Guild Wars 2

Hi Vague, I don’t think zapv was condescending to you at all. Your post has alarmed, maybe even offended necros due to some of the false claims that you’ve made, i.e.:
“I’m surprised necros seem to be getting a free pass when it comes to balancing.”

Our class has gotten very little buffs and huge nerfs that was kickstarted by the dhumfire nerf of 2013. It went downhill from then on. The June 23 patch gave us some sustain, but that’s really it. One of our elites’ duration got cut down in half, from 30s to 20s to 15s with no CD reduction.

And you’ve completely ignored today’s nerf to Unholy Martyr and Vampire signet

Pretty sure I was in that game. My Necro is Ombei, and I was the player with 200ish points at the end (pretty good match for me).

Were you the thief Soy Latte? You were pretty upset in chat, iirc (assuming that was you).

Three things. Awkward team comps win ALL the time in pickup games.

Secondly…that thief on your team (whether it was you or not) was the squishiest player I have ever attacked. I won’t say thieves are doing super great now, because that doesn’t seem to be the case, but an issue with the losing team in that match was builds, coordination, and player skill.

Third, there are many builds out there which do awful things to necros. I’ve been 100-0’d in CC lock I cannot escape by eles and engis due to the lack of stability. Don’t even get me started on guardians. If they’re not blocking or totally immune, I’m blinded…and usually on fire. Some classes/builds are better/worse against particular classes/builds.

It could be thieves need a buff, but let’s not start kicking around the easiest class to shutdown in the game.

Edit: If this wasn’t the right game, ignore the match-specific points.

Necro doesn’t either, just because you don’t remotely understand the profession doesn’t mean they are OP.

I didn’t know that 1.5k damage/second is op.

Don’t stand in wells and don’t condiburst unless you’re ready to cleanse/avoid whatever they may transfer back. There, now go bag those free kills.

Also, read the patch notes, necros did get nerfed.

It was Anet’s original idea. Then they listened to the QQ.

Only ANet could fix a bug and immediately bug the exact same skill they just bug fixed, all while nerfing the absolute hell out of a previously worthless skill that had just become viable.

SchmendrickTheMagician.8247:

TeuthidPurveyor.1970:

Anyway, the one thing I don’t understand is the complaint that “tempests don’t add anything new. We already had boons/auras/pbaoe/combo fields/etc.” This is where I betray my ignorance, because I can’t think of anything elementalists don’t already do. We have melee and ranged condition and crit damage, boons, combos, aoe, healing, cleanse, etc., etc. I really don’t know what an elementalist spec could do besides let us do the same stuff in a new way.

So there’s my question: What is the base elementalist lacking? (bonus question: how could either tempest or a hypothetical elite with a different name or weapon provide it?)

What Elementalists DON’T do:

- Torment
- Confusion
- Poison
- Fear
- Taunt
- Slow
- Aegis
- Quickness
- Resistance
- Converting conditions into boons
- Converting boons into conditions
- A viable zerker burst spec with enough defensive mechanics
- A viable condition spec
- Any viable spec without water+arcane
- A viable scepter spec
- A viable spec without cantrips
- Stealth
- Reflection
- 2-way Shadowsteps
- Portals
- Copying stuff

Just off the top of my head.

There is literally SO MUCH new stuff they could have given Tempest. But they didn’t they just gave us more of what we already have. Boo!

You can scrap 50% of that list because it includes other professions main/signature gimmicks, which should NEVER be given to a different profession. Ever.

IndigoSundown.5419:

I’ve accepted the fact that ANet’s vision of Necromancers and my desires for the profession are never going to mesh. I’ll no doubt try it if I buy HoT, but I expect to dislike it based on what I’ve seen.

Pfft Anet’s vision of necromancers will never mesh with the mechanics of the game, nevermind anyone else’ desires for the class. Necro and Ranger have arguably the worst class functions in terms of gw2 combat mechanics, due entirely to ANet’s stubborn refusal to alter their design philosophy.

