Guild Wars 2

After watching WP’s breakdown of the Scourge ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cwTlsrnDs78 ) the only reason for the two nerfs to Soul Reaping traits were done solely for the purpose of modifying it for the new Scourge elite. The two changes are directly related to major fundamental damage gains for the Scourge and how it’s shade is intended to work and had absolutely nothing to do with this;

“One of the biggest changes for necromancers in this patch is the change to the Vital Persistence trait. Previously, this trait reduced the rate at which life force decayed while in shroud and was too powerful compared to the other two traits in the same tier. We’ve changed the functionality of this trait in order to provide a different option that is easier to track and is more competitive with other traits in the same tier.”

Not one thing! That said, i think it’s high time they give the Power Reaper back what they have taken to facilitate the Scourge build and give some serious thought as to how they can properly balance this class once and for all. So many decent ideas have come from the player base, many in Lily’s post and absolutely no conversation from their end. I think it’s just flat out wrong to treat your customer base this way, just wrong.

Play a Necro you’ll feel all better by tomorrow.

“Oh we can’t give stuff to necro because it’d be major power creep.” “Necro is a selfish class” Both these statements are why this class is in this shape. For some reason somebody at Anet has allowed this to be part of their development culture and it is why we find ourselves here.
I can’t begin to explain how statements like these are tolerated by management. It isn’t context it is a blanket statement which pretty much transcends the message and opinions discussed. If this isn’t the case i would urge management to get involved because clearly there are people who have their own agenda, opinions and or values. I understand that Twitch is live, hence the risk but the fact they were comfortable saying this openly and on air is very disconcerting!
At some point i had hope for the Power Reaper, now i know we are doomed to be a forgotten Elite spec.

Brujeria.7536:

Portal is the only shadowstep in the game with a cast time. You can cross 75% of its potential range while simply moving, instead of casting, leaving you with a net gain of like 200 range.

Exactly, one dodge roll and you’re there. Doesn’t anyone wonder why it’s not the same distance as a mesmer portal, clearly there are chosen favorites couldn’t be more obvious. As for PvE, there aren’t creatures that supply enough boons to keep the Scourge going in most PvE, please be realistic in your expectations of how well this will work, nobody has had the opportunity to test it there.

Brujeri, hit almost everything on the head for me, some primaries;
- Lifeforce is hard to build with this spec
-The damage is low, you cant “spam” the skills for the damaging effect because of the absurd lifeforce cost takes us back to VP nerf.
- In PvE you don’t get personal survive ability in a clutch and you don’t get dps, even if you fully spec for any of these aspects.
- Skill 5 is bugged, it doenst grant might at all most of the times, only had it grant might one of 4
- Speed of Shadows, etc. are all too weak and wont really help you much because of the increased cooldown, speed of shadows is now a hindrance to all 3 builds.

If i had to point out the obvious, it would be this; the Scourge is obviously meant to be a support character. It certainly cannot sustain damage for PvP, nor does it have the mobility and would have minimal use in WvW (maybe sitting atop a wall casting except the range sucks).

Anyway let’s just be honest for a moment, after watching the Elite Twitch stream and listening to how the Necro’s are “Selfish” characters and seeing that the Soul Reaping trait line was almost a must (yes i did play it), there is only one conclusion that can be drawn. Either the development team ran out of time and feared that if they had not nerfed VP and SS the scourge would be OP, or this was an attempt to dedicate that trait line to the Scourge….beyond the obvious Scourge trait line.
I can say outright that the right thing to do is to add back the VP taken from the other 2 specs and put SS back into Reaper to resolve the potential for Scourge being just too powerful not that i can ever see it in any game play today.

While I’m here let me just say the fact that a developer used the word “Selfish Class” while describing a build that was solely under their control and which has been petitioned against for so long by the community to allow it to be of value was bloody disappointing to say the least. We need this team do what’s right, fix VP and SS and if it means you need to add it directly to reaper trait line then do it. Reaper’s shouldn’t suffer because time was short , no other options were visible and certainly not because this interfered with the new shiny Scourge toy!

