Guild Wars 2

Marsares.2053:

My main is a Mesmer, hell I’ve really only played Mesmer since Beta as I love the class so much. Yet, I’m a strong advocate for fixing this… putting an elite on someone that kills of all their pets can only be a bug and needs to be fixed.

Necro’s rely – much like Mesmers – in many ways for clones/pets/illusions/whatever you want to call them for damage, utility and support. Suddenly removing that with the press of one button cannot be right. It’s the same when the recent bug caused all illusions to self-destruct with a Mesmer when the opponent went into stealth and our illusions lost their targets.

Holy kitten. A Mesmer with a brain. . .

Zenith.7301:

I mean, why not just buff a deficient trait instead of nerfing another one to make the crappy one look good with the shifted functionality?

This stinks of the same logic they used with rangers.

“Oh, you guys aren’t using longbow? Here, let’s nerf shortbow and see if you guys use longbow.”

No, like I said, you’re still not taking anything I’ve said into consideration. doubling the attack speed of Life blast builds it much faster. I suggested a nerf from 15 to 10-12, which would still technically be faster at building, and only a bit less potent at holding that max stack (so long as you use life blast somewhat frequently, it wouldn’t be a major issue with Runes of Strength), and doesn’t touch Signet might building at all. Technically, this would be MORE reliable, overall, with a faster Life blast. You simply cannot go buffing Life blast and leave the supporting traits alone.

The part where Reaper comes in however, is that I suggest the faster cast Life blast and shorter Duration system over the two-hit Life Blast because with Reaper using a faster attack, Reaper’s Might is too good, and suffers the same balance issue a faster life blast would already, effectively making it better than Chilling victory, which is being held back because of this trait. The faster Life Blast but shorter might idea that I had would keep it relatively close to how it is now for base necromancer (again, given a faster attack speed), but reduce its potency slightly for Reapers, allowing for Chilling Victory to be better balanced and useful as a whole, which is currently, as a Master-Major, getting outshined fairly easily by Reaper’s Might, a minor-adept in spite.

Essentially, two birds with one stone. The two-attack might fix only keeps it the same for base necromancer but does very little to solve further issues with speed variations between the shrouds.

There you go, with the shadow scythe.

Downed state ruined this game. People claim it “adds team play” but it doesn’t. What it really does is:

- Allows people to go full glass and try to lulburst everyone so they can scream in vent for raises when they die, and complain about “tank meta” because people can build proper builds that deal some damage and can survive, rather than try to faceroll zerker like 2 shotting people is skill or something.

- On the same token, promotes carrying people.

- Diminishes the value of support, REAL team play, because working hard to keep your buddies up isn’t as easy as bursting down a guy and rezzing your whole team with a stealth stomp.

- Ruined PvE because support nor any other role has a purpose, more zerker spam, and every boss has to have sheer 1 shot mechanics just to ensure anyone can die because otherwise it’d be too easy when you can pick anyone up who falls down. So rather than play support and make sure your team doesn’t lose, you just try to kill everything in 30 seconds and continuously pick eachother up.

That’s the basics anyways… PvE and PvP in this game could have been so much better, and people could have had real roles, but nope. It turned into Zerker smash everything, add condition spammers and “Bunkers” in pvp, who do absolutely nothing combat related other than live for ever and are pro carriers.

reikken.4961:

it has a pretty long cast time. dodge it

On a class that has clones / distractions and MOST importantly the ability to stealth cast it? Are you really that dense? Someone can stealth cast basically doom an entire build. It IS A bug (said so by devs) and with MM getting nerfed because of crying baddies, its high time they fix this.

That’s pretty much the point in a nut shell. I don’t mind it dying, because it’s a minion. It’s part of having them is watching them die; however the issues are:
- It heals LESS than signet.
- It is killable/ccable/Losable
- The heal tick can be “dodged” by the enemy.

The damage it does isn’t a big deal. 25 dps is pretty shruggable for… basically anyone. It’s kind of like having half a 0 condi power bleed on the enemy at all times that can be evaded, not a big deal.

Vayne.8563:

BrooksP.4318:

Peoples ironic dismissal of WoW is so comical its sad. WoW did it so no!

Show Spoiler

hide spoiler

News flash: GW2 is the epitome of themepark gameplay which WoW created.

Actually Guild Wars 2 IMPROVED on a lot of the nonsense that was in WoW for no real good reason, like kill and node stealing.

