via vigor. This is all working as intended. Giving us stability or vigor would synergize extremely well with our “attrition”. The devs could give us these buffs, but they would have to either nerf us elsewhere or buff the other classes to compensate.

But i think it would be best open a new thread if you think we should be going more towards active defense because i think siphon isn’t the answer. I think we should focus on the vampiric traits with the assumption that we arn’t going to get any active defense. Although if you read the development thread, it looks like Jon is already trying to give us some help by removing the weakening shroud ICD. Aoe weakness on the enemy combined with deathshroud has potential to limit some focused burst on us. *But as mana stated, if you put yourself in a bad sitaution you “quite frankly deserve to die.” *

Lets get back to talking about how the vampiric traits can be implemented better.

Another possible option would be to make utilities such as wells not proc the siphon(wells siphon trait would work and could drain more). Eliminating these pulsing effects would make the only other pulsing effect locust swarm which requires you to be in melee range(more risk). This may allow them to buff the baseline number or the scaling to a certain extent?

It also would encourage more dagger warhorn builds because they would have some more staying power to compensate for the pinball cc they receive. Thoughts?

nekretaal.6485:

…but all of that healing counts for naught as you can’t heal in Plague

Since when can you not heal in plague!!? Im pretty sure you can heal.

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

On top of that, if you’re tagging 100 people and you aren’t dead, then you’re not alive because of the siphoning. You’re alive because nobody is attacking you.

I respectfully disagree. We are a ranged class with DS to sponge some damage as well as plague form which is beastmode in WvW.

Bhawb.7408:

Per ICD making Dagger/Warhorn less risk/reward: yes it would, if you didn’t use wells (which no power build in their right mind would do). The point is that you get the high risk/reward plus AoE siphoning from Vampiric Rituals, which do not need an ICD, because of their inherently limited nature (just like Vampiric Master). This gives you the AoE multi-opponent scaling, assuming you can keep them in, and wells would still proc Vampiric/Vampiric master, but couldn’t reach the very ridiculous amounts of 600 HP/s per well in idealized scenarios. Dagger/warhorn still has ridiculous sustain because of its LF generation, and it still rewards risk/reward.

But the real question in all of this is: do we keep the majority of an entire trait tree useless to every single build but one (and this extends to more weapons, the one with the best siphoning becomes the new balance point), or do we implement some kind of “gate” on the siphoning in ridiculous situations and normalize it, so every Necro gets access to sustain?

Good points and questions.

I cant comment on a pve perspective because i really dont pve. I play tournaments against some of the top teams (i think im ranked around 800) and every necro seems to run the terrormancer build. Nobody in the history of competetive tpvp has gone into the blood line for the vampiric traits (correct me if im wrong). However, I do have perspective with WvW in tier 1 megablobs. I get a good chunk of health off of aoe pulsing effects because they almost always hit 5 targets. These include all wells, locust swarm, and plague form. Plague form with locust swarm can both hit 5 targets a sec. If i pop all my wells(i usually run 2), hit locust swarm, and dive into plague to blind. I usually can tag upwards of 100 people in the first 15 key seconds of the engagement. I have about 50% crit rate so with vampiric precision im averaging about about 50 health a hit. I can siphon over 5k health easily in a short time frame even with this weak scaling because the nature of the aoe pulses. Then i can spam staff 1 which manages to pierce along will all my aoe marks. I have extremely good survivability and can use DS to absorb damage if i get caught out of position. It usually takes being largely outnumbered or catching a static field with no stunbreak/plague form followed by the melle train to down me. This is why many top guilds have been running variations of asciis WvW wellomancer build for a long time because survivability is king (dont rally their downed).

I like this discussion and the points you made. I feel they need to use step “5) Redesign life siphoning from the ground up.” This would take a lot of resources and time. Until then, i think the best bandaid fix would be step “2) Add an internal cool down to life siphoning”.

JonPeters.5630:

We will talk today about changing duration on weakening shroud instead of cooldown .

Also we have some plans for death magic including merging reanimated with death nova, and moving Protection of the Horde to be a major trait, and then reworking the minors in this line. This kind of change is not going to happen for dec 10 for 3 reasons.
1) testing time
2) implementation time
3) most importantly: if we rework this we want to make sure it is correct the second time around so we will take our time deciding on the “right” design.

