Guild Wars 2

Yeah, this whole season has been a kitten throwing fest. the MM is a complete wreck but they could save themselves a TON of trouble If they merely added in 2v2/3v3 arena style leagues. Honestly, It’s miles easier to balance. And much easier for people to do with friends.

I’m with ya OP, It’s been completely awful so far. I’m on the final like four pints to ruby but find myself losing a good three or four games before winning one. It’s merely the MM, It has nothing to do with personal skill. Having all the skilled players stacked on one team. Good example was yesterday I played a game and the enemy team had TWO partly premades put together. I knew they didn’t queue together cause I talked to one of them afterwards.

Honestly though, It’s poor design like this that makes me not even want to bother in pvp. I’ve basicly decided I’m going to do the 3 rounds a day and that’s it. I’ve already gotten the fractal legendary, so I’ll just take my time for this one.

Honestly, we don’t have enough data to fully test where RS1 stands. I’ve heard some interesting ideas including running Flame Legion runes for higher burn uptime (Because a lot of people have said keeping the Scholars buff is considerably tougher now). Best bet is to wait for the release and give us time to settle in with it.

From just running both D/W, GS and RS1 each once in a fractal 50 I saw little difference in damage. GS and D/W are still better, I can easily say that’s correct. However, with how raids look It’s possible having RS1 could be beneficial because of the protective second healthbar. Our easy vuln capping abilities could be of use aswell in less optimized teams.

I just want to see what the later bosses do, cause in a Vale Guardian like fight, we don’t offer too much vs running the optimized comps. I don’t want them to force groups to take a necro for some haywire mechanic, we should have a place like every other class.

Me personally, I love RS. I’ve always been a power necro fan and I love the shroud mechanic, It’s the big reason I’ve been maining the necro for a good three years. I’ll most likely be doing an RS build even If the damage falls short, mainly in smaller groups such as fractals… Where vuln capping will be a lot more valuable. All that aside I do think RS1 needs a damage buff, It should be doing the most damage out of our autos and RS5 also needs one. I’m ALL for a more interesting rotation.

Lily.1935:

Truefrost.6815:

Cogbyrn.7283:

@Truefrost: Zaroua isn’t confused. He just accepts that there are enough unknowns to make attempts at declaring hard facts about classes and the roles they fill in raids look silly.

Roles are defined by boss mechanics. If we don’t know the boss mechanics, we can only theorize on the roles based on whatever little information we know. We can draw conclusions, but if you submit yourself to following everyone else’s conclusions on DPS, roles, etc., you’ll never find yourself out on the cutting edge of the meta. You need an open mind to make discoveries that evolve the meta, and evolution should be the goal over preaching someone else’s sermon.

Necros might find that they fall short of having a firm role in raiding. I’m not saying it’s guaranteed. I’m just not going to rule it out until the data is in. Vale Guardian on a beta weekend is not an appropriate amount of data, regardless of how professional everyone thinks him/herself to be.

EDIT – @Zaroua: If you mention boons, someone is going to mention Mesmer’s sword auto again which strips boons at a rate of I think 1 every 2.5 seconds, and I’m going to vomit into my mouth again. Please spare my taste buds.

Also, I’ve been avoiding mentioning Patchwerk, but it’s been on my mind for days now. If they are going to create engaging encounters, they won’t be Patchwerk-style, and anything less than a very, very sophisticated simulation mechanism is going to fall potentially woefully short.

The Mes boon removal is actually quite good. Necros have to give up stuff and fall back on large cooldowns. Making the single boon removal quite nice. This of course could change If bosses begin to require a boon removal that removes multiple boons.

You’re completely wrong in this regard. Necromancer’s boon removal is often built into the build a necromancer will already be running. Well of suffering is already automatically run by a necromancer well build as it is. We give up nothing by bringing it. The same is true with Focus which will already be an auto include with dagger or dare I say axe? But to assume that the necromancer has to “Give up something” is completely false and utter nonsense.

First off It’s Well of Corruption that corrupts boons which also has a large cooldown on it, second focus is up in the air. It turns into Warhorn vs Focus, each gives something. We don’t need the vuln from focus anymore.

I’m not saying we’re bad at it, I’m saying It’s not enough of a reason to take us.

Cogbyrn.7283:

@Truefrost: Zaroua isn’t confused. He just accepts that there are enough unknowns to make attempts at declaring hard facts about classes and the roles they fill in raids look silly.

Roles are defined by boss mechanics. If we don’t know the boss mechanics, we can only theorize on the roles based on whatever little information we know. We can draw conclusions, but if you submit yourself to following everyone else’s conclusions on DPS, roles, etc., you’ll never find yourself out on the cutting edge of the meta. You need an open mind to make discoveries that evolve the meta, and evolution should be the goal over preaching someone else’s sermon.

Necros might find that they fall short of having a firm role in raiding. I’m not saying it’s guaranteed. I’m just not going to rule it out until the data is in. Vale Guardian on a beta weekend is not an appropriate amount of data, regardless of how professional everyone thinks him/herself to be.

EDIT – @Zaroua: If you mention boons, someone is going to mention Mesmer’s sword auto again which strips boons at a rate of I think 1 every 2.5 seconds, and I’m going to vomit into my mouth again. Please spare my taste buds.

Also, I’ve been avoiding mentioning Patchwerk, but it’s been on my mind for days now. If they are going to create engaging encounters, they won’t be Patchwerk-style, and anything less than a very, very sophisticated simulation mechanism is going to fall potentially woefully short.

The Mes boon removal is actually quite good. Necros have to give up stuff and fall back on large cooldowns. Making the single boon removal quite nice. This of course could change If bosses begin to require a boon removal that removes multiple boons.

