Guild Wars 2

Lay off of Karl. Grouch specifically asked him to summarize the first couple classes, so then Karl assumed that’s what he wanted for all the classes, and Grouch nor the other interviewers ever asked him to stop doing that. It’s not Karl’s fault, it’s the interviewers’.

So he’s not a good public speaker. So what? If there wasn’t someone from the balance team there I’m sure people would complain even more. So he forgot whether or not a certain skill has a blast finisher. So what? There are hundreds of skills and effects in the game, he can be forgiven for forgetting one. So it makes him appear less capable at his job. So what? He’s a human being and human beings all make mistakes, he doesn’t deserve to be judged for that.

“They said ele healing is fine, lol” – no, they said that the amount that eles heal is fine and that they want to increase the casting times of those abilities. They want an ele getting his heal off to be a big deal, but they admitted that right now it is perhaps too easy to do so.

“same build diversity as necros? Necros have no build diversity, lol” – wrong. There’s the standard condition build, then you have 30/30/10/0/0, you have the condition build with Terror mixed in, there’s a 30/20/0/0/20 ele-killer build which is super fun with 4.2k life blast crits and incredible dagger spam damage and boon removal, you have the minion bunker-buster or bunker build, heck take a look at the two builds in my sig. The point is that the tree is diverse enough to support a wide variety of builds, AND there is room for “tweaking” builds to suit personal preference. Whereas there’s only one mesmer shatter build, for example.

“leaderboards will probably release six months from now” – oh my lord, they said specifically that leaderboards are in testing. Meaning that all of the programming work is done unless the testers find a bug that needs to be fixed. They also said that leaderboards will be here soon, maybe even before the patch! How in the hell do you interpret that as “6 months”?

EDIT: sorry for the venom in this post. The forums have been frustrating me lately, there was a thread where someone dared to say that they were actually having fun with sPvP and everyone on here tore him a new butthole. I guess I’m frustrated over how this forum behaves, but it is the internet, so I should probably get over it…

•Spectral Grasp: •This ability will now pull the full 1200 range, instead of 900.
•Spiteful Talisman: •This trait now works with Reaper’s Touch in PvE.

HOLY KITTEN, YES, THANK BUDDHA, FINALLY

Gonna attempt to get this thread back on topic.

Yes, necros have lots of viable builds.
-Standard condition build (0/30/10/10/20, plus a few variations)
-Complete glass cannon that melts everything (30/30/10/0/0)
-Terror condition build (0/30/20/0/20)
-Ele-killing power build (30/20/0/0/20, super fun, 4.2k life blast crits, incredible dagger spam damage, boon removal)
-Minion bunker-buster (20/0/30/20/0, Berserker’s stats)
-Minion bunker (20/0/30/20/0, Soldier’s stats)
-Xelfer doesn’t stream anymore, but he used a hybrid condition/healing build that was very strong at holding a point, his team ran it all the time. From memory it was something like 0/20/20/10/20, Shaman’s amulet.
PERSONAL PLUG
-Hybrid condi/power build that also squeezes in Terror, also melts Eles (30/10/10/0/20) first link in sig
-Well bunker build with crazy life siphoning (10/0/30/30/0) second link in sig
-And more

Do necros have a god mode build that strongly affects the metagame, like trap rangers or bunker eles? No, not in sPvP, though I’ve heard that control WvW builds are in high demand. The point is that the trait lines is diverse enough to support a wide variety of builds, AND there is room for tweaking to suit personal preference, and all of them are pretty well balanced. Whereas there’s only one mesmer shatter build that’s used, or only one thief backstab build, for example.

When the devs say they want other classes to have our build variety, that’s a good thing.

Didn’t they talk about this in the last SotG? They tried deathmatch, and it basically went like this:

1) Teams stand around staring at each other for a little while
2) Someone gets impatient and both teams run at each other
3) Everyone uses their elites
4) Huge clusterkitten
5) Elites wear off
6) Whoever happens to have more players left over wins

Doesn’t sound fun to me. I didn’t like WoW areas for similar reasons. Battlegrounds were great.

Think about every single time you have seen a group of people take a tower or keep. What do they do? They stand directly in front of the door and beat on it, or they group around the catapults that are attacking the door. They just stand there, attacking the door. Cast things on the walls if there are defenders up there. Stand around, hit the door.

Everyone has been stuck in the same mindset about how towers and keeps are taken for months and months, which is run up to the door, drop rams, and plow on through. Now that you can’t do this anymore, the complaints roll in.

How to take a tower now? You need siege to take out the arrow carts. “But they will just build counter-siege!” They do not have infinite siege! You do, because you are the attacker and they are trapped inside. You need to starve them out. How you do this is:

-small group to man the siege that is destroying the arrow carts and other siege
-small group to defend the siege man-ers
-small group to secure nearby supply camps so you can keep building more siege
-small group to defend the supply camps so the enemy can’t build siege
-small group to cut off reinforcements to the tower so they can’t bring in supply from elsewhere

It’s going to take coordination from several small group all working toward a common goal, it’s going to take a bit of time, and it’s going to take skill in resource management from the commanders rather than just zerg the door. Hey guys, look at that, Anet solved the zerging problem! Which you’ve all been asking for, for months! So why the complaints…?