Point 3 is something I’m happy to discuss here to list some ideas and break down some pros and cons.

Thanks,

Jon

Thanks for the update Jon! The pve crowd will appreciate this change. While you all are playing around with the death magic tree maybe you should revisit the “Death Shiver” trait. It doesn’t really “Shiver” anymore after the much needed beta nerf. I think you could move this to a grandmaster trait and have it apply a low duration weakness (2sec) every x secs in DS to fill in for the withering precision and weakening shroud nerfs while making the death magic tree more attractive.

On another note, blood line did get improved by being less dependent on bloodthirst. This was a step in the right direction. Im glad you are testing and arn’t make knee-jerk balance changes. However, most of the necro community still thinks the vampiric traits still need some help. Thanks for reading my opinion

The problem with vampiric is AOE. They are balancing vampiric around fast hitting attacks that hit multiple times and aoe abilities. These abilities include axe 2, staff auto (pierce), all staff marks and all wells. This makes single target siphons weak because if they upped the scaling then healing from aoe would be too strong. You can potentially tag 90 targets in 7 seconds with wells alone (7 pulses x 5 targets=35, 6 pules x 5 targets =30, 5pulses x 5 targets 25). Throw in all staff marks and a few auto attacks and you can potentially tag around 120 targets in 10 seconds.

The devs could man up and address the scaling problem head on or just claim that this continued band-aid fix is working.

Large scale zerg fights 30+ against skilled guild zergs not pugs:
1. Guardian
2. Necro
3. Ele
4. Warrior
5. Mesmer
6. Thief
7. Engi
8. Ranger

All about that sustain, stability, AOE pressure(You want retal friendly aoe not small hits).

When i was a noob, it took me a while to understand the game mechanics. It took me a while to understand the difference between a stun and an immobilize. I was stunbreaking immobilizes and it wouldn’t work. I was a huge noob.

Looking back, i start to realize why it took me a while to understand the “mechanics”. The reason it took a while is that there seems to be inconsistancy on how the mechanics work.

For example:

Immobilize can’t be stunbroken and goes through stability. Immobilize is a condition and i guess it isn’t a “control effect” even though it disables you from moving or dodging. So you need a condition cleanse to remove immobilize.

Fear is also a condition similar to immobilize. However, you can stunbreak and cleanse fear and it doesn’t work on stability. I guess it is classified as both a “control effect” and a condition. Other control effects (daze, stun, knockdown, float, sink, etc) are not considered conditions. Melandru runes -condition% and -stun duration% both “double dip” in reducing the length of fears (-25%condtion + -25%stun= -50% fear duration) which is evidence that fear is considered both a stun “control effect” and a condition. Stunbreaker working on fear also proves that fear is considred a stun “control effect” and a condition.

So my questions are as follows:
Why is fear double dipped as both a control effect and a condition? Is this intended? Im sure this is confusing new players on the mechanics of the game.

Bonus question:
Why does necromancer trait terror fail to do damage ticks through stability?

The coding for deathshroud is awful. Why do you think every DS bug “fix” results in a new huge bug? DS coding was tied into the downed state mechanic through the UI functionality of deathshroud (Old DS UI was same as downed state and you couldn’t see conditions etc). I also find it extremely weird that our DS health is around 2/3 of our total health pool and our downed health is around 1/3 of our normal health? Around 66.66% of our downed health is coded to death shroud and maybe we are left with around 33.33% for our actual down state?

R.I.P. DS Weapon swap. What other casualties will our necros have to endure before our coding is fixed?

Myrmidian Eudoros.4671:

Torqky just got ban hammered, but the laugh was so worth it.

Delete! Hide!

haha nice one :P

Yes they do 15 chars

Strang.8170:

Torqky.3682:

You are making an assumption that the ele is running a particular build. What if an ele took 30 into earth for written in stone and used signet of earth. Thats enough to have about 2500 armor base (melandru 165+ 300 from traits + 180 from signet) which allows you to gear full zerker considering you are immune to snares and have good healing potential. There is alot of theorycrafting that can be done around this that other classes don’t have an option for.

2500 armor is very mediocre.
Also, either healing or damage would be subpar, since there´s just not enough points to get both damage based traits and healing. Written in stone would mean that either ele would sacrifice even more stunbreaks to use more signet or his gm trait would effectively be only there for one skill.