What you don’t like being able to remotely deposit mats? Should be go back to WoW because we’ve built upon it.

The LFG tool is better than the one used in WoW. Returning to it would be like devolving.

Technically, though, I’d like to get off of WoW as a whole, WoW had both, now. The best option IS both.

LFD automatic grouper = Faster game play, more casual, more Active.

LFG Tool = Slower, often abandoned, but looking for specific scenarios.

They have entirely different uses and even the LFG tool as it stands does not see much use for dungeons outside of a select few paths for specific dungeons. LFD would be used to get more people to play dungeons, bring a breath of life to mostly forgotten content, and make it more accessible, which is a key element to MMOs, accessibility for people not wanting to wait around all the time. The other flaw with LFG Tool, as hit on, it allows simple exploitation of dungeons. Only do the easiest dungeon with the easiest path. A random dungeon finder gives purpose to doing dungeons no one else does, as you either do it… or you don’t and you leave, but have to wait.

Right now I see so few people doing SE, HotW, and CoE, but it doesn’t have to be that way. I’d love to get more use and familiarity with the content the game already has.

Coulter.2315:

WoW has many good systems that can be adopted or improved upon but I don’t think the dungeon finder is something worth bringing to GW2. The reason being there is no Tank or Healer role.

Before dungeon finder in WoW you had to stand in a city spamming “LF 1 Healer 1 Tank Deadmines” for aaaaaages and assuming you didn’t have leavers from waiting too long or someone just went afk while you spammed, you then needed 2 people to go run to Deadmines and start summoning the rest. It took AGES!

Because there isn’t this god awful wait (which still needed you to be actively spamming and then summoning) in GW2 you don’t need the automated system.

The purpose isn’t always to find a missing Role. It’s about accessibility, quickness of play, and incentives to doing something that you would otherwise just avoid. Even now, like I said, sure you can easily find a CoF path 1 group, but finding a group for a different dungeon is near impossible. There’s also no incentive to push through and keep trying, as there is no drawback to leaving and letting the group fall apart, and filling spots with a standard LFG tool is much slower than having them sent to you automatically via an automation tool. More fun for less time and adding incentives to do content that exists are the main goals here.

It’s a bug that was introduced at live. It has to do with how utility bars lock when a necromancer is transformed and has something to do with the unique coding in Death shroud (or so it was explained) and is why their elites were eventually made to say they kill monions on use, which was announced to be a temporary fix so people wouldn’t be surprised. Many devs didn’t even know it happened or forgot until i directly brought it up to Hammon and a few others last year some time and they vaguely confirmed it as a bug. Which should be obvious since it’s the only spawned pet that doesnt die (both spirits, turrets, clones).

There doesn’t seem to be many hardcore necros in ANet, much less MMs so we get pushed off a lot. Not to mention, no one has any understanding off the issues it has.

(ie, turrets get to be called objects so they are immune to critical hits and conditions too, hence they can be used in team fights where as mm Pets die in abiut 4 seconds and the MM can be trained down) and is why spirit guardians don’t even really exist.

I’m sure this is probably a case to make Moa kill turrets, but it really just needs to stop killing minions, the only people if affects this way. I wish these critical bugs were taken more seriously by the devs and not exploited as leverage to nerf unwanted builds.

My two cents ~ High Warlord Sikari.

Luke.4562:

I congratulate with you for all the dedication you’ve put in (I stopped long time ago doing this kind of things).

I’d like to say something i noticed.
1) The changes you proposed are nice to make the spec slightly more viable, but after that it still needs a lot of work to become a meta-viable spec.
2) One problem with the Minions is that they aren’t useful like other utilities. Example, check the Wells: you can bring them in builds which aren’t forced into taking traits regarding wells and they still perform good. Minions (excluded the Golem and somehow the Wurm) are way too much dependant from the Death Traits.
It’s like they cannot perform without determinate Traits. Note that too: Wells and some other spells aren’t dependant from traits because their related traits usually works on the cooldown, they doesn’t modify the spell itself that much.
3) The design. Minions are presented as a special characteristic of Necromancer, but they have no synergy with Death Shroud, nor Conditions, nor Pressure, nor Life Force generation.
4)You didn’t mention the problems with Reanimator and Protection of the Horde being usekitten th in whatever Death build not bringing minions and whatever Minion Master build.
I feel the Jagged Horror as a placeholder… it’s again a design flaw.

Good Luck, and hope your message will reach the Staff.