Bones.5762:

lettucemode.3789:

Think about every single time you have seen a group of people take a tower or keep. What do they do? They stand directly in front of the door and beat on it, or they group around the catapults that are attacking the door. They just stand there, attacking the door. Cast things on the walls if there are defenders up there. Stand around, hit the door.

Everyone has been stuck in the same mindset about how towers and keeps are taken for months and months, which is run up to the door, drop rams, and plow on through. Now that you can’t do this anymore, the complaints roll in.

How to take a tower now? You need siege to take out the arrow carts. “But they will just build counter-siege!” They do not have infinite siege! You do, because you are the attacker and they are trapped inside. You need to starve them out. How you do this is:

-small group to man the siege that is destroying the arrow carts and other siege
-small group to defend the siege man-ers
-small group to secure nearby supply camps so you can keep building more siege
-small group to defend the supply camps so the enemy can’t build siege
-small group to cut off reinforcements to the tower so they can’t bring in supply from elsewhere

Hey guys, look at that, Anet solved the zerging problem! Which you’ve all been asking for, for months!

hmmm, small group everything, lets also run with small groups and split up into other objectives like our enemy…. Or we could group up, and take out each of these small groups, until they’re left with nobody.

You can’t group up now, arrow carts were buffed, remember? Just build some carts at the supply camps, or to defend your own siege. Then if they start siege-ing that, well, now we’ve got some interesting counterplay going on.

Kebab.4013:

lettucemode.3789:

Think about every single time you have seen a group of people take a tower or keep. What do they do? They stand directly in front of the door and beat on it, or they group around the catapults that are attacking the door. They just stand there, attacking the door. Cast things on the walls if there are defenders up there. Stand around, hit the door.

Everyone has been stuck in the same mindset about how towers and keeps are taken for months and months, which is run up to the door, drop rams, and plow on through. Now that you can’t do this anymore, the complaints roll in.

How to take a tower now? You need siege to take out the arrow carts. “But they will just build counter-siege!” They do not have infinite siege! You do, because you are the attacker and they are trapped inside. You need to starve them out. How you do this is:

-small group to man the siege that is destroying the arrow carts and other siege
-small group to defend the siege man-ers
-small group to secure nearby supply camps so you can keep building more siege
-small group to defend the supply camps so the enemy can’t build siege
-small group to cut off reinforcements to the tower so they can’t bring in supply from elsewhere

Hey guys, look at that, Anet solved the zerging problem! Which you’ve all been asking for, for months!

As defenders I would prolly do this:
-medium group to kill the siege and their guards
-redirect medium group to kill the small groups running from and in the camp and grab supplies.
-redirect the medium group to kill the last small group running around being idiots.

Hey guys, look at that, Anet has made the problem even worse! Which you’ve all been asking for, for months!

See my other post. Arrow carts out in the field or at the supply camp will deal with the medium or large groups sent as counters.

Daddy.1825:

necros should get a condition thats like bleed but better

TWO BLEEDS

I think he just misinterpreted the question. Even if the AI has no bugs whatsoever there is always a way to make it “better”, like with smarter pathing that leads the opponent or something. I think that’s how he was answering the question. I doubt he actually meant to say that bugs as severe as minions standing around are intentional because they are balanced that way. They could easily just change damage/health numbers to compensate for the better AI if they feel they are too strong.

GoldenKnightTim.4390:

I just wanted to duel with my brother and play private games with my friends IRL. It’s looking like Arenanet won’t let me do that without paying extra money. I’m legitimately disappointed.

Arenanet DOES let you do that WITHOUT paying money. You can convert gold into gems. If you don’t have enough gold, as you stated, that is NOT Anet’s fault. That is a cumulative result of the actions you have taken in GW2 so far.

Do you do this in real life too?

“Welcome to Best Buy, can I help you?”
“Yea, I’d like a TV with specifications XYZ that my brother and I can watch things on.”
“Here’s a TV matching your description, that’ll be $600.”
“I don’t have that much money.”
“Well, I can put you on a payment plan, $100 a month for six months.”
“I don’t have $100 a month either.”
“Well then I can’t sell you the TV.”
“OMG I JUST WANT THAT TV TO WATCH THINGS ON WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOUUUUU”

VOLKON.1290:

oldephartte.4369:

Decklan.7540:

To anyone who wants to know, a canard is a synonym for a lie.

It’s generally used by people to mask their lack of an argument behind the pages of a thesaurus.

A canard is a belief in something that is not true — my intended meaning. If I had wanted to use the word lie or liar, I would have used it. Get a better thesaurus.

Hoist on your own canard? :P

I was going to correct you, but I’m pretty sure you’re just making a joke. A decent one too

In my opinion this patch was a wash in terms of buffs/nerfs.