It´s good and pwerful option for protection against conditions, but not much else. It´s a selfish build that doesn´t offer that much edge over anything that doesn´t solely rely on conditions.
Water based builds have comparable enough condition cleansing potential, it affects your team and also provides protection from power builds.

There you go again… i mention 30 points and you assume where the other 40 points are going.

That sounds awesome! “We are losing this matchup time to try to save face in the other” lol

DevonCarver.5370:

The new matchup code didn’t make it all the way to where it needed. We have addressed that and restarted WvW. The new matchup will be there on restart. Sorry again for the inconvenience.

This dude gettin kitten done man lol

SOR/BG/JQ based on what im seeing from the thread about the euro reset.

PinCushion.7390:

In order to achieve what you’re talking about an Ele has to be totally bunker/condition defense built. That means Melandru runes, instead of solid damage. That means Lemongrass food, instead of damage. That means 20 Earth/20 Water/30 Arcane, instead of taking 20 Air for lots of fury. That means skipping on extra Bleed duration to be hard to CC. Basically, it means doing terrible damage. That build is going to be good at soaking snares and healing and that’s about it.

I never bothered with the Melandru runes, but I’ve run the trait/food setup and the damage is laughable. It’s a build designed to not die, and that’s it.

You are making an assumption that the ele is running a particular build. What if an ele took 30 into earth for written in stone and used signet of earth. Thats enough to have about 2500 armor base (melandru 165+ 300 from traits + 180 from signet) which allows you to gear full zerker considering you are immune to snares and have good healing potential. There is alot of theorycrafting that can be done around this that other classes don’t have an option for.

I think john is right. I cant speak for all necros but i feel we have options to stay alive with death shroud and plague both at our disposal. The problem is we can’t outlast the enemy in the battle of “attrition”. Our condition spec is too dependent on bleed damage (limited poison uptime…Why do engis get bleed, poison, confusion, burning, and plenty of cover conditions?). Our power specs are weak outside of wells and dagger (staff 1 can hit kind of hard but moves too slow). Axe 2 hits hard but the autoattack just isn’t there. DS1 cast time is too long and is easily dodgeable, and the long cast time costs you lifeforce which is effective health from the degen. Death shroud 1 needs rework to be made worthwhile (it useless in condition specs and still bad in power). I can go all day about stun breaks and getting cc’d to death but this has already turned into a rant.

Not enough conditions that do damage and not enough conditions to cover your damaging conditions. Engineer has bleeding, poison, burning, confusion and a bunch of conditions to cover them from cleansing. My poor necro! Engineers took our JERBS!

A: 2016
15 chars lolz

Runes of melandru at like 3 gold and lemon grass poultry soup price went way up. Clearly this shouldn’t be intended. Immunity to snares makes condition cleansing overpowered. Thats a few less conditions that they have to worry abount cleansing. Not to mention people depend on chills/cripples/immobilize to cover their bleeds or other damaging conditions. I wouldnt expect a fix anytime soon though. For example, look how long it took for them nerf the lifesteal food. With no ICD, you had a high chance to proc an extra 400 damage and steal that as life. Now factor in channeling attacks or grenades that hit multiple targets. Even if it didn’t steal life the damage alone was way over the top in terms of balance. On top of that you had flamethrower/nade engis in full zerker topping themselves off from the heal alone. That took them like 6 months to nerf that food.

I expect a few months before they nerf the food. Its funny when people’s builds are built entirely around runes and consumables.

Torqky.3682:

Andele.1306:

BadJas.5178:

Andele.1306:

People, please learn, Condition ticks that dont do more together than degen dont apply in DS since they apply at the same time as the actual LF degen, game counting them as the same thing (ofc that loses value when the enemy got any kind of condi setup going, but still important to take on for calculations).

Could you explain what this means?
LF_degen = maximum(LF_degen_natural, Cumulative_condition_Ticks)
Is that right? If so, how did you obtain this info?

Thanks for the info!

All damage ticks that are condition/effect based tick on the same timer, so lets say first tick is right on application 0.1, second will be at 1.1, thing is DS degen happens at the same time and during the calculation of it, all condition damage is added under it
So if LF degen > condition damage that would tick = No damage taken from conditions during that tick, bu if LF degen < condition damage delt during that tick = additional LF lost based on condition damage. Usually burning and 4 stacks of bleed from someone with no condition damage can be consumed that way. Found it out by checking agony ticks with and without AR while in DS (and its kinda the reason why necros are the only profession that can finish level 50 or higher fractals without doing the death trick)

Long story short, condition damage form someone who doesnt spec for it can be eaten by DS for really small or even no loss.