Now back to what the Scourge needs to survive normal PvE, is something beyond boon strip to feed it. Maybe the new zones have enough to sustain the scourge but i guarantee it won’t work in the majority of Tyria. Perhaps this wasn’t the concern at the time and the bulk of development was for PvP, WvW and the new zone but that is a seriously shortsighted view.

Please take the feedback for what it truly is, all of us hoping that the new Elites work in all areas of GW2, so much lore would be wasted if it needed to be conformed to a portion of play time.

Only makes sense if that was the primary motivation for the creation of the elites, after trying them, that was pretty clear. Every skill set i could find was specific to both PvP and every 2nd critical set was for raiding, none of which i do so I’ll wait until the expansion pops.

May be useful in PvE won’t know for sure until we get a chance to try it but the wife was very underwhelmed. It looks great and that’s pretty much where it ends.

Well done Lily, good complete breakdown of the facts, Brujeria, had some great points as well. The sad thing is the community keeps trying to reach out and keeps trying to provide real viable solutions but I fear it all falls on deaf ears. Not sure why there is such resistance to just making this class respectable but I think it has a lot to do with a few people who try things out in a limited capacity and don’t fully understand the day to day issues the community runs across so there is some false sense that everything is just fine.

I hope one day someone at Anet takes a real hard look at this class, specifically power necro and just does what we all know is the right thing to do!

Well that is extremely disappointing, i can try and log into WvW but it really has little bearing on how i would play the elites myself on a day to day basis.
Now to figure out a way to tell my wife the bad news and keep the tears to a minor flood!

I’m just confirming this, but based on the post today there won’t be any testing of the new elites in PvE this weekend? Curious as to why this would be, shouldn’t those of us who have no real interest in anything but PvE have the opportunity to try these specializations out?

I don’t need any research, I’ve played virtually ever decent MMO and have witnessed the culture it creates in each one of them, WoW’s biggest proponents of this behavior was a site called Elitist Jerks.com and the name says it all lol! Theory crafting is fine but using it as a tool to shut people out is flat wrong. You want to help the game using a personal DPS meter, start by teaching people who don’t understand the mechanics as well as you do not by ostracizing them.

KidRoleplay.3615:

The traits’ve been fine for four years. If a new mechanic isn’t going to be using what’s offered in the trait, considering it’s for necromancer core, that trait should be updated to include additional features instead of removing things from it to dampen build diversity. There are many traits even still across all professions that are very specific. I guess in their arguments, a specialization is a bigger deal than the general, bigger depiction of the profession’s main mechanic?

This is exactly what needs to happen, stop punishing shroud builds because it was the fastest solution to an upcoming issue with the new elite specialization.

Every MMO in history has gone down the same path and there are always people claiming it’s needed to ensure they can do the most difficult content etc. and that only certain people abuse it. All rubbish as every MMO in history has proven out, it’s a tool used that propagate elitism and it absolutely has far more negative effects than positive.
This is a subculture

I’ve enjoyed most of it and the fights are challenging but not overwhelming, i certainly do agree power needs a serious boost (Power Reaper). As far as the layout, at first i wasn’t thrilled with the thought of desert but it’s beautiful for the most part and so far not as empty as i pictured.
I for one enjoyed the bounties, the hearts and other quests and found a lot of things i think are being saved for release in this area. The raptors are gorgeous but i would like to see more dye blocks for them.

Lots of great hints of things to come, i loved the unidentified item’s although it’s a throwback it’s certainly a space saver. I think to be honest it would make a great secondary mastery to train up which would allow you to be able to identify the items once your skill is high enough. I also loved the hint regarding bigger bags, although the cost seems a tad high & the new salvage types likely leading to new items as long as there is inventory created for them.

All in all i am very happy i purchased this, but as mentioned i truly hope that power builds are brought up a few notches to compensate for the new tougher creatures and mechanics!

Lily.1935:

There dps hasn’t change enough to make an impact on the game. They’re DPS is still much too low to function as intended. I’ve already done the testing on this and their DPS is still reduced thanks to the Vital persistence change. Even with us getting 25% of it back.