Good
-Staff is now usable without 10 points in DM, frees up 10 points for many, many builds
-Life force gain buffed in lots of places, especially on Spectral Armor. Any build with 15 in SR got a good survivability bump
-Spiteful Vigor down to Adept

Bad
-Can’t survive a fall from any height without penalty anymore (can still survive higher falls than all other professions)
-Greater Marks up to Master, who cares, not necessary anymore
-Spectral Walk LF gain nerfed, could be noticeable during play
-Terror damage reduced to balance out Dhuumfire condition builds, expected, builds won’t change because of this

The only significant gameplay change I see coming out of this is more build diversity due to increased default mark radius.

yea

Just wanted to poke my head in and say I’m happy with the way this thread turned out – a place for GW1 vets to discuss their perception of the necromancer, and how to bring its old themes and ideas back. Thumbs up.

Motoko.2875:

That is an interesting question to ask me – and unique as no one as actually asked me that other than just defending the hell out of GW2 and attacking GW1.

What the kitten?

This is a thread about what things people like about gw2 pvp. Obviously we’re going to be talking about things we like about gw2 pvp. No one is “defending” gw2 pvp because there’s nothing to defend it against; we’re just talking about what we like about it.

Even more ridiculous – no one was “attacking” gw1 pvp, no one even mentioned it until you did. You came in here and interpreted our statements as fanboyism and “attacking” gw1 pvp for no reason at all. lol

And yes, I did play gw1 pvp for several months at a variety of skill levels. I stopped because it didn’t really appeal to me. You seem to have this attitude that if someone likes something you don’t like, or that if someone looks at the same data as you and comes to a different conclusion, that person is automatically wrong. I would advise against pursuing that fallacious line of reasoning. It might make you a tough guy on the internet but it won’t count for much else.

What was funny about the December culling trial was that the thread about was full of people who didn’t like it. Then after the original behavior was restored, the thread about that was full of people who liked it and wanted it back. Now that we’re going back to the way it was in the trial the majority of the responses to it are negative. Maybe everyone should actually contribute to the conversation rather than only coming out to post when you don’t like something.

For those of you who don’t like it, you only have to deal with it until culling is removed entirely. As Habib explained a thousand times this is a temporary measure, not a permanent change. As for me, I’m happy that thieves won’t be able to endlessly stealth around in zergs anymore.

CHIPS.6018:

lettucemode.3789:

CHIPS.6018:

lettucemode.3789:

If you take Shrouded Removal, a 10-point trait in Death Magic, you can cleanse the fear off just by entering DS without using a stun break.

OP’s story is fishy, partly because there is no way the thief could have killed him with just 1 steal and 3 HS. They must have been fighting for some time beforehand, in which case the Skull Fear + 3 HS is likely not the problem. The thief smartly saved the Skull Fear for when OP was low instead of blowing it right away (like most thieves do). Apparently he also waited until OP used all his Life Force because OP could have entered DS while feared to absorb the damage. So apparently OP, even after encountering this several times, didn’t save his life force for the Skull Fear.

I don’t know. Skull Fear is a strong skill, but if you don’t slot a stun break or at least take Reaper’s Protection in w3 you don’t have the right to complain about getting CC’d imo.

It was in the middle of a fight and I was already weakened. On top of my lowered hp, my skills (DS or DS3) were in cooldown. And that’s when the thief use this combo. I am dead due to Skull Fear. I get feared for 3 seconds, cannot control my character, a bunch of damage pops up, and I am dead.

I few people suggested that I save my DS and DS3. Well it aren’t that simple in zerg vs zerg. What you are asking is for me to not use DS until the thief shows up. In zerg fights I pop into DS to soak up damage all the time, not just from that thief. Often I had no choice but to turn on DS because I cannot Ride the Lightning my way out.

So you were in a zerg v. zerg fight when this happened? That’s kind of crucial information to leave out. Your OP made it sound like the thief killed you by himself with a faceroll combo and you were upset at potential imbalance. Now the story is that the thief is picking targets out of a zerg. So what? I like to sit around in zerg vs. zerg fights, identify low stragglers, pull them in and burst them too. It’s not exclusive to thieves (though thieves can do it very well), a warrior could have hundred blades’d you, an Ele could have done the Updraft into fire combo, an Engineer could have knocked you back or immobilized before taking you down…. It sounds more like you just got frustrated with this one thief in particular because you kept running into him and then made this thread for therapeutic reasons.

I can see warriors, eles and engineers and anyone else coming. I can plan ahead. I am actually pretty good at watching the battlefield. But thieves there is nothing I can do. They stealth+culling. They hit super hard. And now they can fear me (and all my nearby allies) for 3 seconds, disabling me completely.

I thought you were completely out of life force, DS was on cooldown, and you had no fears left. Even if you saw those other classes coming, it wouldn’t have mattered, the same exact thing would have happened. They have disables too, remember?

Dee Jay.2460:

Ensign.2189:

First glance thoughts:

-Heartseeker cost increased to 4 Initiative (up from 3)

I really dislike this proposal. It represents a monstrous nerf to D/P, and represents a bigger hit to game play than actual power. Gap closers need to be cheap to encourage interesting combat once joined, and the power level of the skill is such that its use is sub-optimal once you’ve closed the gap, up until your target is below 25% health (at which point you’re not going to be spamming it much since it should be dropping them in 1-2 shots anyway).

I agree that impressively bad players over-use the skill as a crutch against their inability to move; and that not quite as bad but still bad players lose to heartseeker spam because they do not know how to defend themselves in a reasonable manner. Unless we’re going to start balancing the game around what bad players are doing, this doesn’t make any sense.