You got me interested. How does this work in terms of the first degen tick. I thought it takes like a while for the first degen to kick in. Lets say 100 health was equal to 1% of my life force DS health. So each degen would take 4% or 400 health. What if i were to tick a bleed for 53 damage. That would be 453 damage and i assume that would round up to 5%. What if i ticked two bleeds for 53 in the time of the degen time? Would that be 506 which would be rounded to 5% or would it round up to 6% as soon as it passes 500? Or would it round each tick/source of damage individually like 400=4%(degen), 53=1% , 53=1% which all equals 6%? What if the bleed tick was 49? Would that round to 0%?

Until we fully understand the mechanics, the way life force %/vitality/traits converts to DS health, and how the rounding of damage (both white and condition damage) works this math is just all speculation.

Very interested to know if all condition damage ticks only apply at degen time as i feel the time of degen is delayed and the way conditions are applied at different intervals etc. Very confusing stuff and i bet the majority of arenanet’s employers dont even know exactly how this works haha.

Wells. Epi is fun but too much counterplay. Do yourself a favor and run wells.

hybrid is fun with theorycrafting.
This seems to be your build roughly: http://gw2buildcraft.com/calculator/necromancer/?5.0|b.1b.0.8.1b.0|7.1g.0.d.1g.0|1c.9c.1c.9c.1c.9c.1c.9c.1c.9c.1c.9c|2w.0.2w.0.3w.0.2w.0.3w.0.1c.67|u000.f0.a0.0.f0|0.0|0.0.0.0.0|e

I am thinking about making a hybrid using something more like this:
http://gw2buildcraft.com/calculator/necromancer/?5.0|6.1n.0|b.1b.0.8.1b.0|1n.719.1n.719.1n.719.1n.719.1n.719.1n.719|211.0.311.0.211.0.311.0.211.0.1c.67|0.u000.p00.0.f0|0.0|0.0.0.0.0|e

I would reccomend trying to double dip by picking up 25 in death magic and undead runes to get 5% power and condition damage from toughness. Then if you choose to use oils you can get more condition damage or power from that toughness. Staff is great for hybrids with the cd reduction and the auto attack can hit hard when it lands. You can get more condition damage, toughness, and effective power at the cost of some vitality by going with knights to pick up some crit without having to lose power by investing in rabids. Power scales too well and you can’t afford to lose it on rabids in a hybrid build.

As far as your build, i think you did a great job considering you arn’t building staff into your build.

BadJas.5178:

Think about all the things you said: mark of blood is a blast finisher? you can weapon switch when wearing no weapons at all? something about epidemic… (i don’t know what that’s about) They make no sense.
Even if some bug accidentally works out well for a certain profession or setup, if it’s unintentional it should be removed on principle. Then, after the bugs are gone, you can add the intentional stuff to make a profession more viable if it’s weak.
And one more thing; I promise it’s the last. Nothing is ever “taken from us” or “stolen from us”. We might have bought the game, but we’re playing it by their rules. As it should be.

I agree. Just pointing out how slow they fix bugs.

Take a look at these: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/necromancer/No-Wep-Swap-In-DS-now-Are-you-serious
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/necromancer/Stealth-nerf-oh-yeah/first#post1522960
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/necromancer/DS-Death-Shroud-bug/first#post2060234

If it was intended, why was it a stealth nerf not mentioned in patch notes:
Hint: It was a bug
If you remember, Deathshroud went through alot of bugs were it was delaying skill use when entering, not allowing others to rally (people couldn’t rally of necros and warrior using vengeance), and many other issues. They decided to take the easy road and just turn it into a hard transformation to make it easier for coding and weapon swap was taken from us. There are dev posts telling us weapon swap in DS was in fact intended(Take a look at Jon Peters’ infamous L2DS post telling us about swapping in DS and managing cds etc) . Click through some of these posts and you shall see…. I would also bet the 1/3 life in downed state bug is also related to the coding of DS seeing as this came about when they changed the UI of deathshroud away from the downed state 1-4 mechanic.