I completely agree about the synergy issues. The issue is, they don’t want our minions looking like Ranger pets. Their idea of keeping the Ranger “unique” is literally holding back their design potential.

Also, I do know this wouldn’t be “enough” to make full-meta, but I can preform relatively well with my current MM spec peeking at 615 and currently at 91% after some time off, which is acceptable for minimal effort, with these changes I could imagine a lot more fun coming from this type of build. Unfortunately, there is an underlining issue that to even have our pets we have to give up so much personal power, defense and utility that we cant ALLOW them to be dead, and that’s just not going to change easily. To be quite frank, we need a little more burst avoidance other than soaking up the hits, and some CC block, but I can’t really comment on how to work that in without telling them to redesign the class/build, and I really don’t want to be that guy. I’m just trying to help them go in the direction they already wanted to go.

Lastly, I did mention those 2 traits in a middle post somewhere in here. I just haven’t had time to work them into the main posts. They’re all near character max, so I’ll have to do some trimming.

Thanks for your post!

Try it. I bet you realize real fast why you’d die constantly without proper utilities lol. Also the big difference between thief having pets versus necros if that necros don’t have perma evade and perma stealth. :P

Let’s not be stupid just for the sake of argument. You don’t realize how much you rely on your current utilities until you don’t have them.

I hope you realize that your defenses against conditions… really didn’t change much. It still relies on resistance from the trait. if anything, with the lower costs on the new UA and EtD, your “defenses” theoretically went up a smidge…

Your weakness to conditions didn’t do anything, all that changes was what you do WITH them, and it only ‘really’ changed in the form of EtD not COPYING them back. AFAIK, EtD never transfered them or removed them, so I’m not sure what you’re on about. Good luck though with your burn guard having very little resistance removal and getting smoked by Banish Enchantments.

While we’re at it. Make condy ticks show too! Makes sense! A burning man doesn’t hide and you can follow the blood trail! :}
(I’m kidding)

I’m probably going to be the odd-ball out here, but I actually don’t like the Treb, but I see the appeal for it. It’s effective, but I don’t think it’s an overly fun mechanic. I avoid Khylo as much as i can.

Bhawb.7408:

Sagat.3285:

You can’t kill what never existed. Dhummfire is still terrible on base shroud if it’s not going to proc on both hits there is no point of making it a two hit skill in the first place.

Not a suggestion anyone is throwing out that I can see, but someone brought it up.

I think he was confused thinking you said Dhuumfire trait would only proc on the second hit. (The first guy) Which would, of course, defeat the purpose of trying to bring DS traits in line with RS trait utilization, Dhuumfire needing it the most. Then it cascaded into more confusion.

Either way. It’s probably just safer to make it a faster attack and not a 2-parter. A 2-part channel makes it unnecessarily useful against stealth, and I can’t think of many other cases where it causes a power issue that isn’t already an option in Reaper’s Shroud. Chances are, Reaper’s might could be toned down in general (like to 12 seconds) as it basically has Might dominance for Necromancer as a whole (more specifically if Life Blast is sped up), and Chilling Victory needs its might duration extended (to 8 or 10 seconds).

Drennon.7190:

ronpierce.2760:

blah blah blah stealth too OP for my IQ

But seriously, thieves survival is too tied to stealth. Acro is trash now, we have low health, low toughness, 0 blocks, 0 invulns, etc etc.

If the balance team continues to hand out reveals like candy, then I would hope that thieves were given access to blocks or invulns. Kinda like how Mesmer can now out stealth, evade, invlun, and then camp stealth until all of their goodies are off cooldown again.

Your defense isn’t just tied to stealth. That’s your +1 mechanic and one of your flee mechanics. You also have unchallenged mobility that is the sole reason Magic Toker can basically single handedly carry a WTS win on caps and decaps.

Also, no need to get petty “low IQ”, it makes you look bad and unintelligent yourself. Stealth is a corny mechanic. Get over it. Also, Mesmers have more than they should. That isn’t news. I sure as hell wouldn’t want anyone bumped to their level.

Just get used to it. A new player says the same thing about any base class. Once you’re used to them (I am already), they actually provide you better detail about what your enemy can do.

Generally speaking; its meant for Team Que pvp, at least it should be because that’s all that we used to really look at (before Solo Ques and custom arenas allowing standardized 1v1 and 2v2s). So these should be based on a 5v5 match up. However you will get a lot of 1 on 1 trickle biases thrown in the mix too sometimes.