Zaroua.2714:

“Everything we offer other classes do better. "

But that’s wrong. Nobody has more health than we do because of death shroud. Nobody has anything like Epidemic for sustained AoE damage against large groups of enemies. Nobody has as much boon/condi tools as we do. Nobody has passive group wide condi removal. Nobody has as much weakness and chill as we do.

Not every revolves around maximum DPS. And if anet does their job right, it never will be. Here’s to hoping we never have to fight against a Patchwerk or one of its many clones.

First of all DS doesn’t scale, which is one of It’s key problens. We also have no utilities while in DS. So ‘Two Healthbars’ is being just is ignorant as Anet has been with that sad excuse. Boon/Condi tools? We have terrible boon uptime and we can’t share it worth a crap. Group wide condi removal? Wtf are you talking about? WoP? Which is stuck behind a large cooldown, other classes can achieve boon removal far beyond us. And finally, weakness and chill, our condi chill is bad cause of the limit and Weakness doesn’t work on bosses.

Currently, since Anet seems focused on roles. We cannot do them better then any other class. This has been the problem from the beginning, a problem Anet created themselves. It’s what happens when you take poor care of your classes.

As I’ve mentioned on other threads, I really do hope Anet changes things. I love the combat in this game I just want them to finalize on something already, I feel like most of the combat COMPLETELY conflicts with the necro (Which it does)

I do agree though, we don’t know how raids will turn out. The points I’m making is in the current state of the game. If they make more bosses like Vale Guardian we’re gonna have problems if the classes aren’t balanced.

Zaroua.2714:

Truefrost, your posts are full of baseless assumptions. Pretty much everything you’ve said can be countered with a “but, what if…?” question.

“For an optimized group you want a PS warr”: But, what if you can get a group setup where the group has full uptime on 25 Might stacks at all time and where the Warrior’s DPS + banner buffs DPS is less than another profession?

“a tank guard”: But, what if the encounters ignore blocking to prevent cheesing? But what if you need someone to do DPS while tanking? But, what if you need someone to do healing while tanking? But, what if you need someone to actually bring good or different buffs/debuffs while tanking?

“although any class can do this role”: But, what if a boss fight requires something specific out of the tank that not every class can do, like mobility for a Necro?

“really you most likely want a tough class”: But, what if you can evade tank on a berserker?

“that can also buff really well”: But, what if the optimal group comp makes the buffs the guard tank brings redundant?

“thus bunker guard makes logical sense”: But, what if you bring a Mesmer to AoE Distortion/Blur the damage and buff with Signet of Inspiration while bringing both Alacrity and Quickness?

“The imbalance in numbers is large enough that there isn’t a reason to NOT run the highest dps classes.”: But, what if you need utility (tank/heal/CC/etc) more than you need damage?

“So of course people will stack condi engi’s.” But, what if the assumption that stacking 4 Condi Engineers is the best way to deal condition damage actually false? But what if, in a future fight, you need AoE or burst condi damage?

“Necro can’t take any of those roles besides tank”: But, what if there are roles in future fights that aren’t simply “tank/heal/DPS”? But, what if a Necro ends up filling whatever strange requirement a fight might have in the future so well that every group will try to bring a Necro for said fight?

“but they aren’t the optimized choice for even tanking”: But, what if other tanking mechanics work differently?

“We can’t group stack might so we can’t replace the PS warr”: But, what if other professions can replace the PS Warrior?

“we can’t heal so replacing druid won’t happen”: But, what if a Druid is actually suboptimal to playing better and bringing another DPS? But, what if Druid is actually suboptimal compared to a healer that can actually buff the group?

“in the end we have one role”: Already answered that one.

“According to the raid that downed him they had nearly a minute left on the timer, which means If it doesn’t get nerfed we’ll need optimized group dps to make it”: But, what if their group was horribly optimized and an actually well optimized group can kill Vale Guardian way, way faster?

“Necros have never been very good at condition damage”: Actually, Necros have always been the only acceptable PvE condition build because all the other condition builds suck at AoEing stuff down. At least until a few months ago when they released that huge patch with the condi changes.

“As for bosses that will be immune to conditions”: But, what if there are no encounters where conditions don’t work at all?

“A casual non-optimized group would reach the timer”: But, what if the timer is set to be lenient enough that non fully optimized groups can kill it? Ya know, like what happened last weekend.

“My point was that necro is on bottom end of dps, thief and ele are a considerably better choice” But, what if there are fights where the strength of the Necro is so significant of an advantage that Eles and Thieves are sat out?

Let’s be honest here, nobody knows what future raids will bring, least of all anet. They probably haven’t started designing the next 5-6 raids that we’ll see. So if anet doesn’t know what the future holds, why are YOU making assumptions about it? All we can and should do right now is establish what classes can and can’t do, establish good DPS spreadsheets (all the current ones suck and don’t take into account group buffs nearly well enough and don’t run simulations) and share our findings on the forums so the devs can read, agree or disagree and balance accordingly.

You seem very confused. So I’ll try this one more time, easy to understand. Everything we offer other classes do better. Simple as that, we have no legit spot currently. I do agree however that we don’t know the future of raids, but with the style of gameplay Anet is using I’m not expecting much of a change unless they are willing to make one themselves.

I’ve already gone over these same questions like four times in this thread. The dead horse is dead, for god sakes stop beating it. :P

Cogbyrn.7283:

Not that this means anything, but I’m amused you singled Eles and Thieves out in particular as classes that you’re sure groups will be taking, as this thread is active over on the PvE boards:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/dungeons/Thief-Ele-have-no-place-in-raids/first

In general though, I don’t subscribe to putting each individual mechanic under a microscope and throwing a class away because another class might handle that situation better. It’s like saying a Swiss army knife is useless because you could buy a better individual version of each component.