-Dancing Dagger cost reduced to 3 Initiative (down from 4)

You’re kidding right? You want to make what is already a 100% uptime projectile snare even more spammable?

I agree that the damage on the skill was overnerfed and that some bounce back is warranted on that, but the utility part of the skill is already very strong and is not due a buff.

-Mug damage reduced by approximately 50%. Mug now also applies 4 Bleeds for 4 seconds.

Interesting. I think the power level you’re proposing is roughly in the right place, but why do you prefer bleeds here? I don’t get the flavor and I don’t see how they enhance gameplay.

I think a simple ratio reduction does the job here just fine. The big packet is where the play is, and I don’t see what we gain here by shifting power into something else. Find the biggest number you can put on it without breaking things and run with that.

-Infiltrator’s Singet now also steals a boon from the target when used.

I like this, it’s a good idea for an active that lacks oomph. I’m going to steal this one.

-Body Shot now also applies 4 seconds of Weakness to the target.

Eeeeh.

I think this is an ok buff, but it doesn’t make me want to spend initiative on the skill over the other options available. Not that weakness is bad, but I don’t want to actually pay for it.

Wow, some honest feedback….wouldn’t have expect that at this point.

However I don’t see how you can make that argument about Heartseeker and Dancing Dagger.

Heartseeker is an incredibly powerful ability. It’s a high damage ability, a leap-finisher allowing you to utilize all kinds of combo fields as well as a gap closer. It also happens to be targeted which makes it incredibly easy to use effectively.

It is simply far too efficient an ability to have it cost less than almost all our other abilities. The cost/effect ratio is simply off with this ability. It’s too good and too cheap to use.

That’s why I think it deserves to cost a little more.

Dancing Dagger is in a similar situation, just on the other end. It too is essentially a gap closer, but by snaring the target rather than leaping. It kind of pales when compared to Heartseeker due to its cost and multi-target niche.

I honestly can’t remember when I last used Dancing Dagger simply because it’s so expensive. The smaller the niche an ability fills, the cheaper it should be.

The niche Heartseeker fills is far larger than the niche Dancing Dagger fills.

I don’t think HS needs a nerf. When fighting a thief, you know exactly how Heartseeker works and that the enemy thief is going to use it multiple times in a row, and information is the best kind of advantage in a competitive environment. After all, if you know what your opponent is going to do, you can counter it. If a thief starts HSing me I know exactly when to block, dodge, or drop an AoE, and after that’s done with he has no initiative left. He trades relentless offense for the fact that he’s boned and standing directly next to me if it doesn’t work. Kind of like 6 pooling in starcraft.

I don’t have a high-level thief, but having been on the receiving end of HS for many a month I think it’s fine as is.

Pretty sure it’s just you. I used it for a while and never noticed it healing anyone else.

This change really only affects pugs. My guildies and I always communicate about when to use disables, and we keep bosses at 0 defiant stacks until we need to interrupt something. After we interrupt, everyone uses their CC skills to get rid of the stacks. Wash, rinse, repeat. Hopefully Anet will make Defiant block Basilisk Venom too, then things will be consistent across the board.

Sureshot.6725:

First and foremost, I’m not even agreeing that zerging needs to be fixed because to fix something you need to accurately define it.

Ask 10 people and get at least 5 different definitions on what constitutes a zerg. The only commonality I find among the various definitions for zerg is that one side was heavily outnumbered.

Second, I see a lot of comments stating that lifting the AoE cap will resolve zerging. In this context it seems to be defined as a smaller group could take out a larger group if the cap was lifted.

However, as the larger group would still be able to AoE and bring more AoE to bear being the larger group, I fail to see how this would fix so called ‘zerging’.

I must be missing something.

I agree with you. There are a lot of DAoC players around (which I’ve heard was an awesome game) who want GW2 to be more like DAoC. Even if the AoE cap was lifted, player stats are different, damage on skills is different, classes are different, etc. It’s not the same game in a million different ways. So even if the AoE cap was removed, I bet that these players would still find it harder to “destroy whole zergs with only 5 players” (something I doubt actually happened) because of all the different things, and come back to the forums complaining that the game still isn’t like DAoC.

Players run around in large groups because it is easy to do while still feeling like you are contributing, simple as that.

Pyriall.5027:

Who is going to actually pay for those?

If only other multiplayer games had dedicated servers…we could look at those and see however many hundreds of them there are…the historical precedent would be useful…oh well. /sarcasm

After the new patch that said “Fixed a lot of exploits and bugs” I went through as much of this bug list as I could solo to see if anything’s been fixed.

Profession Mechanic
NB0001: Still triggers on any damage in DS, but you can still cast spells and attack while the invulnerable effect is on you.

NB0002: Still happens, can’t cast anything while under its effects.

NB0003: Still happens.

NB0004: Still happens.

NB0005: Barbed Precision DOES trigger bleeds while in DS. FIXED

Staff
NB0120: Still happens.

Dagger
NB0093: Still only makes the necro lose 1 condition per bounce/hit.