The Demonic Spirit.3157:

I tried it in PvP too , too rare to get myself killed
Thanks to Anet there is no minions AL issue anymore ( they attack all the time )

This is true, I run 20/0/20/30/0 in tPvP made it to top 500 yoloquing (slowed down and eventually stopped because I got bored) however, while they’re OKAY, in high end there are some very glaring issues:

AoE makes bunker mms not work, because without minions you’re absolutely defenseless, and you’re not of muich use to a group.
MM has almost no mobility, but at least decent CC (Little to no stability though, so we get pushed off base easy).
All of our damage is single target unless you run condi MM in which case you’re better off going a full terror build.
Moa instantly 1 shots all of your minions.
All in all, without minions the build is useless. Now I’m talking on HIGHER tier.

I will agree that in LOW end:
Minions do a little to much damage.
We are rather survival because of minion body-blocking.

However on high end:
Minions get AOEd down WAY too fast.
Good players exploit grounds to make minions spend most of the time chasing them.
CC chain the MM.
Moa the MM.
AOE condies just absolutely wreck an MM (the meta atm).
We have basically no cleave.
DS eats all of our traited heals and Blood fiend attacks.
Our heal (if you run blood fiend) can be cleaved down.
All of our traited survival is easily aoed down, so without them we are basically traitless with 90% of our traits being into making minions viable.

All in all (from experience) sure, they’re okay 1v1 vs noobs, and it can really give off the feeling of being a “great build!” but once you know the facts, and play higher skilled players, assuming they know how to deal with an MM which most do, you’ll find yourself having too many short comings for it to be worth having the “one man super army”. It works too well in low end pve/pvp, while being too easily countered in high end pvp, or ANYTHING with more than 2 people fighting due simply to cleave damage, and harder dungeons you’re just better off running something else because you can cause some accidental pulls, they die to AoE, and the damage isn’t good enough for speed groups.

Better plan!
Soothing Stone: Remove retaliation, give 1.5 second resist per condition removes (2.5 is crazy!)

Inspiring reinforcements: Since it has a 10 second CD, this is now the stun break and is instant. Now casts in front of the caster, no longer directional.

Forced Engagement: reduce cost to 25, make unblockable, reduce range to 900 and increase cooldown to 8 seconds. Needs more reason to use and more time being effective without being too strong for chain CCing!

Vengeful Hanmers: No longer break on stuff, now considered a pulsing AoE and not actual projectiles. No longer unblockable. Increase condi duration and damage reduction to 25%! Bump healing scaling! Reduce cost to -6pips.

Rite of the Dwarf: Remove CC break, but reduce cast time to 3/4 second! Also grants user 4 seconds of Resistance and Protection to make the user particularly resilient for the duration!

Charblaze.6958:

@Malchior: I agree with RashanDale about DS1 e Dhuumfire. Torment should be baseline on DS1 and not on the trait. I would add it even on Staff1 so condimacers have a cover condition and they not kitten their dps too much while waiting for weapon swap CD or using DS. Torment on DS1 and Staff1 is great “utility” for all the other necromancer specs too.

I’d love for a longer duration torment (only one stack, to keep that “attrition/buildup” feel for Necromancer) on DS 1 (/RS 1??? Maybe only on the first two hits as the final hit is a “burst” hit) baseline for Shroud 1 skills to allow for more condition covering and generally making the core mechanic work for condition builds a little better.

The staff though, I see it as a utility weapon mostly. I really think Staff 1 would be met best with a 2 second cripple on enemies above 600 away (600-1200), which is both utility and really pushes that “you can’t run from the necromancer” sort of niche, without allowing Staff too much melee KITING pressure close quarters, obviously baseline. I sincerely believe Staff 1 needs this little perk to drive home that feeling of being hard to escape the necromancer.

And, it helps with closing gaps a bit which Necromancer (and reaper) also direly need since they have a lack of realistic mobility. So this sort of staff tweak really helps in all areas without giving it something it doesn’t necessarily need, a close range kiting tool.

I feel like baseline 5 sec cooldown would be good, and just add a 10 second CD on the 3 Sec stability trait.

Sagat.3285:

scerevisiae.1972:

It’s not like it can be any worse than Tempest anyway…

This human habit needs to stop.

Hm? It’s good to have facts, am I rite?!