My point was that necro is on bottom end of dps, thief and ele are a considerably better choice. So even If they can’t get the best in slot classes, they’ll get the closest thing to it.

Cogbyrn.7283:

How much DPS does a Power Engie do? What if you are in a raid instance, and the next boss after needing condis is immune to condis? Do you bring 4 condi engis for the first boss? What if you can’t dynamically drop groups/add new people in the middle of a raid and have to bring a group that can tackle the entire thing?

Also, you assume you want a tank that can buff really well. What about a tank that can strip boons well? What about a tank that does solid DPS instead of buffs?

The limit on imagination is a little strong. Maybe the highest DPS class for one fight won’t be the highest DPS class for the next. Maybe a Necro’s ability to go Power, Condi, Tank, Strip Boons, and relocate downed Allies will be a great asset to a group for only 1 raid slot.

Also, what is the guarantee that every DPS in the groups who downed Vale Guardian and made videos pulled their fully optimized weight? Without meters, it’s like we’re assuming every single player of every class/spec is performing optimally. If you’ve raided in other games, you know that’s very much not the case.

If I want a dps tank, I promise you necro won’t be my first choice. I’ve already covered this and now you are going in pointless circles. In a 10-man raid everything will be covered, including boon removal (Interesting to note here, Mesmer can remove boons with It’s basicly sword auto attack).

As for bosses that will be immune to conditions, honestly in the current state non-condi engi is better then necro power anyway, lol. And let’s not forget I’m sure groups will be taking eles or thieves (Who are WAY beyond necro in power dps builds).

As for player performance, that’s always going to be a thing, It’s unavoidable. Honestly, I’d love If they’d add a meter, cause then It would be a lot easier to show everyone where the classes stand so people can truly see how terrible the balancing is currently. Most of the bad players will most likely not be doing raids or doing them in casual manner, which in the current state of raids is impossible. (A casual non-optimized group would reach the timer.)

Cogbyrn.7283:

Let’s assume for a second the blanket statement of “literally anything a Necro can do, another class can do better” is true. What are those classes that are filling the Necro’s shoes for each role doing besides said role? Is there still merit to bringing a Necro because the Necro can have pretty high effectiveness across multiple roles at once, reducing the number of slots required to fulfill a set of roles to 1 instead of 2+? What benefit does that bring?

Also, you don’t have to apologize for having the opinion that Necro is a jack of all trades. I’ll accept your apology though if you think your opinion is infallible. There’s no reason why each class can’t submit feedback in each realm of GW2 in order to ensure their class is useful and fun. To say a class should abandon hope in one realm because they excel in another is defeatist and unhealthy for the future of the game.

The real problem comes with how this is all setup. For an optimized group you want a PS warr, a tank guard, although any class can do this role really you most likely want a tough class that can also buff really well, thus bunker guard makes logical sense. Finally, you want a healer, which currently druid is the best.

What does that leave us with? Needing dps, sadly… The imbalance in numbers is large enough that there isn’t a reason to NOT run the highest dps classes. Also, in the Vale Guardian fight you need condi damage. So of course people will stack condi engi’s.

Necro can’t take any of those roles besides tank, but they aren’t the optimized choice for even tanking. We can’t group stack might so we can’t replace the PS warr, we can’t heal so replacing druid won’t happen. This is the problem, in the end we have one role and that’s dps. According to the raid that downed him they had nearly a minute left on the timer, which means If it doesn’t get nerfed we’ll need optimized group dps to make it. Don’t forget, Vale Guardian is the FIRST BOSS.

Back on subject, to the OP… This has been gone over a thousand times and It’s beating a dead horse at this point. Necros have never been very good at condition damage, Reaper might help it out but the gap between us and a condi eng is too large.

I truly hope something will change during raids or they’ll make us more powerful. It’s just really hard when you have a mechanic like DS that basicly goes completely against the design of the game.

OMNIBUS.2913:

Truefrost.6815:

OMNIBUS.2913:

Truefrost.6815:

I never really cared much that they changed the animation, yeah… It looks bad. But who is actually axe auto attacking anyway? :P I’m more concerned that the weapon is a pile of garbage in the highest order and It appears Anet just won’t give it any love.

Sad to say, Axe is one of my favorite weapons (Hell, Frostfang was my first legendary) and It’s sad to see how bad It’s fallen and worse how little they are doing to make it usable.

This type of response has been beaten to death. Barely ever are players auto attacking with axe, that’s true. But does that justify its terrible animation change?(which was corrected on ele’s lightning whip if i recall for the same reason without butchering the look)? No. And axe auto usefulness is not the topic anyway. Srry if this post seems aggressive but I have made frostfang as well, I really loved the old animations and the fact that anet looked at axe(evidenced by the patch), and more than likely saw the huge axe animation thread. From my perspective it seems they chose to ignore the players and leave the bad animation :/, puts a bitter taste in my mouth…

As posted on another thread, Robert Gee replied saying that the animation was changed because the old one was being exploited through canceling, he pretty much flat out said It’s not going to change back to the old one. (Well, he said It’s unlikely… But saying that as a Dev pretty much means no.)

The ultimate point is the weapon needs a rework, a FULL rework If we want a different animation, and honestly I don’t think that’s a half bad idea since It appears Anet is afraid to buff it because of pvp reasons.

I’m aware of the old exploit that nobody used XD. It’s why i mentioned the lightning whip change. You could exploit it the same way yet they managed to fix that without making it look terrible. Axe to me seems like they took the easiest route to fix an exploit. Necro only deserves bare minimum effort to a fix apparently…

Yep, that sounds about right, lol. Seem we always get the short end of the stick. If we want a change to the animation they’ll have to come up with a brand new one, which I admit does take time and with the devs dealing with elite specializations we can cut them some slack.

