Guild Wars 2

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Shadowstep

/topic

Marriage is an archaic institution and has no place in game nor irl.

Condition spam isn’t the issue. Its simply another avenue of attack. If there were no conditions in this game but every attack involved 10~30 packets of damage, you’d get the same people crying over the same things.

The perceived issue of condition spam is actually the visibility of it. Too much of SPvP is determined by clusterkitten team fights with a billion AoE effects going off, most of which are condition based, that people feel like they have no defense for.

Conditions are great to play against, you take enough cleanses and fights become a matter of knowing when to use your cleanses. My strategy for this season has been taking a meta build, shaving off some of its DPS capabilities for additional cleanses for most of the classes I play.

These are the classes I play, inb4 accusations of being a condition spammer:

Tempest: Power/Support
Guardian: Power
Daredevil/Thief: Power
Druid/Ranger: Power
Scrapper: Condition
Necromancer: Condition

Vayne.8563:

Ramoth.9064:

Vayne.8563:

Ramoth.9064:

A lot of comments here seem to be based on heresay or speculation. I started raiding last week; it definitely needs effort, but the whole elitism stance is fairly baseless and not exclusive to raids. Dungeons and fractal players screamed zerk only for the longest time too. I’ve generally had really good pug experiences raiding. Team setup requires patience, but its not impossible. Set up your own team and you can specify the experience level. Ive also set up training runs before where experienced players joined and offered to teach.

I’d hardly say “most people” dont care about raiding, most of my guild raids, and it didnt come together when raids were introduced, we generally had people interested in it, whether it was inter guild raiding or pugging.

When I want to make a dungeon group,. I put up an ad, dungeon path casaul, fun run and I get people pretty kitten ed fast.

I’ve never not beaten a dungeon with any group I’ve gotten that way.

Try that with a raid sometimes.

Um, good for you? Not sure why you are replying to me though, i know raids need specific builds, and i dont mind that.

I’m replying to you because what I’m saying gainsays what’s your say. You’re claiming that people are just talking about elitism, but you know, it’s more than just elitism. It’s about having to have X build, X profession and until now, that’s really gone against what Guild Wars 2 has been about.

Could I run any path of Arah with 5 necros. I could. And not even five necros specced to death either.

This content CREATES that elitisim. People are calling it elitism, but it’s really not. It’s a requirement born of necessity that says you must play this way to win.

That’s a problem. It’s also why I replied to your post.

Applaud the fact you are clarifying the falsity of elitism claims however, the whole play this way, you must, schtick is only ever true until proven false. You’d think having 10 man for matthias is a must, but its proven wrong. Using updrafts for gors? Wrong. Green circle team for VG? Wrong. Ascended gear for the whole of sv? Wrong. Besides actually asking for players to play at their absolute best, which i dont think is unreasonable, this games raids have been extremely lenient as far as choice goes. Even the enrage timer is a soft enrage.

Yeah, it might be stretching the principle of play as you like a bit but that ship sailed ages ago. Its not like you can tell them to take the puzzle elements out of fractals either just because puzzle things are your choice of gameplay.

Axl.8924:

30k? you really are a troll.I got like 22.7k hp.

Also enemies can hit for up to 10-15k easily with burst.Even rangers with their arrow shot on longbow can easily do that much or a necro with axe.

You go into pvp. Make a demo character. Equip the carrion amulet. Kthxbye. You’re assuming just because you have trouble playing everyone else has. That is not true.

This isn’t even scourge related anymore at this point. The carrion amulet has been around for 5 years now.

Your April Fool’s cool down still has another 363 days mate.

fishball.7204:

There’s been no proof that the group who are unhappy with raids are larger than the group happy with raids.

Most of the casual friends I know that don’t raid don’t even care about raids, just like they don’t care about WvW or PvP.

Even on the forums it’s the same few people complaining about raids (Ohoni, Astral etc).

Until there’s definite proof this is just conjecture.

This. If my guild is anything to go by we are 200 strong glued to raiding all the time.

Ohoni.6057:

Game has no place for people unwilling to do things. If you are unwilling, you shouldn’t be playing. Guaranteed! I’m unwilling to grind the mats for a legendary weapon, Arenanet should start handing them out I guess.