It can’t be any worse designed than Tempest.
It can’t be named any worse than Dragon Hunter.
Can’t be any worse than Ranger in tPvP.
Can’t be any more OP than Elementalist.
Can’t be any worse in pve than Necromancer.

Sorry if I missed any other particular outliers.

It used to be like almost every living story had some cool back piece, head armor, some sort of skin that was worth doing it for (for people other than lore/achievement chasers). Now every single time it has been like a bag of supplies or some gold… What happened to the cool stuff…? It’s been a while now. I hope this isn’t going to be an ongoing trend. :S

Sagat.3285:

tetrodoxin.2134:

ronpierce.2760:

People clearly have issues with how they are doing it. How about giving better feedback rather than creating a million "the sky is falling threads that do absolutely nothing.

Also, by the sounds of things, it’s you who is feeling a bit salty.

This so much. Thief forums are currently drowing in salty tears of self-pity.
Kinda hilarious. I’m sure the devs will react to that!

Feedback was given since trait preview and 1st day post patch even money was given there was no reaction on thief except for selling DD and purity of pistols 2.0 sooo yeah.

To be fair, very little has changed since then… For anyone. There is a larger balance patch on its way, repeating sarcastic nonsense on the forums isn’t solving anyone’s issue. They don’t produce balance patches at a rate based on pointless threads in the thief section per day.

We still have to deal with Ele in its current state, that alone says there is work to be done and it just hasn’t come yet.

However, as living proof, being reasonable and doing lots of collaboration and write ups, it’s much more beneficial to the class in the long run (as we’re starting to see Necromancers inch out of that terrible spot it was in for 3 years).

Be a part of the solution and you might get the results you desire. (As a whole, not directed at you specifically.)

600? 600 is actually pretty lenient.

Powerful Aura = 360, Elemental Attunements = 240, Life From Death = 360 etc.

600 is on the upper side of support, unfortunately, with only a few exceptions.

Random Weird Guy.3528:

zapv.8051:

Can these all get buffed to 40 or 50 percent? 20% is not enough to be even remotely reliable. No one thinks, “let me use my 20% projectile finisher through that field,” because it isn’t reliable enough to change your play style for that.

20% projectile finishers are basically all auto attacks, or attacks that have multiple projectiles (like rapid fire). Increasing this to 40% just adds even more random passive play to the game.

Or, like Revenant’s, they could just simply balance the effects and auto speeds around 100%. There’s nothing wrong with knowing your attack will be stronger steadily when attacking from a combo field. That actually forces people to play well with them. Not having them reliable, you get random chances at benefits, but it’s not enough to push anyone to try to play better and utilize it. There’s nothing passive about combo field finishers, that’s why they were made, to reward people for comboing. Right now there’s no reason to.

Sure, projectile through burning might need a little tweaking and 100% projectile ranged attacks could possibly need to be slower attacks like the Revenant, but it adds play to the game, which the game desperately needs, that makes you think about your placement. As is, you don’t think about your 20% chance moves and as such, you gain very little play value by having them.

As for multi-hit, you could leave it at about 25% chance and that’d be fine. You’d have enough quick hits to want to take advantage of fields still.

Back to my forever long design philosophy don’t design around balance. Balance around good design.

2v2 / 3v3? If only… :/

Weirwynn.2390:

Inculpatus cedo.9234:

No zone completion in the new Skill/Trait implementation. It is all based on Hero Points (formerly known as Skill Points).

Good luck.

How disrespectful! Didn’t you hear him say he’s been trying to avoid hearing any actual information about the system?

Well he can’t really complain about false/incomplete information and not expect some information.

If it helps, as vague as possible. Build numbers will go down, viable builds will go up. It forces harder decisions. It’s not NEARLY as limiting as WoWs “remake” which actually changed from traits to abilities essentially. The core trait system will still be very familiar after the update. Cool your jets and just try it out first.

d(‘-’d)

Turk.5460:

ronpierce.2760:

Well, not that anyone cares, but this is basically along the same lines or handling MM and Guardian Spirits, they took the easy way out and deleted them. Such a shame. At this point turrets may as well be removed from the game, along with any other summon that is essentially useless across the board. Not sure why they ask for “feedback”. I’ve spent hours making several page write ups on how to make certain AI builds acceptable contenders without being overly frustrating to fight OR play, but it seems they always get ignored.

If you want a “Good job, we can pvp again!” You got it, good job. But this isn’t a design victory at all.