Could not agree more!

KrHome.1920:

Using shroud as shield is basic power reaper gameplay. The whole mechanic is designed around it as power reaper has tons of LF generation for a reason so you are able to refill your whole shroudbar in under 10 seconds.

You are doing it wrong if you shroudflash as a power reaper! You are wasting tons of LF gain.

Some math:
Let’s talk about a shroud uptime of 10 seconds (cast time for shroud2 gap closer, shroud5, shroud4 and a few auto chains to get some use out of Blighter’s Boon – that’s it, nothing special, no camping at all!)

Now let’s think about the potencial direct damage (!) shield lost through shroud degen.

marauder gear: 20K shroud:
2% degen = 20% shroud lost = 4K shroud @ 50% dmg mitigation = 8000 HP lost
3% degen = 30% shroud lost = 6K shroud @ 50% dmg mitigation = 12000 HP lost
4% degen = 40% shroud lost = 8K shroud @ 50% dmg mitigation = 16000 HP lost

You can tank 8K more burst damage with a 2% degen compared to 4% and 4K compared to 3%. This is significant and noticeable!

It has nothing to do with shroud camping!

This is exactly what most people don’t understand. I’m so fed up with the general, just adapt and learn to play attitude, it helps no one. The fact is this particular build has suffered greatly since the first set of nerfs after HoT launched and it hasn’t gained any real ground in all that time when ever other class has seen some attempts to fix them.
What is absolutely insane is that i can pull videos and interviews from Anet prior to HoT that clearly describe the rational of using shroud with this GS power build in just this way and yet we constantly see so called experts coming here telling everyone they don’t have a clue, it’s laughable.

To the OP, you hit the nail on the head for me, i play this build because i love playing it and I have spent well over a year building Twilight, and ascended Valk gear specifically to play this build the way it was intended to play then had it just yanked out from under me with no discussions or plans to fix it. I can also go back and yank their own videos saying that none of the current elites were going to be rendered obsolete, heck i can pull info regarding not rendering gear obsolete like other games just look at the official PoF introduction video from last Tuesday.

If there are plans to fix this going forward after PoF launches great but it should be communicated up front so those who enjoy playing the very thing that sold us on the last expansion aren’t left out in the cold.

I have never been more disappointed and completely turned off by changes in balance. This killed my power Reaper, killed it. Why should i bother anymore after pouring everything i have into gearing up a power reaper only to have it killed off with this nerf. Really why should i buy into anything else at this point only to have it yanked out from under me after a year of investing money, resources and time to have it completely negated by some random developer who doesn’t fully understand the implications of a poorly thought out change? This wasn’t balance, it was a destruction of a years work and time so thanks for that!

That’s the point i was making, the DPS is nowhere near enough to remove the survive-ability with that trait and 180 vit to someone wearing Valk gear is inconsequential. They could have reduced it by 10 or 20% but to remove it completely without supplying us the tools to increase the DPS to compensate has killed this build. Necromancers already struggle to find their place in this game and if they think everyone will jump into Scourge as a support class they don’t know the necromancer community at all!

Vital Persistence, this is far too big a nerf to ever compensate for and though i appreciate the attempt to dissect these balance changes and to bring some bright spots forward, this clearly destroyed power Reaper. This demolition of a class I have played religiously since HoT is impossible to swallow and especially after almost a year of pouring my resources into Ascended and Legendary gear. I refuse to play a condition necro as a main, i have one i don’t enjoy it and isn’t that what this game is supposed to about, playing what you enjoy.

There was no viable reason to completely eradicate power necro, there could have been some minor changes to this trait that could have been compensated for but 180 vitality was not one of them.

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

This is a trait that needed to be baselined, not removed.

Okay, bringing the Cooldown reduction up to 20%? That’s good. Adding Vitality? Completely ignorable. Removing the decay reduction entirely from the game? I guess they don’t want Necros to be able to survive anything.