I should also mention that one of the devs said this was never meant to be a large balance patch, that more tweaks and changes would come in time. Still, I know how long it takes Anet to balance things, let’s hope that’s not the case in the future.

Nay of the Ether.8913:

Something that is bothering me I noticed after the changes were announced. Everyone seems to think necro is getting projectile reflection which is False…CPC will provide projectile Destruction which basiclaly nullifies the projectiles. Need to be clear on that because every post I see discussing CPC people keep saying reflect, which is wrong and might mislead some people who can’t be bothered to read full sentences.

A lot of that has to do with people just lumping projectile reflect/block into the same thing. I think most know It’s just a block, force of habit for them I suppose.

Bhawb.7408:

No, Gee said the animation wouldn’t go back to the old one, because it was true that the old one could be canceled for around twice the DPS. It can still get a new animation, so long as that animation works out cancel-wise like our current one.

I was referring to the old animation, should have made that more clear on my part, sorry!

OMNIBUS.2913:

Truefrost.6815:

I never really cared much that they changed the animation, yeah… It looks bad. But who is actually axe auto attacking anyway? :P I’m more concerned that the weapon is a pile of garbage in the highest order and It appears Anet just won’t give it any love.

Sad to say, Axe is one of my favorite weapons (Hell, Frostfang was my first legendary) and It’s sad to see how bad It’s fallen and worse how little they are doing to make it usable.

This type of response has been beaten to death. Barely ever are players auto attacking with axe, that’s true. But does that justify its terrible animation change?(which was corrected on ele’s lightning whip if i recall for the same reason without butchering the look)? No. And axe auto usefulness is not the topic anyway. Srry if this post seems aggressive but I have made frostfang as well, I really loved the old animations and the fact that anet looked at axe(evidenced by the patch), and more than likely saw the huge axe animation thread. From my perspective it seems they chose to ignore the players and leave the bad animation :/, puts a bitter taste in my mouth…

As posted on another thread, Robert Gee replied saying that the animation was changed because the old one was being exploited through canceling, he pretty much flat out said It’s not going to change back to the old one. (Well, he said It’s unlikely… But saying that as a Dev pretty much means no.)

The ultimate point is the weapon needs a rework, a FULL rework If we want a different animation, and honestly I don’t think that’s a half bad idea since It appears Anet is afraid to buff it because of pvp reasons.

I never really cared much that they changed the animation, yeah… It looks bad. But who is actually axe auto attacking anyway? :P I’m more concerned that the weapon is a pile of garbage in the highest order and It appears Anet just won’t give it any love.

Sad to say, Axe is one of my favorite weapons (Hell, Frostfang was my first legendary) and It’s sad to see how bad It’s fallen and worse how little they are doing to make it usable.

Only thing of value for me here is a Projectile block, FINALLY. I’ve been hoping they’d give us one for three years now. -_- Took em long enough.

I saw this coming already, when I watched the live stream and heard it’s range was increasing I knew not much else would happen for the weapon. Simply put, It’s bad… And I’m not just talking from a pve perspective, which in pve It’s WORSE then bad, It’s not even usable for DS builds. Giving up Rending Shroud is just a giant no-no for that crappy axe trait.

This weapon needs much more If you want it to work correctly.

Very, very curious to see how this goes. Well, If it becomes useless (Which I doubt) eles will still hold a high place in pve gameplay, they still offer great utility and amazing damage (And godly AoE sustain). I honestly wish they’d just nerf it into the ground so eles can take something different for once. -_-

Well, It moving to the bug section might mean It’s confirmed that at least the Moon not appearing during night is a bug. This is of course wishful thinking but eh!

Narrrz.7532:

cliffside. It’s just so long and annoying, and it can be both second or third (and maybe even still first?) so you can’t be sure you’ve escaped it until you get to the boss fractal.

Hah! I use to hate Cliffside aswell, I don’t know why I started getting Snowblind so much. Now I’m actually okay with seeing Cliffside on the second roll. I however dislike it greatly on the third.

Thing to understand, OP… This is not like any normal MMO, everything is very different (I remember going from WoW to this, It was very strange to me) And it might not even be your style, everyone has different opinions when It comes to MMOs.

I honestly hate the stand still style, I love being active and moving instead of sitting there spaming a rotation then moving two steps to avoid the badness.

Snowblind. 100%. Not even because It’s hard, but because that Ele is as broken as can be. I also get it EVERY freakin’ day I do my 50 daily. -_-

Hopefully tuesday patch notes will tell us If axe got more then that, cause It’s still not worth using. Don’t care much about Scepter (Not a big condition lover). But man, THAT Projectile block, freakin’ finally. Cannot wait to have that.

I’m curious to see If more buffs were given in the actual patch. Guess we’ll find out, all in all… Fantastic, from a pve view anyway!

This still all remains to be seen, who knows what bosses will be like. My honest feelings, I’m glad things are changing, maybe this will finally allow people to use other things. The changing of the meta is always healthy for MMOs, not only is it new but It’s commonly more refined as time goes on.

The question will be how far into the trinity will this go. Being Anet I don’t foresee them going full on trinity of any kind. Although I love the idea of a support heavy build being useful, I just don’t want it to turn into needed.

Still, whatever happens we’ll adapt. Things will always change.

Maclaine Diemer creates brilliant music. I love his preview of track 9, just beautiful! (Feel free to look it up on youtube If you haven’t heard it.)

This is… Very, very strange… I don’t even know what to say… Man, this is freakin’ creepy. O.o Anyone else feel like they are watching some form of a disturbed kids program…?