You’re right, fixing a long-time problem shouldn’t be hailed as a victory. Think of it more as “Game Polish”

Except it’s not. It ruined them, and everyone knows that. And we’ve all been frustrated with turrets, it’s fine to be happy that they will be much less of an issue now, but they did no design justice here. Turrets will not be in a “good place” from this, nor does it fix the ease of playing and design for 0 mobility, it simply took one of the few non-kit builds an engineer had and trashed it. It’s not a polish anything. If anything, they’re making more useless trash in their game that has no use across all 3 game types. This isn’t something to honor.

It’s an easy bandaid fix.

I made top 10 (7) in tPvP with it doing 1/2/2(far) me and a spirit ranger going far. I just roamed with the spirit ranger and we did just fine. I agree MM is actually an UNDERPOWERED (wutttt?!?!!?) spec, and needs help. They’re nerfing its 1v1 viability but forgetting its other mass issues:
-Terrible team use
-No reliable cc breaks outside of wurm which has a 1.5 sec pre-cast and often does more harm than good to sacrifice
-No stability
-Terrible Mobility
-No extra evades/vigor/protection/block
-LF generation comes down to pretty much dagger 1 hits or pets dying, and if you don’t get LF you’re basically a sitting duck.
-Huge weakness to aoe cc/snares/kiting.
- Huge weakness to aoe damage.
- Purely single target.

People don’t understand the true dynamics of mm, they just see a bunch of names and die and freak out. :P

MM could certainly use some less dmging pets, especially for 1v1. I can agree to that. But they desperately need help in many many other ways. I play it because I enjoy it, it does take a lot of ability management, especially to CC lock someone enough for pets to have uptime. The problem is nubs don’t require cc to hit, hence why its so strong against terrible players and 1v1 in general. But its in no way the strongest 1v1 build and having played one in actual competitive gameplay, its not nearly as easy as people make it out to be. It’s hawk… Rabbit killer for life.

leman.7682:

EremiteAngel.9765:

hahahahahahahahha

mjharrison.3209:

Downed state:

• interrupts the natural pace and flow of combat
• does not spectate well
• is not fun
• precludes skilled 1v2, 1v3 victories
• turns a close 4v4/3v3/2v2s into a whitewash because of ridiculous rally mechanics
• promotes instagibbing
• introduces imbalances that wouldn’t otherwise exist

DS should at least be an option on custom arenas. I’m willing to bet that DS-disabled arenas would be more popular than default.

Well, when you put it that way… Yeah that’s all pretty true. I like feeling different in this game when I die, but I’m questioning if its worth it just for flavor.

Sagat.3285:

Drennon.7190:

Almost forgot
Engineer: “Josh, can I spit it out this time?”

Bruh…

I wish I had this guy’s guts. :P

Well, while the underlining option is to not use them or transmute them, I will say I dislike how MOST of the land legendaries are too goofy. It’s a bit annoying honestly when you expect them to be awesome. That said, they’re adding new legendaries to the game so might just wanna ride out the storm.

Even our serious ones like Eternity give me a headache. I don’t get why people love them so much, they make your combat look like a mess lol.

I hope they make thieves useless. Can teleport around, has too many easy no-brain evade frames. Too much burst and blind. I don’t really want to learn to fight them, I hope they just make them useless. Auto attacks proccing two dps sigils causing brainless burst? How can anyone think this is even okay?
/s

Real point being. There’s so much passive stuff people don’t realize is passive, and instant abilities that in reality don’t take a lot of thinking to actually do. I’m not saying thief is particularly easy, but a lot of their basic mechanics are and are just as ‘cheesy’ if you really consider how much they get that is 100% instant and procs of high damage without much consideration.

Geikamir.6329:

ronpierce.2760:

Geikamir.6329:

ronpierce.2760:

Geikamir.6329:

Turrets are actually surprisingly hard to destroy even when the engie isn’t there. It really makes no sense. And when the engie is there, it’s very hard to do anything about him. I understand that the automatic response is going to be L2P, but really. If someone was to objectively make a list (no one here for sure) about what builds beat other builds, things that turret engies are good against and what they are bad against would likely be the most skewed list.

Turret engies are actually bad against a LOT of builds because how much their immobility can be exploited. They’re just good at holding a point, especially if the point has a decent amount of LOS and high ledges to place turrets.

The entire purpose of Conquest is holding points. So they happen to be very good at the most important thing.