The issue with Vital Persistence wasn’t that it was “too good compared to the other options,” it was that it was too necessary to even consider the other options.

And Fear of Death is still godawful trash, so that didn’t change.

I could have lived with a nerf but removing this altogether was way over the top and killed an entire classes viability. Like i said if the motivation was to have players try scourge all you’ve done is sour me on the entire expansion with this ridiculously unnecessary and frankly not well thought out attempt to balance.

If there are any devs that even bother to read this forum anymore this needs to be addressed. Somebody has to see how out of whack this is, for heaven’s sake somebody at Anet has to care about this profession. The sad thing was i almost believed WP and his theory that power Necro’s may actually get some positive changes, man was he off the mark!

Oh and to those who think the additional health is compensation, please you have obviously never played a Necro as a main lol!

A completely unnecessary nerf on a class that struggles to find it’s way in this game, why? I can tell you this has changed my view completely about playing Reaper and more than that has absolutely killed the excitement i had about the expansion. I get you want people to try Scourge but it shouldn’t come at this cost! You need to roll this back it was not necessary and far too harsh and virtually has all but killed power Reaper and honestly my will to keep playing.

I just cannot understand why they needed to touch Shroud. It’s the sole thing that allows a power necro to survive long enough to kill most things. Maybe not everyone wants to play a kitten ed condi necro! Why do you constantly nerf this class, it isn’t a threat in any area of the game so what is it that just pushes you guys to dump on it all the time.
I just spent months gearing him up in ascended and a legendary to the point he was a decent character to play and this happens, i almost regret buying two expansions, and seriously thinking of walking away for a while. You just destroyed the one character i enjoy playing in game, thanks for that! OH BTW giving health to someone wearing Valkyrie is a colossal waste of time, thanks for nothing, truly!

Keep going down this path…a slope is a slope. All i know is any design that gives an advantage, a distinct advantage to one game play is wrong. It makes no more sense then building gear based on race, religion, creed or sex…instead we call it WvW, PvP, PvE and Raiding, i thought gaming was beyond this nonsense.

Segregation…i thought we were all beyond that now….go figure? All players are equal but some are more equal than others

This leather issue is becoming absurd and needs to be fixed, properly. Anytime you want anything ascended you need to start grinding your face off to get it, and frankly the whole game is beginning to feel like a bloody second job.

I’m not sure who is responsible for these absurd drop rates but i really hope that someone higher up finally gets the message and deals with it all before more people get driven away. Also the leather farm is an absurd joke and most certainly is not the fix!

What I find completely ridiculous is the fact that a damage meter cannot dictate whether or not you’re a good player in any respect. I mean really, just because I can produce high damage doesn’t mean I can dodge for kittene or know when to heal or support or anything else. That coupled with the fact that the game is literally nowhere near difficult enough to require anything like this to clear this content is reason enough to never need this kind of tool.

For all those that say well I want to clear the raid in record time yadda yadda, well in actuality you likely represent less that 5% of the total player base so why would anyone introduce a tool that truly isn’t needed to begin with and serves only to add negative and toxic behavior in the first place a mystery to me. There is no valid reason to have one it certainly cannot fully define a players value nor can it ever replace the experience of multiple runs through content. In the end even if you do clear a raid in record time who the hell cares in the grand scheme of things and did it really justify degrading other players or spouting vitriol, if it does you should take a good long look at yourself and re-evaluate your priorities in life. Anyway it’s always been a tool that really has more downsides attached to it then positives and I personally could never justify using one and don’t care to ever play with anyone who thinks it is that critical to playing a game.

“Robert Gee
Game Designer

We always consider raids and fractal composition when balancing. We gather input from a lot of different teams whenever we do a balance pass, including suggestions from fractals and raids teams. We try to keep in mind feedback from a variety of different sources when building our balance changes.

Regarding class optimization. I’d say that it’s more accurate to say we want every class to be viable in each game mode."