Focus
NB0014: Didn’t bounce to any minions while I was testing it.

NB0121: Reaper’s Touch now has a range of 1200 and recharge time of 14 when using the Spiteful Talisman trait in sPvP. Still bugged in PvE and WvW. KINDA SORTA FIXED

Utility
NB0018: I tested Spectral Grasp against many Mists NPCs on all kinds of terrain. It never once failed while I was in range. So probably fixed! FIXED

NB0094: Cooldown timer still bugged.

NB0102: I couldn’t get the combo field to trigger at all I’m bad at this game…

NB0022: Could not reproduce. I have not noticed this skill missing when I have used it. FIXED

NB0023: Putrid Explosion still does not trigger Death Nova. Death Nova DOES trigger when the necromancer goes into the downed state (wtf?).

NB0025: Still bugged.

NB0113: The tooltip says “creates a field that poisons foes and leaves them weakened.” It applies weakness and poison to a foe once for each time the enter the circle. So if a foe enters the circle, then leaves it, then enters it again, they get the conditions applied twice, once for each time they entered. I think the tooltip is accurate as written. FIXED

NB0112: Still behaves that way.

Spite Traits
NB0095: Still does not apply the damage of Spinal Shivers.

NB0109: Still doesn’t work, tested against Mists NPCs. I could have sworn it worked a few days ago in WvW…oh well.

Curses Traits
NB0038: Still only applies 1 stack of bleed.

NB0040: Does not increase Spectral Walk swiftness duration, but DOES increase the length of time you are allowed to teleport back to the original location from 8s to 12s. I think that counts as behaving correctly. However, the tooltip still says 8s, so that’s still bugged. FIXED, MOSTLY

NB0042: Still doesn’t work with Plague of Darkness.

NB0044: Fear damage DOES appear in the combat log. FIXED

NB0084: Icon still changes, still bugged.

Death Magic Traits
NB0046: Chillblains is still the only one with the larger targeting indicator.

NB0053: Still doesn’t reduce minion active skill recharge time. I think this is intended, though.

Blood Magic Traits
NB0056: Still does not increase the siphon amount.

NB0065: Still doesn’t scale with +healing, but I’m confident this is intended behavior. +healing didn’t increase health siphoning in GW1 either, and we have access to the Bloodthirst trait if we want it increased. I think this “bug” should be removed from the list.

NB0066: Could not reproduce. Siphoning occurs on every skill use, every tick of a well…all attacks trigger it. FIXED

NB0100: Still doesn’t siphon in those forms.

NB0068: Siphons for 32/hit at level 80, and yes, it’s affected by Bloodthirst. FIXED

NB0069: Critical hits on skills DO trigger the siphon. eagly, Necrotic Grasp crits do trigger Vampiric Precision, so does everything else. FIXED

NB0107: Still doesn’t trigger in those forms.

Soul Reaping Traits
NB0007: Still does the wonky cooldown numbers thing.

Cheers!

Hey Swimsata, I have a build for you that you might like.

Spite: 10 points, take Spiteful Spirit.
Curses: 20 points, take Weakening Shroud and Spectral Attunement
Death Magic: 10 points, take Shrouded Removal
Soul Reaping: 30 points, take Spectral Mastery, whatever for the major and Near to Death.

Every time you DS switch you get retaliation, fury, remove a condition, and free cast of Enfeebling Blood. You already have permanent fury, with enough boon duration you could get permanent retaliation too. If you slot Spectral Walk and use a Warhorn, you will get permanent swiftness also. If you use a staff you will have permanent regeneration too, but in that case trade Shrouded Removal for Greater Marks since you will be able to remove conditions via Staff 4 anyway.

The reason to take Spectral Attunement and Spectral Mastery is that your utilities are Spectral Wall, Spectral Grasp, and Spectral Walk. Walk will give you 3% life force every time you are hit, so it is great with high toughness builds. I ran a full knight’s set for a while and it works very well at reducing incoming damage so you can gain life force effectively. The protection from Spectral Wall will last 7s with Spectral Attunment and no extra boon duration. Additionally you can walk through the wall twice for 14s total of protection on a 32s cooldown. Spectral Grasp will give you 10% life force when you hit someone with it. Also, Spectral Attunement will give you 5% life force each time you use those utilities. Something I like to do when I am low on life force is use Spectral Grasp on a rabbit, then kill the rabbit for a quick 28% life force. You can also cast it on random mobs as you run by; it doesn’t put you in combat and it chills the mob so they can’t catch up to you.

That should be a good starting point, feel free to experiment with it. You will be able to take tons of damage and have room to invest in more offensive gear than a normal attrition build.

Vita.6302:

I think your Rune of Vampirism is causing that (you cant use any skill while in mist form, right?), like my svanir if it is transforming me into an ice block. Thanks for confirmation! Im wondering why not more ppl did note that until now. Even without Rune of Svanir or Rune of Vampirism its not hard to see what is happening there

Ahh, yea, you’re right. I didn’t realize what was happening because the mist animation never plays. So – confirming that Runes of Vampirism activate immediately upon taking damage in combat in DS.