“Handing them out?” No. But providing alternate methods? That’s definitely something that would be good for the game. I mean most mats you can either farm yourself, or buy on the markets, which is at least two options. More would be nice though.

I’d really like to see some numbers where people have actively quit GW2 because they are so up in arms about raids. You complain so much here and I don’t see you quitting. And if you, the staunchest of people who are against raiding haven’t quit they really have no worries that the supposed ‘difficulty’ of raids are offending anyone.

It’s not a matter of people quitting over it, it’s a matter of whether they are fully satisfying their customers. If they can launch a relatively simple change that would satisfy a lot of players, then they should do so.

Who’s to say this simple change of satisfying a lot of players won’t make an equal amount of other players dissatisfied.

The developers should rarely ever have to dumb down a game system for people who choose not to adapt or participate, because even with difficulty reduced there can still be other people who call it out for being too hard.

Id like to shorten my channelling time on all my other skills and get full effects too please. Kthxbye.

Sigmoid.7082:

Well before more often than not you would lose your might to signrts corrupting your boons anyways so its not a huge difference.

The real difference is now than for corruption necromancers don’t HAVE to go signets and it allows their builds to be a whole lot more diverse. Offhand dagger, mainland dagger and the curses line became fsr more attractive after this change since spite is no longer mandatory. And if you go spite you don’t have to take the signey trait because you don’t have to run signets just to stand a chance against all the boons rhatbare been able to spam in the game at the moment.

But that IS the power creep. With signets you have to go spite, and now that you don’t thats a good change, yes. BUT. The nature of boon corruption on spite requires a specific build, an active counterplay, AND the loss of a signet passive. That’s a just reward for a commited build.

Some of the new boon corruptions are almost like a free resource, no real trade off whether you use it or not, and thats where the power creep is.

Ragion.2831:

Ramoth.9064:

Ragion.2831:

Ramoth.9064:

Ragion.2831:

Ramoth.9064:

Rise will make a trap DH cry. Good positioning, and death’s charge will win you the day. Death’s charge destroys projectiles

While at it you can deaths charge your way into the traps.

Rise is a great skill regardless if you are up against DH or not. Trappers usually sit on their own traps,, and Rise can diffuse them

Sure if you are at range, but unless you are using staff or axe, you will be in melee. Even then Reaper is melee so if the guard is smart, you could be caught along side the shamblings

Nothing says the necromancer can’t be smart too. I’m trying to highlight that we have numerous tools to fight a DH with.

You use Rise at range, wait for the traps to go off, Deaths charge to his face. If he lays another trap your shroud can tank the worst part of it.

Lmao…first this is assuming we have enough shroud to begin with. What if its the start of the match? or you just burned LF in another fight? i guess the pro thing to do is wait for team and hope they take the heat off while we build LF

Those traps + LB do ALOT of damage and Guards have obscene amounts of stealth now so shamblings wont be attacking when we get slapped with true shot we wont see coming. We will burn LF we may or may not have just tanking one players burst. What if there are more players there focused on us which is pretty much what you would expect in a normal match. Position ourselves better? with what? Shroud charge our way through them after eating guardian traps? i dont think so.

The only way is to not get noticed by the guard and start doing damage from range with axe or staff and hope the guardian is not running much stability or blocks so at least the pulls may work.

All this ridiculous what if theorycrafting. What if we had 100% LF, what if it wasn’t at the start of the fight? What if the DH’s utilities were all on CD? See, I can do that too. The OP asked for tips against DH, and I stated facts, not what ifs. Rise diffuses traps. FACT. Deaths charge destroys projectiles. FACT. But sure, keep what if-ing your way to the next heavily disadvantaged scenario if that makes you feel better.

You remember the GW2 manifesto? They say that villagers will remember you for saving their village. These frickin’ Itzel don’t seem to remember me aside from the two from the story.

What gives? Why take away a key feature?

Barnabus Stinson.1409:

Why is wrong to want the Power based Spec to actually be decent with power, why are people hostile to the idea of a power reaper being buffed even a little?

I dont expect to just AA and Condi rotations really arent much harder, and even if they are not enough to make a near 50% DPS increase ( 24k Power to 34k Condi )

I’m not hostile to the idea of buffing power reaper, I have one myself. But if you look at this patch, power reapers got buffed, very little, I know. Would I like more buffs? Yes.