No i think it needs 3 more months of tooltip fixes. I think if they continue to fix water tooltips this game will really take off!

cal.4718:

Fix the hole in the tires before you give it shiny new rims.

Well said!

Bhawb.7408:

I totally agree they barely touched our bugs, and ended up introducing a new one that is worse than any they fixed. So if you are going to complain, base your complaints off of that, a totally legitimate reason, and not the fact that this isn’t a balance patch, which it was never going to be.

Bhawb you are making too much sense. However, rage leads to irrational thinking. Necro forum is raging because we have been neglected. The first bug they fixed was mark of evasion. Mark of evasion used to create a blast finisher. This made playing necro fun. Dodging into our well of blood giving our minions some retal and regen was rewarding. They fixed that bug so fast because it was beneficial to us. There were no people crying necro dodge blast finisher is OP. They just fixed that first and didn’t fix our staff mark sizes for ages (or anything useful for us). They finally fixed staff in time to nerf epidemic. Then they just broke staff again. And don’t get me started on minons, death shroud weapon swap being stolen from us, or many other things. It makes me want to smash my computer with a brick lol.

Make no mistake DS weapon swap was taken from us because of coding issues. After they couldn’t fix it they just labeled it as a balance fix.

I think it works like this (It changes alot cuz of dem necro bugs):

Each hit gets rounded since damage gets converted into life force . We have a certain amount of health in DS (around 70 percent of normal life give or take depending on how far you invest in soul reaping). So if you have 20k life, you may get around 14k Death shroud life. It will take that 14k number and convert it to life force % :Each percent of life force would be 140. The damage you take gets converted into rounded life force % which does take account your toughness. But on small consecutive hits or condition ticks, the damage may get rounded up making it seem like toughness isnt helping. The last hit that gets you to 0 life force will never cut into your health pool. That is why we can jump off cliffs and survive no matter what % life force. These complicated mechanics make bugs rampant with our class and balancing a nightmare.

LOLOL 15 loooooooooooollllllllooooooll

It should pulse every second like a well

…This just in: Warrior still sucks! On a noble quest to demand pvp equality i was able to get a dev to comment:

This month will be focused on bug fixes, with balance coming in later patches!

Huge slap in the face…again.

emon.1863:

This month patch will be bug fixing ?!
I am out then

I know right…There is the pve patch/wvw patch/spvp patch/bugfix patch/balance patch… Its getting old. The progress is non-existent because they cant prioritize kitten! Bug fixes should come with balance and should be prioritized. Bugfixes this late in the game should be low priority

Defektive.7283:

Follidus.8027:

Defektive.7283:

Contemplating coming back for this very reason… tournaments (while new) have given me renewed curiosity regarding this game.

But you quit. Here’s proof: http://www.twitch.tv/defektive/c/2075636

2 Months ago getting frustrated with the lack of Warrior changes.

Then they make Warrior changes.

Arena Net fulfills the requirement of why I left. It’s only logical to test the new changes to see if they are a valid reason to keep playing.

I’m not entirely convinced yet, but I’m keeping it as a possibility.

JonathanSharp.7094:

DiogoSilva.7089:

Hey, Jon, will this month’s patch bring balance changes? I believe some dev has mentioned that they might wait a bit longer to let the meta settle, while changes to underused builds are being worked on, and I wonder if this means we might get one month without balance changes or not.

This month will be focused on bug fixes, with balance coming in later patches!

Dont worry, back to business as usual. Warrior is still bottom of the food chain.

Bhawb.7408:

BobJoeXXI.2493:

And Thiefs can wipe out entire teams without losing a single hip point…

Don’t make absurd claims. Show video proof. I highly doubt both statements quoted above and would love to see proof.

It really isn’t that difficult to think of a situation where an Epidemic could wipe a team. In the L2P that Gibbly and SOAC did, they wiped a team pretty easily by stacking a bunch of condis on them and then blowing them up with 2 Epidemics right after the other.

No one is saying that it is easy to wipe a team with Epidemic, but if you hit someone with 15 bleed stacks, some various other condis (burning, confusion, w/e else), then chain Terror them and Epi, the entire team can be stuck in a 4 second fear taking over 4k DPS just off their conditions. Is this a realistic scenario that currently happens often? Of course not, in fact outside of teams running multiple Necros it is incredibly rare. But it remains that Epidemic has the highest “one click” damage potential of any skill in the game, if it is given the required setup.