Yes but that’s not really what you said. But also, that still holds true. In many cases they have a lot of counters. They just so happen to do well against A few standard melee roamers, especially things like thieves who are supposed to be able to kill people and decap. Seems like a good check if you ask me. Because thinks like mesmers, Rangers, hambow, some medi guards and the like actually do quite well against them. They’re not OP, they have huge downfalls and little flexibility.

More times than not what people are really upset about is the ease of play. People get enraged when an AI unit kills them. I think that’s the bigger issue. They have plenty of weaknesses and downfalls and work just like any other rock paper scissor. Scissor is complaining about rock being OP and everyone is complaining that a certain rock is too easy to throw.

Opening up myself to the L2P backlash, but…

So I play a lot of different professions and playstyles. Jumping between is what makes me stay interested. I’ve played with and vs. every current meta build that I know of (and even more janky builds). The only ones that genuinely seem too strong in comparison (as far as ease to counter or even having a hard counter) are Turret Engie far in first, but followed by Shatter Mesmer. With Mesmer it’s easy to spot it’s counter, spamable AoE and condition cleanse (Guardian with a staff is a great example). Turret Engie is a lot harder to counter. The only really consistent argument is to kite or out range him. Unfortunately when you are doing that (which isn’t even that easy to begin with) you aren’t gaining points while he is. And they are very hard to kill even then.

Even bad Engies can only be like, a level 7 of 10, because the turrets are the problem.

Here’s the thing I think people tend to forget. Turrets are bruisers I’d say similarly to how Hambow is. they do decent (Not high, the actual math in their damage is not as high as people will lead you to believe) but they’re also decently resilient with a major weakness to ranged attacks and conditions. MANY times fighting these builds, you can’t expect to just decap or take the cap without them dying. It works similarly to say a guardian standing on middle or home, you’re not getting points and they are while they’re alive, so use that knowledge as an advantage. Relax and just know you’re not taking it while he’s alive anyways so give yourself that freedom to kill him as best you can at ranged. Rangers do this best, but many builds can do it. Once he’s dead then take the cap. Or 1v2 him, which is a common strategy to take far, and he’ll surely die faster than many other bruiser/bunker builds because they really don’t have many defensive maneuvers. Their main defenses are healing turret overcharge/blast, protection and CC. Their CC at range is abyssmal, this is the main reason melee without stability has a harder time with them. Thumper can be problematic for squishy melee like thieves. 2-3 chained CCs and they’re basically dead, its a simple counter though.

Like I said. Even “L2P” issues aside, most people get miffed about the passiveness of damage and AI in general, as well as ease of play more than them being particularly “OP”. That’s why most conversations skip “nerf turrets” to “remove turrets from PVP entirely”. Is sort of a shame though because builds and characters exist many games and aren’t an issue. This is the first game I’ve seen the community have such a huge problem with AI.

Rennoko.5731:

I just don’t like how all the siphon scaling is to weak and that the minion siphoning doesn’t scale at all. Not sure if that is a bug or what, perhaps it has been fixed since the last time I tested it after the siphon lol buff patch.

Minion siphoning does scale, damage with power and healing with healing power, its just very small because they can add up quickly.

It hasn’t been 5 years yet. Comeback in 2017 when the last 10 people playing hit dragon.

Sigmoid.7082:

We will have ways to heal in shroud and you dont spend 100% of your time in it. I dont see a problem with how it will be once they change it.

Your suggestion totally guts ANY build which relies on the shroud mechanic for any long length of time and it would ruin the concept of the reaper. Its clearly mean to stay in its shrouded state. Look at all the life force gain it has even when in RS. Its auto and chilling force for a few.

It would not ruin those things as degeneration and gain are both percentage based. That means outside of getting hit, nothing would change. And no, a Necromancer being attacked is NOT supposed to “stay in shroud” because that would be called immortality…

But beyond that, imagine, say you build to be tanky with high Shroud uptime. Now place those mechanics in any other similar game that has had a trinity system from conception, such as WoW. A tank (or even a dps) that has a defense that makes them absorb damage for a bit, but a healer trying to save them blows their cooldown a to secure a clutch save comes to realize they wasted cool downs and resources on someone who just negated every bit of support and will now still die soon.

That would never be accepted and is a completely terrible design. Healing for a few hundred hp from leeches here and there or from blighters boon is nothing compared to the AOE 4-6k burst of healing fairly frequently that you risk negating from upcoming actual healing builds, more healing focused than the support we have today. (Similar to a shout warrior, only much more outgoing healing)

It’s not okay.