I’m just saying, power reapers only got nerfed if you think the game plan is to stay in RS and AA.

Lily.1935:

Why further nerf a class that’ll still need a babysitter?

That’s a big exaggeration to be honest. God forbid scourge has some weaknesses to ranged attacks, it is still extremely powerful against melee and condition pressure.

this is hilarious. thanks op.

Speaking entirely from a SPvP sense, a very obvious trend can be seen in the meta over the past 5 years of GW2’s lifespan.

GW2 started with an extremely burst oriented play style at the very beginning; the days when Quickness was 100% IAS. This was a reasonably good time for attrition based play; the options for cleanses were low, and death shroud sponged power attacks relatively well.

Things that promoted burst power play got toned down by Arenanet, and at the same time, the community learnt the merits of defensive play. The height of defensive play peaked at around the beginning of HoT and season 1; celestial elementalists were all the craze and minstrel’s amulets were still floating about. Instantly we saw the need for necromancers diminish, because the focus of the community was now on sustain.

Sustain really is the new attrition, or rather, they are one in the same. When your purpose is simply to outlast the enemy so that they succumb before you do, there is no difference in the two terms.

Meta has definitely shifted to the point where attrition, whether people realize it or not, is the standard form of play, save for a few classes. Our niche is gone, partially because most classes can now do it better, and partially because we don’t have any real unique ways of standing out.

This. At least just make the guild missions reward stuff only useful for frequent pvpers.

Sarrs.4831:

Crinn.7864:

The primary cause of death for necromancers in PvP is getting spiked while shroud is on cooldown. old Speed of Shadows meant that necromancer had a lower vulnerability window.

If this is what Soul Reaping was doing for you, why not switch into Death Magic and take Unholy Sanctuary? Death Shroud is never on cooldown when you need it to protect you from a spike, with US.

Because death magic is a pretty bad line at the moment.

You don’t want to be using minions, so the 1 traits are all garbage.

You don’t want to be stacking toughness, so the toughness to power conversion is garbage.

As a power reaper you have low access to poison, so the putrid defense is garbage.

Reapers protection is too situational to be deemed good, so really, its garbage.

So: ding ding ding, the only good trait is shrouded removal, and the protection on shroud exit minor trait.

Unholy sanctuary is a decent trait, but its kinda like training wheels, and you really dont want to rely on them, especially when the whole trait line will hold you back.

Astralporing.1957:

Ramoth.9064:

And absolutely nothing in game is stopping you from enjoying the raid.

Nah, raids as they are are stopping me from enjoying them.

Hypairion.9210:

Same rewards in quality in easy mode raid, aka free legendary.

aka strawman.
You have some really nonstandard definition of a word “free”.

Hypairion.9210:

i’m raiding, so i deserve raid rewards.

Sure. Because Anet said so. If Anet decided to introduce easy mode raids with raid rewards tomorrow, anyone doing them would deserve them as much as you would.

TL;DR: The only thing that makes you deserving of those rewards is Anet’s decision. And that is arbitrary and subject to change.

fishball.7204:

To us raiders, such effort does not really deserve any sort of reward

Yes, i get it, you think that only playing the way you like deserves any rewards. I disagree with that way of thinking.
Your way of playing is in no way superior to others.

And your way of thinking that you deserve something is in no way superior to others either. So really the great thing is, there’s a patch coming on Wednesday, most likely with minimal changes to raids, and we’ll get to see you and Ohoni whinge for probably another half year for something that probably won’t happen.

Scourge is god kitten amazing. I can’t go back to regular necromancer again

There is so much synergy with curses and soul reaping. Your F2 is godly with path of corruption and dhuumfire piles on pretty quickly. F2 is just so good.

Torch 5 is pretty good, very low window of escape. Torch 4 is a bit lame.

Brokensunday.4098:

Ramoth.9064:

Here is my proposal for signet of undeath:

2 second cast time.
75 second recharge.

Passive: gain life force
Active: Rally one ally ‘vengeance’ style.

what if it were active send minions that revive your ally and explode when they die

I’d love that!

DGraves.3720:

I know it is late and has likely already been asked but is legendary armor still on? Or going to be released sooner than later?