Yea and warrior can 1 shot 5 people with the new signet and killshot once the stars allign too. Stop it with the hypotheticals. Meta has too much condition cleanse in team fights and epidemic has a long cast time bro.

MaXi.3642:

WvW is large group oriented… because there are not healers, the only real group support are boons… you want to remove supporters? they already sacrifice something so they can take boon skills and be usefull for whole group…

Bhawb.7408:

AoE boon stripping in WvW just won’t become a possibility against good zergs. The ability of AoE boon application with shouts and combos will always outpace the ability to strip them.

There is your counter sir. People who are real group supporters will find it more rewarding to do their role more effectively when there is counterplay. They still can outpace it. AoE condition removal and boon sharing is rampant and there is no real counterplay.

We were in a good spot (tpvp) until they made hgh engi and thiefs outclass us in two patches. Thiefs got that boon strip evade garbage and HGHs pressure bunker guards much harder than we ever could.

Myrmidian Eudoros.4671:

Torqky.3682:

They have to balance the possibility of 92 health a hit with vampiric precision and bloodthirst. With alot of aoe (marks), wells that pulse 5 times/5people each, and staff auto projectile that can hit 5 people, and our channeling attacks that hit rapidly like axe 2 and dagger 2 it creates the potential to keep our life and DS bar up in aoe situations.

God forbid Necro have a viable bunker build. While in PvE and WvW scaling the siphons might cause minor balance issues (<500 per AoE tick on wells wouldn’t even be bad due to the long CD’s) it would pose no problem whatsoever in tPvP, because you will NEVER hit 5 people that deserve a chance to beat you with a well for 1 tick let alone 5. Hitting 1 person with Staff#1 is challenging if they care to make you miss and if you pull a 5 hit with staff #1 in tPvP (or even in HotZerg), then you will be the first to do it. Putting cleave on dagger’s tiny range would almost never hit anything else anyway, so who cares.

By the way it would still be easily countered by the following:
chain CC necro,
burst at will,
necro down,
necro stomped.
No matter how much lifesteal the necro can output 2 players with heavy CC would down it in less than 5 seconds if they coordinate well. The siphons require the ability to hit a target, and you can’t do that if you are under CC and they are smart enough to not stand in wells. On the extreme outside chance that the necro is running Wurm, Spectral Walk and Spectral Armor (or Plague Sig, lol) in order to maximize stun breaks there would be so little lifesteal being put out that you would still just focus him down super fast. You need the utilities (wells) to really get enough out of lifesteals to make any kind of sustain out of it, and you need the stun breaks to not be a total ragdoll. you can’t have both, so the siphons aren’t an issue no matter how much scaling you give them.

Oh i agree with you 100% in tourneys/spvp. But in WvW, you it seems like every aoe attack hits five people with these zergballs. It would be really strong and require nerfing on that point and the devs are too lazy to balance the game around each mode…They are just to slow with balancing… I already abuse axe 3 retal/spectral wall/ and plague form with the siphon. Plague with chill blind/spam, aoe pulse that benefits from life steal, and near 100% retal and protection uptime. I just think its difficult to balance health siphon with all this aoe pulse crap, aoe marks, etc..

Alot of good points. My thoughts:

Power necro doesn’t have ways to improve damage through traits without going deep into trait lines for damage modifiers to hit hard. You got 20 spite for marks spiteful marks, 30 spite for Axe mastery/close to death, 25 curses target the weak, 25 blood magic for blood to power, and 25 soul reaping for strength of undeath. We can’t get multiple damage modifiers because they are all to deep into the trees. Our weapons scale poorly with power, traits dont allow us to get a consistent high damage modifier as they are mostly situational based on health % of enemy, health % of us, # of conditions, and % of LF.

A second point is that we don’t get cleave. This is due to the fact that our traits don’t allow for it. Life stealing is weak in most scenarios (small fights or single target) because we have too much aoe capabilities allowing for too much potential if it scaled or if we got aoe auto attacks. They have to balance the possibility of 92 health a hit with vampiric precision and bloodthirst. With alot of aoe (marks), wells that pulse 5 times/5people each, and staff auto projectile that can hit 5 people, and our channeling attacks that hit rapidly like axe 2 and dagger 2 it creates the potential to keep our life and DS bar up in aoe situations.