I’m actually very excited to see the launch trailer! I want to see some stuff that isn’t Verdant Brink related. xD

Kronos.2560:

Truefrost.6815:

Kronos.2560:

Truefrost.6815:

Kronos.2560:

Maybe you were just using a crummy reaper build cause when I was playing it I never had problems, ridiculously high health pools. Almost always 25 might (Reaper’s Might,“You are all weaklings!”). Good healing and shroud generator (Blighter’s Boon, “Your soul is mine!”). Throwing out tons of vuln and burning(Unyielding Blast and Dhuumfire). And also a good boon removers (Nothing can save you!, Chill of Death). I guess I’m just confused at how a reaper isn’t good in a group or solo? It has 2 huge health pools that heal like crazy, hits like a truck while applying vulnerability,burning and removing your boons. Do you really need more?

In the current state of pve, all those things are completely useless in group play. Might is already group wide with a PS warrior, who can maintain 25 stacks for the whole group. As for DS, sadly DS is a poor mechanic that doesn’t scale with multiple enemies, thus is less effective vs classes with lots of active defenses. And of course, boon removal is just generally useless, as Anet has yet to add a need for it in current content (Mesmers can also achieve better boon removal then use through sword auto). Vuln is the only nice thing, but in an optimized group It’s also already taken care of. (Gonna be SUPER easy in 10-man raids.)

Necro in the CURRENT state of pve, has no use in groups, our damage EVEN with reaper is lackluster and brings no reason to not just take another ele over taking a necro. Now, as I mentioned who knows what raids will bring, It could easily change the meta.

If every single group you run always has a phalanx war/(ele for pre fight) and has no need for burning or vuln and are requiring you to bring a “more dps class”. Maybe you shouldn’t be saying whats wrong with this class? but perhaps you should be asking whats wrong with this group?… If you want to follow the max damage zerker rush meta by all means pick a higher dps class and go for it. Necro is about playstyle not pure dps…. and so far it has both (not top dps but reaper hits hard).

Lol, that doesn’t even make sense. Nothing is wrong with the group, It’s optimized fully, which is gonna be a common case in raids. People are going to put the groups together looking for the perfect comp. (Unless It’s more casual or pug) All classes should have a near equal footing, of course… Nothing is perfect and some will be better then others but It’s up to the dev team to make sure classes aren’t imbalanced, which is a huge problem for GW2.

No class should be about ‘Playstyle’, every class should have a reason to be there. That has been the problem with necros for the last three years, It’s whats created this elitism towards them. I love the necro, I will always play it… But I would also like to see it stand with the other classes.

Reaper is good in its own ways (which have already been listed), but it is not top damage which it seems is the only thing you care about. If that is the case then go play an ele cause we will never out dps them. If elitist groups are all you play then switch to a pure dps class and stop complaining. The rest of us will enjoy what reaper has to offer.

First off, all the ‘listed points’ I’ve already covered. I’ll say this again in plain form. Unless pve is changed heavily in raids, necro will have nothing to offer, this is made even worse with 10-man raids as the buffs/debuffs are even EASIER to cover. And as mentioned before, everything they do other classes do better.

I think you are just missing the point here. I could care less about dps, It’s about a class that’s been neglected for three years. I care about the Necro and It’s future in new content. I love what the reaper offers and I will always play the necro, It’s my class and It has been for three years now.

As mentioned before, unless the state of pve changes heavily we will continue having no place in pve.

Well, they moved it to the bug section. I guess that says something!

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

Relshdan.6854:

maybe in raids, only if chill has a major advantage in the events that happen inside the raid instances….

so not likely. boons dominate debuffs….this will not change in the new content. defiance bar destroys reaper usefulness….everyone has soft cc, so why bring a reaper if chill only damages the defiance bar like a random cripple from another class that brings boons?

Yeah, the DoT on a bar that’s only there briefly and invites hard CC to spike it down is going to be sooooo helpful….

Defiance bars effectively render soft CC useless, unfortunately. There may be other mobs that we need soft CC for, but it will be worthless on bosses.

Yeah, I’m curious to see how they handle that. If Icebow freeze takes a huge chunk out of the bar, I can only think of the horrors of like four eles with a total of eight bows. Shivers

ZeroKaos.1682:

I don’t know what game most of you have been playing since the most recent balance update, but even without the reaper spec, necro is already a viable class to pick over most classes. I take my necro in dungeons and 50 fractals over all of the other classes except ele and mesmer. Even compared to those two, I’ve been recently using necro more than them. It all comes down to your build and how well you can play it. I play a power DS spec with well utilities and signet of vampirism and lich. For people who say necro doesn’t do high enough damage, I challenge you to find another class that can crit anywhere from 5-7k on autoattack, yes i know it is a fairly slow attack animation but it also pierces, and with the mix of all the other DS focused traits, the damage more than makes up for the slow attack speed. Dagger auto chain is one of the fastest attack chains in the game with a high damage output since it cleaves. Axe 2 crits for about 10-12k every 8 seconds if you know how to set up vuln stacks properly. Wells tick for high aoe damage if used before going into DS… and last but not least, you have 23 seconds of critting for 10-12k on auto attacks from lich every 150 seconds if you trait it right… so please tell me again how necro can be seen as a low damage spec.

Also just because you have players who play your so called meta builds, does not mean your chance for a successful completion is 100%. I can’t even count the number of times the “zerk meta only” stack focused groups have failed in dungeons or fractals because they don’t know how to do anything else with their class besides stand in a corner and spam buttons. I would take a skilled necro over those brain-dead elitists anyday. To answer your question OP, yes reaper will be up there in the meta builds, especially for things like raids where self sustain and party support will be more important than standing in a corner and spamming buttons.

Oh dear, lol. I think you are living in a past year of the game, Eles can auto fireball for more then that. In fact, DS necro is worse then dagger necro. In a group offering might alone DS is quite sad with deeps, It’s just too slow. (By the way, I can get NB upwards of 9k)

Player skill only takes you so far. Every class has It’s limits for dps, no matter how good you are that can’t be changed. It’s how numbers work, with the most optimized setup you will hit a stonewall which is the highest dps the class can achieve. And It just so happens that last recorded numbers the top was condition engi which was nearly DOUBLE the dps of a DS necro.