One particularly astute poster (sorry matey, can’t remember your name) summed up the ranger CDI, which had basically shown that ranger pet issues were due to AI problems that ANet could not change, with words to the effect of:

Rangers: “Please fix our Class Mechanic”
ANet: " We can’t".
Rangers: “Please give us a new Class Mechanic”
ANet: " We won’t".

Necro design philosophy is in exactly the same place.

i dont even play pvp, I am waiting for some normal balance not every 6 months but at least 1 balance per month… And something more like 2vs2 maps, or at least other modes,

Elxdark.9702:

wut I’m still hunting mesmers and even easier than pre-patch.

The only ones that I hate are those infinite pu stealthed s/t kittens.

Thief complaining about perma stealth? Woah, that’s trippy.

Archaon.9524:

chibbi.3706:

This would be like if warriors started with endure pain disabled until they get into combat, and then it goes on cd before you can use it.
Or the same for thief and stealth.

Necro are the only class that doesn’t have access to its ONLY defensive mechanic in the beginning of the game.

It’s extremely annoying to have a thief or mesmer pop you down and only being able to say "oh well, didndt’ have life force, couldn’t do anything ¯\(?)/¯ "

I’m pretty sure this had been said a billion times already and we’re talking to a wall, but maybe one day you’ll be able to listen to your playerbase, a man can hope.

nope there would be like if warriors started with no adrenaline…

oh wait…wars actually start with no adrenaline

ds is like war adrenaline or mesmer clones

if you are out of combat you should lose it

/thread

That’s the worst comparison i’ve ever seen. Warrior was my main since the beginning until last patch where I switch to necro.
1st, burst skills have not much to do with warrior survivability, beside for condi cleansing.
2nd, adrenaline is WAY easier to generate than life force.

If a mesmer burst you while you have no adrenaline you don’t give a flying kitten, you still pop endure pain.
If a mesmer burst you while you have no life force you straight up die.

As for wurm, 1st not everyone runs wurm, and 2nd if you use it to get (only) 10% LF it means you will most likely not have your only (crappy) escape for the first fight.

Other than that necro are pretty good I think, it could use some work but it’s overall okay.

Poor thieves? What can we do? Tell them the same they told mesmers before the patches. “It’s how it is, deal with it, l2p”

They couldn’t have their pet class outshone by a mere Necromancer, of course.

Well at least we know why they decided to give Chill of Darkness a 5 second cooldown. It would of made the Ele’s new earth warhorn skill look like something they copied from a Necro and they couldn’t have that.

Well of Darkess
Blind (3s)
Number of Targets: 5
Pulse: 1 s
Duration: 5s
Radius: 240
Combo Field: Dark
Range: 900
Unblockable

Dust Storm
Damage: 213
Vulnerabilty (10s)
Blind (2s)
Interval: 2s
Radius: 180
Range: 750

Now, when we traited Chilling Darkness (Blinding a target will also apply chill) and traited Bitter Chill (Chilling a foe inflicts vulnerability) from two separate trait lines we basically had the new Ele skill Dust Storm only we could chill the target instead of doing damage.

I’m not even going to go into Wildfire’s boon stripping abilities while being a fire field with not 1 or just 4 pulses, but 8 pulses??

Ele’s new warhorn to me is like a pocket well Necro. We’ve been reduced to warhorns.. Ele’s stole our voice litterally, shouts and all.

edit: (since someone didn’t know) Chilling Darkness had no icd when the patch first hit and was changed suddenly with no explanation to have a (5s) icd. I think this is the reason.

TheDevice.2751:

Bhawb.7408:

They didn’t make the game to be Chinese friendly, the Chinese localization includes a lot of changes. Put the tinfoil hat away.

thats what they want you to belieb……….

Are you being intentionally stupid? Minions have always looked like the way they do, this goes back to guild wars 1. The reason why minions are not skull and bone is because they are not summoning the dead but creating life from the remains of the fallen.

Except for you inability to spell correctly, your argument fails the moment you realize that guild wars 1 was not officially released in China.

Apprently only the Reapers. Because Eles are better already with the first instant wave and just get better the longer the channel lasts. Like what…

With the Ele and Mesmer changes, they very likely are stealing it from us.