TLDR: Once you combine regeneration ability with marks, LF regen, life steal with aoe and fast channel procs, and our heals it makes it a nightmare to balance our class. The result is we get stun breaks on long cds, no stability/vigor, builds that can’t output damage.

This is going to be a huge balance issue with the condition damage spec. Im guessing they will give it more favored to warrior, guard, and mesmer. I would suspect ele, thief and necro get some use of it. Ranger and engi prolly wont get it because of balance issues. I think it would be cool if it exploded when cleansed doing the remaining dot damage as direct damage divided by X to 5 targets around them (similar to epidemic). Casting epidemic would have to cleanse this off the enemy to prevent it from being OP. Anything that does some damage to balance rampant AOE cleanse that prevents condition damage from being weaker in team settings..

I just want the change to make condition specs viable for more classes across the game. Necros can run condition specs very effectively in spvp right now without this new condition. WvW condition specs are less viable and need help so i hope this change addresses that opposed to buffing certain condition specs which will lead to nerfs and lack of balance across the game.

EDIT: Not to mention this will be another condition that warriors will have to cleanse and thus weakening them further. They gave warriors dogged march and that isn’t cutting it.

SOR had a good showing this week. They had more numbers at certain times which is understandable when you are pushing for first place for the first time. Some of their main guilds may have not put in “overtime” but some of their pve population which didnt seem existent last week (didn’t even think SOR had one lol) showed up. That being said, alot of even number fights they won too. I remember someone in voice complaining about their blob as an excuse for losing fights (we had a que on the map).

Coming from Kaineng, i remember reading the t1 thread and people talking about how they couldn’t wait for Kaineng to come up and replace SOR (L2glicko/math). I think we need to praise SOR for their resilience in T1. Great fights this week and keep it classy guys!

Thursday! Any GvGs or windmill stuff going on?

It will land in high levels of tpvp because good necros know when to use it after dodges, etc. Try landing a good epidemic in wvw in the top tiers against an organized guild and get back to me with your results. When two organized, top tier guilds/zergs/blobs collide, take a guess at all the aoe condition removal that goes off in that 1 second cast time. This doesn’t even account for all the dodge rolling, los issues, and all the guardian walls/static fields/earthshakers dropped everywhere to stun and interrupt our cast (We have no stability)… Its getting old seeing the same few posters come in and talk about skills when they have no clue how they work at higher level WvW.. And before you come in saying you have played wvw, i will be the first to tell you i have played tpvp. I can run an axe/dagger 15/15/15/15/10 build and stomp people in hotjoins and soloque but that doesn’t make it viable in high level tpvp… I still have yet to see a necro running epi in GvG videos or WvW zergs landing these nasty epidemics against top tier guilds/zergs.. There is a reason for this and its because the aoe condition removal and long cast time make the opportunity cost too high.

Has this been fixed or just ignored? How can bugs like these be ignored without hotfixes is redic… Please tell me they fixed this and left it out of the patch notes!!!

Oh cool a gimmicky #5 skill on a long cooldown instead of focusing on our lack of attrition. I hope that the skill will be some sort of leap or blink to increase the skill cap. Tired of getting slapped around with no stability, long stun break cds. Oh and it looks like warriors can now get 98% slow reduction with their new traits melandru and lemongrass… Whats the point of playing an attrition class with low damage output when you can’t even kite bad players :/… We still have a niche with chills and blind i guess so that will keep me happy.

Rawnoodles.1398:

Bear on the job.6273:

Kinda curious why these guilds would transfer to a server that has won their tier for the past 6 weeks in a row…Trying to cultivate Dragonbrand and work your way back to T1? Guild members need map completion? Just bored of the current T1 matchup?

I mean, doesn’t seem like you went for the challenge, adding ~400 players to an already winning server…Unless you really are trying to work your way back to T1 for a new fight. In that case, I hope you make it back, so there might be more diversity in T1.

Allot of our core members wanted to see whats out there. We’ve been in JQ for such a long time since beta and wanted to see what the T2 matchups can offer since they house some of the best fielding guilds. Also, diversifying the competitive brackets. A win, win, win situation.

Sounds fair enough! I would go easy on the recruitment for a while to avoid the forum drama lol. I know you are just competetive in nature so i can dig that haha.