This brings up a point I meant to mention… Soul Comprehension needs to be replaced by something that isn’t terrible. o.O

Unfortunately, Death magic doesn’t have access to a WHOLE lot of retal baseline, that seems like something more geared toward Spite.

But something in place of SC would be very +1.

This is more along the lines of why I never suggested chill deal damage, but rather came up with the concept of the “Brainfreeze” trait that causes torment (or confusion) when you apply chill. It just functions better and gives you some condition coverage. But alas, Brainfreeze has been forgotten and now we have a Terror clone with questionable mechanics.

Just because it applies to both sides doesn’t make it bad. That’s like saying OP classes can exist because both sides can exploit them. Such a goofy argument. If a team is good enough to beat 1v2 or 2v3 or even 2v4 strength in numbers should not say “well duh, they haz more so they should win”. No. That’s COMPLETELY and purposefully throwing skill out of the equation. If 2 people are tearing down the walls because the enemy isn’t playing well enough or don’t have a good synergy or communication they should not have even MORE crutch on top of outnumbering their enemy. I don’t know why people keep thinking this idea of “the game keeps going after you die, its a skillful and indepth play scenario”, it’s not. They balance damage around people dying, which means more time is spent dying and less time fighting with your actual skills than it should be to compensate for this goofy kitten mechanic.

To those saying downed state is in replace of healers, that is incorrect. Everyone has self heals and evades in replace of healers. It patches that role nicely. And if downed state was out of the game they’d take measures to increase the games ttk in both pvp and pve. Mobs would hit for less so you’d be able to sustain yourself with your heals better, while the risks would be in the mechanics, not 10k auto swings and instant death abilities. In pvp self heals already work just fine in replace of healers. Self heal + anytype of support build keeps people alive. Healers would put it over the top and no one would ever die. Downed state is NOT in replace of healers, it’s just their “interesting” mechanic that isn’t so interesting and causes Very bad drawbacks across the ENTIRE game.

yolo swaggins.2570:

ronpierce.2760:

yolo swaggins.2570:

ResJudicator.7916:

OP’s posts are kind of ridiculous. They’re always a long-winded rant attacking anyone who suggests balance changes that impact his playstyle. Instead of writing up a multi-page tantrum, you could actually try responding to the points in a logical manner?

I’d do the same for you here, except you haven’t actually made any points except to disingenuously claim (per usual) that everyone who disagrees with you is a scrub.

That would be nice if they actually responded to logic. Same thing if they really were suggesting balance changes. Unfortunately, the people I am addressing do neither and they will remain bad players so long as they want arenanet to give them free kills. While discussion about the contents of my letter is fine that little fact is not up for debate just like all the thief-breaking nerfs those players want.

I offered ideas for a shadow arts remake and everyone ignored it and went back to calling each other bad, so… :/

What do you expect after years of toxicity from the community? I am sure everyone else would be as jaded as them if they were in their shoes.

Two way road. Thieves may get sick of hearing it, and I believe that, but people complaining get sick of dealing with a play type that they find toxic. I think if you sit down and think about it; we’re all very much alike and being incredibly selfish and both sides say a lot that is actually true, but neither side is willing to work at a constructive conclusion because they butt heads so much.

Yeah, MM is a noob killer. Don’t get too comfortable just because you wrecked some baddies with it. High end gameplay is a VERY VERY different story.

Ventari is really bad compared to Druid… I hate to say it. Herald makes up for it a TINY bit, but Ventari is just bad… the energy consumption, the general lack of impactful healing and difficult to use, its just not worth it…

Can someone direct me to the “excitement”?

Ristillath.6745:

ronpierce.2760:

This is the drama you were talking about in that conference? I like it.

popcorns up

Exactly the thing I thought first too.

seineith.7048:

http://i.imgur.com/pauHQuZ.gif

Everyone’s so focused on getting popcorn that there’s going to be nothing to watch.

If you ask me annoying =/= op, and low skill floor isn’t a reason to hurt build diversity. Everyone is going to have some build they hate and if everyone got their way we’d all be fighting with sticks. And eventually those would get nerfed too. Honestly, its a real problem when a community complain about lack of diversity then attacks every build they can, even if they know they’re already not a highly competitive build, they just “don’t like it” or its “too easy”. Just my two cents… Its a bit pathetic.

~ Don’t play turret engy.