As for these ‘meta’ people, this is the common case of groupies. People who follow the meta like It’s the word of RNGesus but don’t understand it. Sadly, this is common among all MMOs and unavoidable. You’ll know the real pros when ya seem em.

Finally, raids… I’ll say it again, for the thousandth time. It all remains to be seen, It very well could change the meta, hell… I hope it does, I could use a change. It’s also interesting to note that the higher end groups don’t do much stacking anymore. But as I mentioned earlier, yet another example of people just following and not adapting.

Kronos.2560:

Truefrost.6815:

Kronos.2560:

Maybe you were just using a crummy reaper build cause when I was playing it I never had problems, ridiculously high health pools. Almost always 25 might (Reaper’s Might,“You are all weaklings!”). Good healing and shroud generator (Blighter’s Boon, “Your soul is mine!”). Throwing out tons of vuln and burning(Unyielding Blast and Dhuumfire). And also a good boon removers (Nothing can save you!, Chill of Death). I guess I’m just confused at how a reaper isn’t good in a group or solo? It has 2 huge health pools that heal like crazy, hits like a truck while applying vulnerability,burning and removing your boons. Do you really need more?

In the current state of pve, all those things are completely useless in group play. Might is already group wide with a PS warrior, who can maintain 25 stacks for the whole group. As for DS, sadly DS is a poor mechanic that doesn’t scale with multiple enemies, thus is less effective vs classes with lots of active defenses. And of course, boon removal is just generally useless, as Anet has yet to add a need for it in current content (Mesmers can also achieve better boon removal then use through sword auto). Vuln is the only nice thing, but in an optimized group It’s also already taken care of. (Gonna be SUPER easy in 10-man raids.)

Necro in the CURRENT state of pve, has no use in groups, our damage EVEN with reaper is lackluster and brings no reason to not just take another ele over taking a necro. Now, as I mentioned who knows what raids will bring, It could easily change the meta.

If every single group you run always has a phalanx war/(ele for pre fight) and has no need for burning or vuln and are requiring you to bring a “more dps class”. Maybe you shouldn’t be saying whats wrong with this class? but perhaps you should be asking whats wrong with this group?… If you want to follow the max damage zerker rush meta by all means pick a higher dps class and go for it. Necro is about playstyle not pure dps…. and so far it has both (not top dps but reaper hits hard).

Lol, that doesn’t even make sense. Nothing is wrong with the group, It’s optimized fully, which is gonna be a common case in raids. People are going to put the groups together looking for the perfect comp. (Unless It’s more casual or pug) All classes should have a near equal footing, of course… Nothing is perfect and some will be better then others but It’s up to the dev team to make sure classes aren’t imbalanced, which is a huge problem for GW2.

No class should be about ‘Playstyle’, every class should have a reason to be there. That has been the problem with necros for the last three years, It’s whats created this elitism towards them. I love the necro, I will always play it… But I would also like to see it stand with the other classes.

Kronos.2560:

Maybe you were just using a crummy reaper build cause when I was playing it I never had problems, ridiculously high health pools. Almost always 25 might (Reaper’s Might,“You are all weaklings!”). Good healing and shroud generator (Blighter’s Boon, “Your soul is mine!”). Throwing out tons of vuln and burning(Unyielding Blast and Dhuumfire). And also a good boon removers (Nothing can save you!, Chill of Death). I guess I’m just confused at how a reaper isn’t good in a group or solo? It has 2 huge health pools that heal like crazy, hits like a truck while applying vulnerability,burning and removing your boons. Do you really need more?

In the current state of pve, all those things are completely useless in group play. Might is already group wide with a PS warrior, who can maintain 25 stacks for the whole group. As for DS, sadly DS is a poor mechanic that doesn’t scale with multiple enemies, thus is less effective vs classes with lots of active defenses. And of course, boon removal is just generally useless, as Anet has yet to add a need for it in current content (Mesmers can also achieve better boon removal then use through sword auto). Vuln is the only nice thing, but in an optimized group It’s also already taken care of. (Gonna be SUPER easy in 10-man raids.)

Necro in the CURRENT state of pve, has no use in groups, our damage EVEN with reaper is lackluster and brings no reason to not just take another ele over taking a necro. Now, as I mentioned who knows what raids will bring, It could easily change the meta.

From a high end point of view, which is what I’m assuming you are asking. No, It still ranks at the bottom for pve. Although Reaper is a good improvement with some actual AoE, better damage and fantastic vuln uptime our damage is still too low and we don’t offer anything of value to groups. (Vampiric Presence was meant to be our unique buff but is lackluster)

However, we have raids coming and we still don’t know anything about them so. Anything is possible. I wouldn’t get your hopes up though, Anet doesn’t have the most fantastic track record of balancing things well. Let’s just hope having actual endgame pve content will push them to balance things out.

Zenith.7301:

Truefrost.6815:

Zenith.7301:

Necro wouldn’t be the best tank, that honor goes to bunker guardian. It also wouldn’t be support; ele, engineer, guardian, warrior, and mesmer all support better.

So we’re left with DPS and CC. The engineer and guardian are miles ahead in CC potential.

You are left with DPS as a necromancer.

Let me try this again. My. Point. Is. We need to see, we still have another beta and NO one has seen raids, not to mention who knows what will change when HoT goes live. Anything is possible, stop being so negative.

I’m asking you, point blank, what do we do better than any other class besides DPS.

And you have given me not a single answer besides “we don’t know what raids are like, let’s wait and see!”