Rising Dusk.2408:

I always felt that Reaper would’ve been better with stances.

I actually think “Rise!” and “Your Soul is Mine!” are awesome as they are, they just seriously needs to be instant cast. This whole cast time thing on shouts is really crippling their viability, and only really the elite deserves that treatment based on its effect.

Stances would be cool, something I’d like to see in the future for sure.

Rise! is honestly pretty bad as is from a design standpoint. Forces MM builds to do things MM builds otherwise hate to do (fight multiple targets), and in everything except some cheese condi builds using DN it is just a worse version of Bone Minions.

I do think shouts should be useful outside of big fights though. Which is why Nothing Can Save You is probably the best designed shout, as it is strong 1v1 and then in teamfights scales well without being reliant on multiple enemies.

Charblaze.6958:

To the guys like Falcon and Bhawb, why are you not posting videos, guides, whatever, to teach others to be awesome necroes like you? Really, if necromancers were on par to other classes given equal player skill we wouldn’t be pitied by pretty much every other class and majority of the PvP forum.

Are my 50+ episodes of But of Corpse not good enough for you? How about my 7,000 forum posts? I’ve contributed my fair share to the Necromancer community thanks.

Also I talk pretty much constantly about how Necromancer is sub par in literally everything. I don’t even like how we are in zerging for WvW, and I’ve been vocal that the only reason we are good there is because we have ranged AoE direct damage, a niche that someone else could easily steal from us.

Shiki.7148:

Give me a single example of when Anet listened to us please. Teamsupport?

Foot in the Grave stun breaking, Vampiric Aura, those are two more recent ones and I’m honestly too lazy to list them all but a TON of changes have been made due to forum suggestions, in fact most of the good changes are direct copypasta’d ideas of ours.

Short answer: Necromancers can’t get the good things. Those are reserved for eles and warriors.
Before the reaper was revealed, when we heard a class was gonna get a break bar I thought it would be the perfect oportunity for necros, turning their life force into a break bar (with as much filled as life force you had)
I’m all in for necros getting a break bar, they DESPERATELY NEED IT. I would be okay with it being on the elite shout, for example. Instead of granting stability like the current iteration does, it gives a break bar, with more or less CCs needed to break depending on foes struck or something. Although thinking about it a break bar isn’t much more than a glorified stability whith actually even more weaknesses cause it’s also susceptible to blinds apparently.

Oh whatever, I just hate the idea of warriors ALSO getting a breakbar when they already have insane damage, CC spam, stab spam, insane movement, and then all of the above combined into a single elite skill with a miserable CD.

kitten anet I just wanna main reaper but you just keep screwing up

Personally, as a casual PVE player, I look forward more towards reaper shouts than I do ele shout. Lets get some references:

Wash the Pain Away: Unless the ally heal is phenomenal, I won’t be running this. To heal my allies and cleanse conditions, I just swap over to water attunement and blast arcane brilliance. In situations where healing is desperately needed, I’ll probably have switched to water/arcane trait lines, in which case I can use multiple heal + cleanses just by swapping to water and dodging. It isn’t like this provides some novel utility that necros don’t have, either. Necros can already pull/convert/transfer conditions, and if you’re in Blood Magic you’re already doing a surprising amount of healing with well of blood + vampiric aura + mark of evasion. Heck, even SoV technically heals the party for about 2k each time it gets used.

Feel the Burn: Another fire field? Basically this is an AoE damage patch, so for now I’ll treat it like a third lava font. Now, the hard part about using this skill is justifying it over arcane wave. I’m pretty sure it’ll do more damage than arcane wave, but wave blasts, making it much more versatile. Granted, necromancers would tear off their own arm to get a fire field, even more so if it causes burning.. But for an ele, this is milktoast.

Eye of the Storm: A stun break with a minor speed boost. Now personally as a stun breaker I usually take arcane shield and mist form, and for very good reason: defense. My ele’s nickname is candlelight, because one blow and she’s out. If we assume that warriors, guardians, and mesmers happen to not have their AoE stunbreak, then even then I would be hesitant to run this, because a stun break is no good if I’m not alive to enjoy it.