MO promises it is still on. Lol.

Jumpin Lumpix.6108:

Hands down got to be RIFLE! It’s not used by anyone except warrior and engineer (2/9 classes) and there are currently no meta builds in either sPVP, PvE, Raids, or WvW which use it.

Last time it was used was season 2 sPvP warrior gun flame build – now obsolete

Thief Rifle elite spec would of addressed this. Make Rifle Great again Anet FeelsBadMan

gotta love staff though everyone gets a staff – necro, thief, ranger, guardian, mesmer, elementalist, revenant, that’s 7/9 classes ggwp

It’s would have, not would of.

And if anyone should get a rifle it should be the mesmer.

daw.4923:

can some1 explain me why LF still doesnt reset after death?

Probably for the same reason why your auto-attack doesn’t make your character instantly suicide?

Hypairion.9210:

Astralporing.1957:

I sincerely hope there aren’t any. At least not until they manage to think of ways to fix the attached problems that created the backlash agains this content.

Again, what backlash ? Didn’t see any, except 2 or 3 people ranting here and on reddit about it…the only minor problem I see is from à story / lore perspective, and LS 3 will resolve that (OK with trinket and new stats too)

He is talking about his backlash. And Ohoni’s. The great double backlash. Never mind all the topics on this forum and reddit congratulating the raid team. They totally don’t exist.

Great job on the user interface guys, really well done. Its the best part of this update. the best and the only good part of the update

Ok, we’ll pair you with 3 thieves.

Crinn.7864:

As far as sPvP is concerned, Scourge was underpowered during the beta weekend, and if it’s nerfed it’ll be completely pointless.

Seems the devs only want necromancers to play WvW.

I think it was balanced just right, and that opponents were just too dumb. The issues scourge has against ranged makes it a glaring vulnerability – that barely anyone exploited.

I’ll probably keep a deadeye around against scourge heavy line ups, for everything else, there’s mastercard.

They are all exotic, exact same icon, exact same spelling.

Mr Godlike.6098:

OriOri.8724:

kdaddy.5431:

OriOri.8724:

Good. Hopefully now they will focus on PvP balance for the average player, instead of ESL level players.

I dont know where you placed last season but i finished almost at plat2 .

The last PvP match i did THIS season looked liked this.

The idea of balancing for weak players wont work and it doesnt work the other way either.

I wished i taped it because i would walk into 1 vs 3 fights and they couldnt even force me to use a rebound.

That’s why I’m always asking them to balance around the average player. They need to be balancing around high gold (making an assumption about the distribution of players here). Not around bronze, and not around ESL. You will never have good balance if you balance around either end of the spectrum.

WRONG – ESL players thanks to their experience and knowledge where first ones to discover something broken or overpowered (because when they competed they where first ones to abuse it when real money was on line). Typical Gold player plays mettabattle build or TRASH build. There is nothing to balance about and even if they have experience…too many times they don’t know what rotation is.

I think it’s correct to balance around high level players. But they should still fix skills that are easy pub stomp skills

Who is to say the ‘easy mode – same rewards’ system is easy enough for you. What then, you call it too hard and they need to make ANOTHER easier mode with the same rewards? Get real.

yawn. -whatever you say- is nonsense. See, I can do it too.

Yeah sure, there’s barely a silver lining to VP getting nerfed, but even without it, at over 50%, its enough to pull off an RS4, RS5 and a couple auto chains of RS1 for good measure.

I’m talking PvP of course. You can still sponge burst attacks with shroud, even more than before if you pick up the new VP.

Its really not the end of the world.

Unless you are camping shroud of course, in which case LOL.

Reaper Alim.4176:

Yannir.4132:

Reaper Alim.4176:

I completely agree with you on this point. However when other MMORPGs do Questing, Story, and Graphics better then you. That’s when you have a issue.

I don’t think any other MMO does any of those things better than GW2 does. Especially graphics, but as those are basically irrelevant to my generation of gamers anyway. I still play a game that was published in 2001, and it’s still one of my favorite games. But that is just my opinion.

From my experiences as MMOs goes. GW2 is top noch for Story.

Outside of that it is pretty sub-par in most other categories.