“Let’s wait and see!” is what some of you said in closed beta after they nerfed the necromancer to hell. And we waited, and we saw; it wasn’t pretty and hasn’t been all these years.

Don’t fool yourself, the beta before any game/expansion release is the only time we have to complain for class changes to be made. After a game/xpac goes live, we’re back to 6 month minimum balance patch cycles.

We do boon removal the best. But what you are saying has NOTHING to do with the point of my post. Which seems to have escaped you. But I’m done since you obviously have something to prove which has nothing to do with what I’m talking about.

Zenith.7301:

Necro wouldn’t be the best tank, that honor goes to bunker guardian. It also wouldn’t be support; ele, engineer, guardian, warrior, and mesmer all support better.

So we’re left with DPS and CC. The engineer and guardian are miles ahead in CC potential.

You are left with DPS as a necromancer.

Let me try this again. My. Point. Is. We need to see, we still have another beta and NO one has seen raids, not to mention who knows what will change when HoT goes live. Anything is possible, stop being so negative.

Zenith.7301:

Truefrost.6815:

Zenith.7301:

I don’t know why people are comparing RS to dagger AA when greatsword will be our highest DPS weapon and cleaves just as well as RS.

That’s all speculation at this point, as mentioned that could all be meaningless If damage isn’t as important in the new content. We’re basing opinions on dated content when we all know raids will be the only thing that will most likely matter when it comes to maximizing performance.

I’m going to reserve these kinds of comments for posterity. Every single MMO out there has maximized DPS in raids, even those that require tank/healers thanks to the trinity, yet somehow people are floating this magical idea that damage won’t be the most effective way to deplete an HP bar and that we’ll see the advent of PVT’s thanks to raids.

I mean, people said the same of high level fractals when they came out, because mobs can virtually two shot you with mere autoattacks, yet lo and behold we still take builds centered on damage.

High fractals aren’t 10-man raids. They were also designed by the wonderful dungeon design team that no longer makes dungeons, for good reasons. Where as raids have a new raid desginer, meaning COMPLETELY different ideas. What I’m saying is what If necros fall into a different role then dps, anything is possible because we don’t know the extent of what raids will be like.

During the raid blog they mentioned wanting the old support/control/dps roles back. For all we know they could design for that. My ultimate point is, we don’t know what to expect until we actually play it or get to see it firsthand.

You are correct, every MMO has the same goal, to sink the bosses health to zero. But not everyone is designed to do that in the raid.

Zenith.7301:

I don’t know why people are comparing RS to dagger AA when greatsword will be our highest DPS weapon and cleaves just as well as RS.

That’s all speculation at this point, as mentioned that could all be meaningless If damage isn’t as important in the new content. We’re basing opinions on dated content when we all know raids will be the only thing that will most likely matter when it comes to maximizing performance.

You can also check out Spoj’s guide, he has information on many different builds. It’s up on the Necro forums. (Make sure you click the link to Dulfy.net, It has the updated version)

Honestly, If you are new and aren’t the greatest at dodging I recommand the staple DS build. But in high end fractals, the dagger build is best for sustain fights and for short fights Spectral Mastery/Lich is the way to go.

You should always be running double wells (Suffering/Corruption) and the last utility highly depends your build. For dagger builds, Signet of Spite but don’t use it for DS builds, It doesn’t effect you while in DS form.

Keep in mind, depending on your group you should be switching some of the utilities up a lot. A good example is the Ascalon fractal, I find WoD useful If you have a group who doesn’t offer effective blinds.

Honestly, It’s really all up in the air. I was curious about the Flame Legion runes myself, I plan to run some tests in the next beta with them. We just need more testing at this point. You also can’t forget in an organized group you have Quickness which also boosts burning stacks for a short period.

We also have to take into consideration that raid content might be different then what we’re use to. For all we know it could completely shake or destroy the meta, in which case being in shroud to have that second healthbar to cover you could mean a lot more.

Glad to see this post still going! Keep it up guys! Bump Change the Howler, bring back our nighttime effect!

Yep! No problem! This might seem small now but Anet has plans to release more elite specializations in the future which will add even more options for people.

Somewhat. It basicly adds a new Traitline (I’ll use my own class for example), the necro IF he chooses that traitline can wield a GS and obtain Reaper Shroud. The new traitline will focus on buffing the new weapon and class mechanic.

Now, don’t be confused, It doesn’t make you STRONGER then the base class, just adds more options. You can mix the new Elite Specialization traitline with the old trait lines to create new builds.

Honestly, we can’t say much about this. We have no idea what raids will bring or where Reaper will be by the time HoT is here. Let’s just hope Anet has learned many lessons from the past.

Gerrark.9870:

Silv.9207:

nekretaal.6485:

Axe is one of the worst weapons in the game on any profession. Single target, low damage, low range, low utility.

Get used to Dagger.

But I note that you said you focus on Death Shroud Damage. Note that both axe and dagger will nerf your death shroud damage, so get used to swapping to staff before you enter death shroud.

What?
That’s not true.
Why a onehanded weapon will nerf the DS?

DS isn’t affected by your welding weapon, only by your Power and your Sigils.
If you have all weapons with Berserker stats and you use an Ascended staff and an Ascended dagger + Exotic warhorn, you will have more Power with staff why it’s full ascended and not ascended+exotic. Or you can change the sigils.
But nothing more.

There’s nothing that change your DS skills that is different from your personal stats and weapon sigils.

Unfortunately this is not the case. The weapon itself’s damage does affect damage of skills used in DS. An exotic 80 staff has weapon damage of 985–1,111, while an exotic 80 dagger and warhorn have weapon damage equaling 924–981 and 814–900 respectively. Because of this, a necromancer will do about 10% more damage if they’re wielding a staff before going into DS than they would if they were wielding a dagger/warhorn, or frankly any combo of two one-handed weapons.