Arrow carts got nerfed way back during the beta weekends because everyone was running around in WvW as level 20 or 30. They took tons of damage from the arrow carts because they had no vitality or toughness and complained. Now that most people are properly leveled and geared, arrow carts barely tickle, so the nerf is getting reverted. I don’t see the problem here.

ajm.2931:

Wait, people were complaining about AoE effectiveness? AoE’s aren’t affective enough as it is. With the 5 target limit, there is hardly a counter to zergs as it is.

And really why doesn’t Anet just go ahead and rename elementalists “daggerists”?

Now I want to play a game where classes are named because of the weapons they use. “Daggerist”, “Sworder”, “Axer”, “Spearist”, etc.

Lifeblast doesn’t cost life force to use. I remember it used to in beta, but not anymore.

This patch isn’t make-or-break for me. I like the game and the features it’s missing don’t inhibit gameplay so I will continue to play, simple as that.

You know, this same thing happened with the HoN competitive community. See, competitive communities of well-established games like SC2 or DotA or WoW are shaped like a pyramid. When the game first comes out, you have a very large base of players who are not that good. Over time the skill level increases for some and they form the next level of the pyramid. Eventually you have a few excellent players at the top who are supported by the other layers of players below.

When HoN first came out it was not like this. You had lots of players who were already pro from DotA coming in, so the pyramid structure was messed up. There were a couple of players at the top but there was no support beneath them, so they stayed at the top for a very long time, pretty much untouchable. This made the competitive scene very unforgiving and it was extremely difficult for new players or new teams to get noticed and win games. After some time DotA 2 came out and the frustrations of the top players in the competitive scene came to a head and they kind of left en masse. Everyone on the forums predicted the death of HoN, so let it be written, so let it be done.

But look at HoN now. Their simultaneous active players is higher than before and the competitive scene is thriving. There are lots of teams that all have a fair shot at beating each other. This is because the pyramid structure has taken effect. Now that there is a proper base of players, teams can properly improve and fluctuate in rankings and new blood will come into the scene and it’s exciting.

So back to GW2 – I think the same thing is happening and will play out over the rest of this year. We’ve got lots of players from WoW or whatever other MMO-type arena games are out there comprising the top part of the pyramid with no base of player support. There have been a few bumps in the road and so some have left. However, this is not the end for GW2 PvP and things will improve. There are a few positive forces in the community who will someday see the fruits of their labors. It’s just going to take some time.

Let’s all take a moment to appreciate just how quickly this thread was derailed.

And that fear is 3s base, not 4. If it lasts 4s on you then the Thief has probably put 30 points into their Power trait line, which has condition duration as its secondary stat, just like ours.

Ooo, just thought of something: the fear from Reaper’s Protection would hit him at the same time! So the trait is a decent counter to that, too. Cool.

Hey ET of the clan [Mend], I’m the HoD asura following your group around right now as you cap some towers. Naked dance parties are always fun, thanks for letting me tag along. You’re a cool bunch of people. <3

Just tested in the Mists with a guildie – Aegis does block Grim Specter, the Lich Form #5 ability. Since the tooltip says it “rips boons off of allies” I think we can call it a bug.

Pretty much everything in the game scales poorly with healing power, and there’s a pretty good reason for it.

To understand the reason, you need to understand a problem that WoW arena PvP had for many years. Arms warriors could get an ability called Mortal Strike which placed an uncleanseable debuff on a target which decreased healing on that target by 50%. Moreover the cooldown and duration was such that you could keep this debuff up forever. So arms warriors were everywhere in arena PvP, and this created a very delicate balance situation. Getting hit with Mortal Strike then getting focused couldn’t be a guaranteed kill or else it would be the only strategy people used, so heals had to be strong enough to power through Mortal Strike and give the defending team a chance. But that meant that heals were incredibly strong in every other situation, so you basically needed an arms warrior to keep them in check. It created a sort of self-fulfilling prophecy (is that the correct term?) because these effects were so strong. Rift had a problem with this for a while as well.

The only solution to this issue is to tone down or remove the reduced-healing-debuff while also toning down the amount that heals do so that things can stabilize, which Blizzard and whoever makes Rift eventually did. And so GW2 is designed like this. Poison only reduces healing by 33%, cannot be kept up on a target permanently (except for us necros if you spam scepter 1), and is removable. At the same time most things in the game have healing power ratios less than 1. You can think of it as a pre-emptive design measure to keep things in check.

Well of Blood actually scales the best with healing power of any spell in the game. It’s 4.4x your healing stat IIRC.

Bull Zooker.1672:

has anyone tried a full rampager axe focus and staff fear build? ive been theory crafting and you could get 140% fear duration, maybe a 3rd tick on fear? im not sure about that though.
ur condition damage wouldn’t be optimal (about 1200) but you would have a form of burst through axe and fear.
would be something along the lines of 30/10/10/0/20.
I think this would fit my play style. does this appeal to anyone else? or is this a ‘good in theory’ build?

I will copy and paste my answer from my hybrid Terror build thread just to make sure you and others see it.

Extra condition duration is capped at 100%. So using the 40% condition duration food wouldn’t extend your fears any longer. However, it would still affect your bleeds, vulnerability, cripples, etc, so I’d say it’s probably still worth using. Heck, if you were okay with 1.9s fears instead of 2s fears (still very likely to get 2 damage ticks) you could just swap out the Master of Terror trait for something else.