- Graphics goes to ESO Eve Online, and BDO.
- Endgame content goes to WoW and ESO.
- Meaningful character progression goes to all other MMORPGs.
- PvP goes to Blade and Soul, and Eve Online.
- ESO’s quests are much better made then GW2’s.
- Combat system imo is pretty much a tie between GW2, BnS, BDO, and ESO. ESO, BnS, and BDO have a more skill based combat system. GW2 has a more casual combat system.
- Class balance goes to ESO and BnS. Tho ESO and BnS is balanced every 3 or so months. Their balance teams actually listens and partake in a way more active role with their game’s playerbase. Hence why every class in those two games are viable in all of the game modes.
- Build variety goes to ESO and Eve Online. The viable builds for PvP in those two games are immense. We have META and anti-META. Build variety in these two games are pretty much null due to the nature of NPCs. And the fact that these two games are only being balanced around PvP. Yes sometimes PvE suffers but instead of just lazly add power creep to the classes, they take a different approach and nerf the PvE content instead. PvP suffers nothing, from PvE content.
- Long term excitement goes to ESO, Eve Online, and BnS.

Again these are my views. You are welcome to have different views. But the fact that you said GW2 does graphics the best alone. Just tells me you didn’t actually play many other MMOs or GW2 is your first and only MMO you played.

You have got to be kidding me. GW2’s story is kittening terrible, is like written by an elementary schooler.

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

Shade 2, but you will also be using Shade 3 and 5 frequently, with Shade 5 being on-cooldown.

How do your numbers look now?

How do your numbers look when you get smashed in the face while in shroud, while a scourge can still gather LF and use shade skills?

Not here to call OP or anything, but having looked at the mesmer traits recently (just started learning to play the class) I can’t help but feel the grandmaster traits are just much better thought out than other classes.

I’d say about 2/3rds of the GM traits are genuinely creative and provide a way to alter the playstyle of the class rather than just be a passive % increase or automated effect. These traits are boring!

I main necro, and I’d say the only specialization that has GM traits with the same level of depth as the mesmer ones would be death magic. Maybe. The reaper GM traits are all terrible and passive. Even before the nerf to deathly chill the trait itself, while good ‘flavor’ wise, was a very passive and boring trait. I think most classes should have their GM traits looked at so that:

GM traits – playstyle altering effects
Master traits – cooldown reductions
Adept traits – small bonuses.

Zeghart.9841:

Vieux P.1238:

OH plzzzzz.. after 3 years… we are way ….way… way… pass that excuse. *(rolling my eyes)

3 years of what? Only relatively recently spvp started getting the attention and development it needed and slowly kicking into gear, without even talking about balance. Hell, it still doesn’t have a lot of the features that would actually complete it.

It puts Anet in a bad light for mostly ignoring it early on, but spvp definitely doesn’t have 3 years of good support behind its back. It might be a 3 year old kid, but it’s still a kid.

Ramoth.9064:

I’m comparing a major guild wars 2 tournament to another esports celebrity testing his computer…and the latter won. Regardless of how riveting it is to watch someone test his computers, these numbers are not something Arenanet should be proud of.

An esport celebrity of one of the biggest esports in the world – and a famous streamer to top that off. Still not a fair comparison. And the actual stream content matters less than you’d think – I’m pretty sure that if Lirik made a stream completely about picking his nose, he’d still get 20-30k viewers.

Guild Wars 2 never had a huge Twitch following (even if it does MUCH better than a lot of other games), it’s unreasonable to expect it to suddenly explode. Seeing how these tournaments can bring in five times the viewers the game has normally, it’s not a bad start as you might think. As I said, it will just take time and care from this point forward.

Explode? No.
Get more than 3.5k viewers? Yes.
Actually engage with their community about the viability of conquest before championing it as their premier esports game mode? Yes.
Admit they’ve dun goofed? One can hope.

Tobias.8632:

The scourge is OP because most GW2 players are too stupid to think “maybe I shouldn’t try to melee the guy whos primary class mechanic is pulsing area denial”

Thank you. You should make that your signature. Serious L2P issues in this forum in general.

Nope, what OP says is true. Had some truly bad players on my team yesterday, they lost a 4+lordv2. I asked how they can be so bad and they said ‘Arenanet made PvE players play PvP, blame them’.

I told them you can buy shards of glory on the TP face palm.