If that seems weird or just plain makes no sense to you, now you know how every other necromancer feels! It’s a really weird and pointless way for it to work and it shoehorns the staff (which is a mediocre weapon at best) into any build that wants to pump out maximum DS dps. And now it’s especially weird considering that RS will not work the same way (at least if I recall correctly), and will do the same damage regardless of what weapons you’re wielding, with only your actual stats affecting effectiveness.

So here’s hoping they’ll change that, sooner rather than later.

^

Yep, hes got it right. It’s been a wtf thing for a long time for DS. At least It gives pve’rs a reason to use staff, cause outside of DS is basicly useless (You CAN use it for skips with a quick slow/condition cleanse/fear).

To the OP. Axe in It’s current state is pretty much useless, you can even trait for it and It still has no purpose (And I highly recommend not doing that, Rending Shroud is silly powerful). LF generation is awful compared to dagger auto, you also get no good damage numbers out of it.

For a DS build I recommend dagger/warhorn and Staff as mentioned in other posts If you want optimized setup in the current state of necro.

Yumiko Ishida.3769:

Canakun.8031:

Eirdyne.9843:

Hi,

I don’t mind doing the dungeons that are around, but I’d like to do them more than one way.

Here’s a fix.

Remove subject words like: OS, Meta, Metazerker, Zerker, Berzerker, Berserker, and etc from being possible to post in the group advertisement listing.

Words that would be allowable: Guard, Thief, Necro, and etc.. ie only class names. This way we can actually play the game.

You built this game so we could play different variations of the classes. Why reward players for breaking your game?

Why do you need to ruin other peoples experiences just to benefit your own?

Cause we try to play without meta-Zerker how we always wanted, and the meta-zerker lovers like you join our group hi-jack it, kick us out, and we have to start over; in dungeon or during prep on the world maps!

I find zerker boring, I have a full set of it (exo+ascended for now), I already did all my dungeons for the AP, so i have different needs than people running it for just money.

I for one am after trash loot such as cores/lodes cause my MF of at least 400% boosted allows them to drop quite often. So I want to kill everything also I want to take long low levels and new players at times to help them experience the game the way they want to experience it. Having people crashing LFGs to troll is not needed and harassment!

You may say form a guild, and we are, but even with 500 maxed out (in the future) ,that’s only 500 out of maybe 1000s or 100s of thousands that feel this way or are new to GW 2. LFG is going to have to be used regardless.

I’m on the OP’s side on this not only from personal experience, but I’m the helpful person that goes out of one’s way to help the inexperienced rather than, “Do as I say!” -lemmings style and mindlessly follow the meta way of doing things and wearing gear they have no business in without understanding it fully or anything much about GW 2 either to begin with, and we all have seen that before too.

Although I admire a helpful attitude. I think people are quite confused on what the meta is, they think It’s this religion or something… Every game has a meta, It’s unavoidable. Some people like to play at the top level of their abilities, much like you want to kill everything and play how YOU want… We want to do the same.

I seriously doubt you get that many people ‘Hijacking’ the groups. I have a friend who isn’t so big on the meta who I run casual no skip groups with, VERY rarely do we meet someone who goes all wtf on us.

As for the OP. What I find most amusing is… You realize If meta/zerk goes byebye something else will take It’s place? It’s numbers, something will become the new optimized setup. Either for a specific class or just in general, It’s unavoidable. So stop complaining.

You can’t honestly be serious…? I’m going to be realistic here. I think this is a lrn2ply issue. Just because the level of skill of the player is low doesn’t make the specialization OP.

Blaine Tog.8304:

TheDevice.2751:

Anyways.. this is why I nearly never pve in this game… It’s a complete bore.

Lets all speed run and fly through the dungeon 0 skill required just meta garbage playing itself.

Nothing difficult or skillful about pve… there’s nothing exciting about it XD. This all boils down to farming and farming isn’t fun.

Or maybe, and I know this is a radical concept, but maybe everyone has a different idea of what they find fun.

^

This guy. Fun is different to everyone. I love this games pve, and I’m very excited to see where raids go. It’s all up to what the person finds fun.

Couldn’t have said it better myself, right on the dot with this feedback.

With Dhuumfire GS is only ahead slightly, let’s not even count the fact It’s auto is hella slow and offers nothing. As I mentioned before, RS is gonna end better because of what it offers.

There is zero reason to take DP while you have decimate defenses. Reaper can sustain 25 vuln on It’s own. Which is 100% up time in RS. DP is pointless, Dhuumfire is the way to go.

As I’ve said in other posts. I still think RS should be buffed. It’s just a bit too weak, I understand Anet knows It offers a lot… But I feel like RS should still do more damage. It is our class mechanic and we’re already behind in damage vs other class.

Zenith.7301:

Truefrost.6815:

Currently, GS is used for AoE LF and Gravedigger for the 50% mark. Gravedigger alone makes it fantastic, and will make it meta for pve easy. It also offers a nice built in blind with Nightfall which is very awesome (For 50 fractals that’s very nice)

RS is starting to come together, I still think It needs a buff but It’s getting close. Matched with Dhuumfire/Reaper’s Onslaught the damage is pretty nice. You also can maintain 25 stacks of vuln in reapers shroud.

To wrap this up, DO NOT use GS auto for most of anything besides gaining LF in AoE fights. It’s melee is just too slow to beat out RS auto, It has better damage plain and simple.

GS auto outDPS’ses reaper auto. It’s just harder to land in pvp and with CC heavy mobs.

If you’re using reaper shroud for DPS, you’re gimping your DPS.

RS is better. Merely because of what it offers. Perma vuln, burning, personal might stacking and a second healthbar. You are welcome to believe what you want though. GS is just too slow and not worth it in single target.