Here is a post I made on Reddit on this topic: http://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/10wgz2/how_healing_affects_necromancers/

Basically, each ability has its own internal modifier that it multiplies your healing stat by before adding it to the amount healed. For example, the Consume Conditions base heal will increase by an amount equal to 1 x (healing stat), but the amount healed per condition consumed will heal by .1 x (healing stat).

Combat system is second to none. Dodging is such a cool mechanic, it adds a new layer of tactics to fights. The various boons and conditions create a lot of different battle situations to consider. And being able to max out a tree with less than half of your spec points means there’s lots of build diversity within a class.

ermagerd, scerr erpdate.

+1 to whoever mentioned Bloodline Champions. That game has the best tournament/ranking system I’ve ever seen.

On topic: hmmm, I don’t know. Having an exclusively solo queue can cause problems too, like outright hostility among teams. I’ve been in a similar situation in other games – I only need a few more points to go up a ranking, but keep getting matched with idiots! It’s very frustrating.

With the queue system that’s going into place, players will eventually reach a point where they are like “hmm, in order to progress any further in this system, I need a stable group of friends or team” and they will go seek one out. So the very nature of the queue system encourages players to make teams, which is exactly what the competitive scene needs! Whereas in the solo queue only it can seem like getting through the middle tier of players is mostly luck.

Overall I think this system is fine. It will bring in new players and encourage them to team up to progress. It will encourage team play rather than honing individual skills and getting frustrated when the rest of the randoms you’ve been paired with aren’t doing what you want and there is no way to bring like-minded people along with you.

Good solo players will still rise to the top, or at least up to a certain level in this system. All recruiters would need to do is scan around that level of rating for a player they like. Really no different from scanning the top of a solo queue.

Kardiamond.6952:

Am I the only one that had a heart attack when they said they were buffing Mesmer GS because they suffer from AoE damage when fighting class like Minion Master Necro?

Seriously?

You buff mesmer because you think they have a hard time killing a Minion freaking master Necromancer?

Was that a joke that I didn’t catch?

You certainly didn’t catch something. They said that they were going to make the beam attack more reliable in big fights by letting them hit targets along the way instead of getting blocked. They also said that they would be toning down shatters to compensate. I think it’s a good change. A shatter mesmer either does 16k damage or 0 damage to you depending on if you know what to look for. If they make shatter worse and other things better, that helps build diversity.

Columba.9730:

Budchgon.2108:

Was in W3 today and stood on a tower watching 10 of my fellow server players try to take down a single stealth bs thief… They were using AoE, flailing around and even running around in circles ‘like headless chickens’.
Kudos to the Thief, he knew his class and was wiping the floor with my fellow players who couldn’t target him to hit him.
Shame, as those 10 players could have been useful in taking camps/towers but I guess dying to a Thief was more important.

This happens all the time, and it’s horribly broken. It’s astounding that some people think that this is just fine.

Idk. I tend to think it is fine, but that is probably because (1) I recently got a thief to 80 so I understand the class pretty well, and (2) my main, a necro, has 2 builds that shut this silliness down – a fear build, and a spectral build. With the fear build I wait for them to pop out, stack some conditions, lay marks when they stealth, fear them out of Shadow Refuge and they go down. With the spectral build I can pull them to me, immobilize, and have plenty of chill, weakness, and vulnerability to apply lots of pressure. They go down somewhat quickly or run away.

It’s fun to time how long a group of my server mates fights a stealthing thief. Then I go in and mop it up in 30 seconds.

I think it’s fine because I planned for this scenario and incorporated tools into my builds to deal with it. I’m sorry that signet greatsword warriors, greatsword guardians, greatsword mesmers (pattern?), longbow rangers, and a host of other popular builds can’t catch thieves. Instead of coming here and trying to change the rules of the game, I suggest you delve even deeper into the game to find the tools given to your profession to stop the permastealthing.

I think I’ll be using Signet of Spite occasionally now, but it won’t have a permanent spot on my bar.

180 power is pretty dang good, especially in builds that use a lot of Knight’s gear and could use the extra power. 1200 range cripple is great for chasing down those eles and warriors (way more reliable than Spectral Grasp, for sure) and the blind will negate a thief opener. Poison, too, good for lessening heals on demand. And you don’t have to fiddle with targeting!

Cooldown still sucks and long casting time still sucks. But hey, at least now there’s a reason to use it.

Underwhelming patch for us, I guess I was expecting a bit more than what we were already told.

The wells that do damage, corruption and suffering (and darkness?), scale based on power. You can tell from their tooltips, there’s an entry that says “damage” and has a number next to it.

However, if you use Well of Corruption to convert some boons to damaging conditions, like Burning or Bleeding, then those conditions will scale off of your condition damage.

Kebab.4013:

lettucemode.3789:

Kebab.4013:

lettucemode.3789:

Kebab.4013:

lettucemode.3789:

Think about every single time you have seen a group of people take a tower or keep. What do they do? They stand directly in front of the door and beat on it, or they group around the catapults that are attacking the door. They just stand there, attacking the door. Cast things on the walls if there are defenders up there. Stand around, hit the door.