Can we upgrade the UI to show ICD’s while we are at it? =/

I think the 16k is a joke, I get about 6k tops realistically, which is still very good considering you can maul, hilt bash, maul.

Its a good build and I tore up a db thief without even trying the other day. I run it with hyena and smokescale.

are you talking about pve? the deathly chill change is better for pve (group content) IMO

can we please get rid of the guild emblem on the magic carpet <_<

Obtena.7952:

I said it won’t get added because it starts diminishing meaningful choices, which is clearly intended by the design of the game. What makes you think Anet doesn’t intent for classes to have restrictions and trade offs by choice of weapon? It’s pretty clear it is intended.

Besides, dagger needs things? I think there is a big difference between what it needs and what you want it to have. Dagger 2 has synergy with bleeding? Seems to me that’s a good reason to NOT put bleeding on Dagger AA … I mean, if you’re just going to make an opponent bleed for so little effort, then that synergy simply turns into a thinly veiled buff of Dagger 2. The idea here isn’t that Anet just hand you all these buffs; you need to think about where they come from to take advantage of them. There is no thinking behind getting a bleed on AA just to automatically get a conditional, extra effect on Dagger 2. That’s silly.

To say there is NO way to get bleed to take advantage of Dagger 2 extra effect because Dagger AA doesn’t have bleed is nonsense. Your demonstrating that you aren’t willing to solve your build challenges with the tools we already have.

Increasing DPS? Again, I’ve asked why any sensible player would want to increase a power weapon DPS with a few crap condition applications. Apparently, you guys think this is the obvious answer; I think it’s a dishonest reason to buff dagger with a condition.

Finally … the number of builds. So far, I’ve seen zero builds from the people that make this claim that would make me think I’ve got something new to try out; a way to make me rethink how I build and play necro; if dagger got a condition.

Lol no one here is bothered to entertain your naysaying. Everyone else has had meaningful discussion agreeing with each other while you’re that guy on the outside screaming no. Again, qualifications please? So far, I’ve seen zero meaningful contributions from you in any realm of competitive play.

And thats all there is to it, if you can’t play competitively your arguments hold no water.

Vyrulisse.1246:

Really wish they would just separate Solo Queue and Team Queue. It’s not a difficult concept.

You’ve grossly over-estimated their abilities.

Astralporing.1957:

Ramoth.9064:

Game has no place for people unwilling to do things.

Raids were introduced exactly because a group of people were unwilling to play it at the same level as others, and wanted the content finetuned to their personal desires.

I see no difference here at all.

Err no. They were made to be a marketable feature to sell. And they sold well.

If you can get to the last part of the boss you are pretty much experienced. I started raiding this week and after having one night of training runs ive killed the boss the next night. How?

Lies and deception. Make your own raid tell people you are experienced and use the code link for proof of kill items. Then up your game. As long as you arent the weakest link in a failed attempt theres really no reason for people to kick you.

The thing is, theres heaps of people in the same boat as you. When i made my VG ‘experienced’ group that finally downed him, there were 7 people telling me it was their first kill. Lies and deception.

i’ve had ppl just disintegrate when they try to focus me in melee

Serenity.6135:

Its not about camping, its about proper rotations. The nerf on vital persistence ruined the synergy with a lot of traits therefore delivering a big hit on a lot of builds. VP is also necessary to keep up with the current meta.

Are you talking about Speed of Shadows? Because I can agree on that.

What kind of synergy and rotation are you talking about in terms of VP? Its not like with the old VP you’d wait out the CD on a RS4 to use RS4 again.

Even in raids, the QT benchmarks exit shroud the moment their RS4 finishes, iirc. If you’re getting hammered in PvP, VP won’t matter, and if you aren’t getting hammered you shouldn’t be camping shroud anyways.

Obtena.7952:

Yup, and that doesn’t change because Legendaries aren’t being removed so I don’t think what I said is wrong.

That still doesn’t change the fact that you continue to decide to ignore my clarifications to be antagonistic and argue on irrelevant factorss, ignoring the most important one; that this is a business decision and Legendaries are not good ROI for Anet.

Lmao, that isnt so much as clarification, its pure backtracking. Your original argument was blown out of the water, and now you are having another pointless try at linking it to business decisions.