Except for Necro in raids and sPvP, it is quite obvious by the lack of any input regarding Necros outside of Epidemic that they haven’t been able to wrap their heads around a way to get this fixed.
I love playing my Necro but the DPS is extremely frustrating in many areas of the game. I was so disappointed in the balance for GS and reaper, it seemed overly cautious at best and completely underwhelming considering the fact we scrape the bottom of the barrel without bringing any unique skills in many parts of the game. Give us something worthwhile to allow us to want to be added to groups it’s pretty much all we ask. As far as solo play a little more DPS for PvE is not going to be the end of the world, it’s freaking AI!

Ok apparently if you have anything that would put her into attack mode it stalls the quest, might have something to do with the current mechanics for her fighting. That said as a necro i fought without minions and waited until i was in peace mode approached her and hit the letter F when i range and got through the quest. The issue became obvious at the end of the quest when i had my minions out to fight again and got into the throne room she went back into fight mode luckily i was done the quest by then. Hope this info helps.

Exact problem, im on my necro and she goes into combat mode as soon as i get near her. I tried despawning the minions and still nothing. Trying one more time with no minions at all to see if that works.

Gaile Gray.6029:

You guys hit the nail on the head: A power failure has a reverberating effect on things. It takes some time to power everything up after a outage, and the time lost in inaccessibility to the servers and the build can roll out to cause delays longer than the simple period of the outage. By that, I mean, if the power goes out for 10 minutes, recovery takes longer than that 10 minutes.

The team is continuing to work on this and thanks for your patience. (And your chocolate )

While we wait…reGaile us with some adventure stories of times gone by

Tim.6450:

My thoughts on this balance patch:
greatsword: They really must have pulled out all the stops here. A 0.06 and 0.11 second aftercast reduction. Fantastic 0.06 seconds faster to your chill and 0.11 seconds to your gravedigger after the chill.
Axe: because extra boon corruption is exactly what necro needed the most.
Blood is power: We don’t need enemies we can now kill ourselves even faster with this 33% cooldown. Now combine this with master of corruption and we can apply four stacks of condition and to our enemy and ourselves ever 13.3 seconds. Which is faster then any transfer skill in the game so now we have synergy with 2 transfer skills instead of one.
Jagged horrors: because Lich condi builds are so overpowered and it is not that actual minion builds synergies with healing the minions.
Conclusion: great job. Couldn’t have done it better
/sarcasm

Bravo could not have said it better….likely angrier but not better. I think Anet needs to force devs to play each build for each class and then come to the table for balancing. Necro balancing right now is like bringing your car to a brain surgeon and asking him what the rattle is in the front passenger side, then having him advise the mechanic on what exactly needs repairing lol!

I thought I was the only one, thanks for the post. At first I thought it was because I was Sylvari and it was remnants of Mordremoth’s influence but it’s been ongoing and for no reason so I guess it’s a bug.

I’m happy to see they are adding a lot of things we are asking for, not in the volume everyone would like but it is a step in the right direction for sure. If these episodes are truly a sign of things to come I think GW2’s future looks much brighter then it did 4 months back.

I like all of these options, well done. It seems to me that the major sticking point in all of this has been the issue of balance and to be honest I think that is what has held them back from adding more to the current game. That said they are well crafted ideas I mean if you think about it the greatest warriors in history were the Spartans and what did they wield, shield and spear / trident.

As far as the underwater weapons I have always believed there would be more of these added when they expand underwater combat for the water dragon.

Don’t care how justified this person felt they were, they were simply wrong in doing it this way. They could have just as easily did this and then returned everything to prove their point, at the end of the day it was wrong and anyone supporting it should be banned from GW2.

No, no and no! There is no reason to do this, if you are already playing with like minded people you don’t need any of these things. This is of zero value in a game that does not gear chase nor does anyone with any real skill need to be completely decked out or wearing the optimum gear to do any of it’s content so that’s also BS.

Isn’t WoW and with any luck never will become WoW, actually if you read up on Legion, they are trying hard to become GW2 LOL!

The game has finally returned to people who play the game not the TP. Most could not be happier, at least everyone I play with is, considering the loot was terrible for so long and the price of everything worthwhile was pushed out of the reach of the majority of the player base.
I say great job giving us the game back and making playing the content actually rewarding!