Everyone has been stuck in the same mindset about how towers and keeps are taken for months and months, which is run up to the door, drop rams, and plow on through. Now that you can’t do this anymore, the complaints roll in.

How to take a tower now? You need siege to take out the arrow carts. “But they will just build counter-siege!” They do not have infinite siege! You do, because you are the attacker and they are trapped inside. You need to starve them out. How you do this is:

-small group to man the siege that is destroying the arrow carts and other siege
-small group to defend the siege man-ers
-small group to secure nearby supply camps so you can keep building more siege
-small group to defend the supply camps so the enemy can’t build siege
-small group to cut off reinforcements to the tower so they can’t bring in supply from elsewhere

Hey guys, look at that, Anet solved the zerging problem! Which you’ve all been asking for, for months!

As defenders I would prolly do this:
-medium group to kill the siege and their guards
-redirect medium group to kill the small groups running from and in the camp and grab supplies.
-redirect the medium group to kill the last small group running around being idiots.

Hey guys, look at that, Anet has made the problem even worse! Which you’ve all been asking for, for months!

See my other post. Arrow carts out in the field or at the supply camp will deal with the medium or large groups sent as counters.

If they send a huge group, take something on the other side of the map.

So in the open field… people would never think of splitting up and not standing in the red circle?

Unless ofcourse you have 10 arrowcards, mighty be semi possible then.

Oh hey, no longer doing any fight? arrowcartwarsj mewkæfgjlædgds dsfgdfsgdsgdsfgs

Can’t belive people are so bloody stupid I don’t…. I dnoq werq kijtrkæeatgi rejæig krlejrhkhdhszd gi gijsgjt iwaopægtjuiwap tjgopgj oi grpæoji gwaopjf iowae jfipwajfi skl.nxmbncvxnbjfxkfdgfdhudghursilruhyrliuhgdrlghdlg d h guidfudg luilr liu drf huilrd ghuirlo glhgluir hgruilglhbdgdrzl dxu hlghrdguirolwerq kijtrkæeatgi rejæig krlejrhkhdhszd gi gijsgjt iwaopægtjuiwap tjgopgj oi grpæoji gwaopjf iowae jfipwajfi skl.nxmbncvxnbjfxkfdgfdhudghursilruhyrliuhgdrlghdlg d h guidfudg luilr liu drf huilrd ghuirlo glhgluir hgruilglhbdgdrzl dxu hlghrdguirolwerq kijtrkæeatgi rejæig krlejrhkhdhszd gi gijsgjt iwaopægtjuiwap tjgopgj oi grpæoji gwaopjf iowae jfipwajfi skl.nxmbncvxnbjfxkfdgfdhudghursilruhyrliuhgdrlghdlg d h guidfudg luilr liu drf huilrd ghuirlo glhgluir hgruilglhbdgdrzl dxu hlghrdguirolwerq kijtrkæeatgi rejæig krlejrhkhdhszd gi gijsgjt iwaopægtjuiwap tjgopgj oi grpæoji gwaopjf iowae jfipwajfi skl.nxmbncvxnbjfxkfdgfdhudghursilruhyrliuhgdrlghdlg d h guidfudg luilr liu drf huilrd ghuirlo glhgluir hgruilglhbdgdrzl dxu hlghrdguirol

If you can’t get close to the arrow carts, then siege them from afar. But now they’re going to send a small or medium group to take out THAT siege, so you need to defend or send your own group out…..

Interesting counterplay going on

okay then, answer me this. Let us say you are attacking briar that has several countertrebs up. They will always take out your treb or catapult before you hit them. You can’t go close to the tower at all. How are you suppose to take it then?

Several? Why are there so many trebs defending a tower of all things? And your statement “they will always take out your treb or catapult” is misleading, it assumes a lot:no human error, perfect scouting by the enemy given the long range of trebs, etc.

Under normal circumstances, it’s not hard to figure out. They have a limited amount of supply and you don’t. Build trebs simultaneously in multiple locations (every time I see multiple trebs build, they’re all within like 100 feet of each other…wtf. I mean like half a mile apart from each other) around the tower, close to max treb range. Once those go down, build more. Keep doing this and defending the spots until the defending trebs are down. Then move in closer and set up the next round of siege. Prevent more siege from being carried to the tower with small groups.

EDIT: I’m gonna be gone for a while, got a meeting here at work for the next 1.5 hours. Will try to respond to any other comments when I get back.

I made a reddit post about it: http://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/10wgz2/how_healing_affects_necromancers/

@OP, just because the siphon traits don’t benefit from healing doesn’t mean they shouldn’t be there. Given the layout of everything else it is the best place for them. That line also gives the regeneration when struck which benefits from +healing, bonus damage above 90% HP which more healing helps you achieve, mark of blood on dodge, lower well CD so you can use Well of Blood more, autocast well of blood on rez, Transfusion, and Deathly Invigoration. Plus if you are using daggers then you are probably using dagger 2 which benefits from +healing. It’s fine as is.

+healing in the Soul Reaping tree would be even worse, there is nothing in there, not even any minors, that benefits from it.