Mez Koo.9510:

Update added 11 HoT mastery points, and new mastery only used 1.

Unless there is going to be a way to use extra points, why keep adding more?

That’s the most selfish post I’ve ever seen. If you don’t want them don’t get them but many, many people have asked for ways to get more beyond adventures. Wow, it’s no wonder i rarely come to these boards anymore.

Felahr.9830:

youre awfully enamored of yourself, arent you

No, I tend to speak frankly, I’m not here to coddle nor blindly support something I believe is wrong, it’s as simple as that. I have always appreciated the work done but when I hear something along this line that sounds absurd to someone who has been playing MMO’s since the 90’s I can’t let it slide. There is nothing wrong with the truth, I expect it regardless of how difficult it is to hear.

Felahr.9830:

Stop. Just stop. They have already said time and time again WHY they cant, and its a good sound reason. Stop making topics like this every week.

…and since this isn’t my first or only MMO and my son is a programmer I know that is total unequivocal cow droppings! The one and only real reason is because outfits are far simpler, cost effective and make more money in the gem stores then armor, period. You can choose to believe whatever is thrown out for reasons but don’t expect everyone else to accept it at face value.

https://search.yahoo.com/yhs/search?p=no+capes&ei=UTF-8&hspart=mozilla&hsimp=yhs-004

I would be thrilled if it was in the Far Shiverpeaks especially now that we are able to glide. I think you hit the nail on the head, far too many hints for that considering the paintings and all. I think it will be the snow zone because I believe that is the target for the next expansion, just a gut feeling.

Mike, no information usually leads to negative speculation and this has been pretty evident in gaming. If they’re building something great they should be happy to tell people they are confident with what’s coming down the line, not sit quietly while their customer base rages at the thought there is nothing to look forward to. Gaming is the one obvious exception to the rule “no new is good news”…no news means there are issues! Thanks for the update.

My expectations for both information and content is nil at this stage. As such I’ve resigned myself to find other games to play until such time this gets resolved.
There was a giant hole left by the reworking of base functionality that took a lot of time away from designing new stuff and the expansion was the result. It was rushed out to a bleeding game with the thought it could hold everyone for at least a year or more. This failed and here we are again less than a year removed and the same anger has flared up, no information, no substantial PvE content, nothing but thin threads of rumors to cling to.

I’m spending my money elsewhere for now because frankly I’ve no interest to log in and play right now and I’ve got all the little trinkets I care to have.

Just got this at the Vale waypoint. Why has nobody answered this post yet, it’s been 17 flipping days?

I’m signing out until I see some progress from the management group. Game is stale, no need to keep squawking about it my guild is dwindling into nadda, thanks guys great job this last year! Keep listening to the raid crowd, you’ll go far

Call them as i see them…that is until I’m infracted. I’d really be upset but regardless I’m horribly disappointed in where they are taking the game. Between my wife and i i am willing to bet we’ve spent a grand in this game but wow what a bloody disappointing path they’ve been on lately. Money stays in my pocket until Mickey decides to fill us in!

Raids are a bloody waste of development time and I’m ashamed they have become anything in GW2, it’s a crime a bloody crime.

There are NO mixed messages when it comes to an MMORPG…..one message and one only, drive content out as quickly and professionally as possible! We’ve had so little one needs to wonder who the hell is steering this ship and why haven’t they cried out to upper management??
I am currently and have successfully run a 150 million dollar company and can say without a doubt, the CEO who hides behind closed doors is a failure. You want to keep your player base, start talking, start pushing interest back out there. No? too afraid to fail? You already have…..hang it up and make room for someone who really cares to grow the business.

Here’s a suggestion to management, flood NCSoft with requests to support this game before it tumbles into obscurity! Get PvE content out now!!!!! before the largest percentile of your player base leaves. Another one, stop throwing development time into things like Raids, and pointless forms of content that have no bloody reason to be in GW2 in the first place.