Aftershock: This is just a movement debuff. Now granted, while eles don’t have too many cripples and immoblizes, they do have plenty of chill. So does the reaper. Necromancers are swimming in cripples and chills. Either way, this shout is immediately inferior to the next one.

Freeze: Basically it is a weaker version of chilled to the bone. Now as an ele, I’m doing either one of two things. I’m wielding a staff, so if I really wanted to stop an enemy I’d just use frozen ground. If I’m welding a dagger, I’m probably using Frozen Burst to blast fields, and thus am already regularly chilling enemies. Keep in mind: I only use frozen ground in the most extraneous situations, and that one comes free with the staff. Freeze probably isn’t worth the slot.

Rebound: I don’t think this is a shout, but I can’t find any practical way to really use this skill. Just spam it and hope it works well.

Now the Necro shouts:

Your Soul is Mine: I can see a use for this. With Consume Conditions fallen from grace, I’ve been using the other heal skills. Well of blood with blood magic, and signet of vampirism with the condi build. But, since I’ll probably be going into Spite/Soul Reaping/Reaper, This skill is an option. It has less damage on a single target than SoV, but a faster recharge and a decent LF gain. I’ll only swap out of it if conditions prove to be an issue.

Nothing Can Save you: This is one of the ones I’ll pass. In PVE being unblockable isn’t a big help, and I’ll already be stacking massive amounts of vulnerability without needing a boon to convert.

Rise!: This is the other “pass” option. Jagged horrors just aren’t that useful.

Suffer: With chilling darkness having an ICD, Suffer provides an adequate means to stack AoE vulnerability, while also doing some damage to boot. It isn’t as good of a condi cleanse as well of power, but it also has a shorter recharge and does damage. This skill might see use.

You are all Weaklings: Given how short the recharge is, that might starts to look rather appealing. This will be great for trash, especially in groups where you don’t have someone to stack might for you. Just pop this as they all gather, bash them all to death with the sword in the 6 (boosted) or so seconds that you have high might. Combined with the spite tree, this can sustain large amounts of might for a long time.

Chilled to the Bone: This is the one I look forward to the most. If the tooltip listed on the wiki is right, this is basically a 600 radius basilisk venom boosted fire grab. The damage is massive, the chill will be useful, the stun will be helpful, and the stability won’t be utterly useless either. Granted, with its long cast time it is one of those “use this at the start of a fight” elites, and this will make it hard to strategically use stability, but it will guarantee no disables upon cleanup.

So really, ele’s aren’t in a better position with their shouts than necromancers are:: a lot of redundant and repeated utility.

Bhawb.7408:

Skoigoth.9238:

Don´t get me wrong, I kinda admire your enduring optimism (no sarcasm) in the face of Anets stubbornness/cluelessness/incompetence to properly address the problems our class suffers from since launch.

Its less optimism that they will fix us, and more acceptance that what we have might be the best we’ll ever get, so I’ll try to make the best of it.

Also, ANet has listened to us a lot, especially nowadays. Just because they don’t implement everything doesn’t mean they don’t listen, they don’t have the resources to do everything we ask, or even a small amount, and then the balance team just is on Mars when it comes to understanding Necro. However pretty much every good change they’ve made recently was due to direct feedback, so they do listen, and Reaper was made in response to a lot of our issues with the base profession.

Give me a single example of when Anet listened to us please. Teamsupport? They went with pure healing/siphoning and proceed to make the Revenant the one with the best heals in the game aswell as giving eles even more, and more valuable, support. Axe? Still Trash, they didn’t even fix the animation. Condition application? Still not even 1/10th of what other classes can do. Active defenses? Nope, not a single one. Letting us start with LF at the beginning of a PVP-Match? Nada. Blast finishers ? “they don’t fit”, so nope. Minion AI/Pathing? Still in a state not even found on private servers. Ways to keep enemies from escaping us in fights? No. Response to our feedback on how terrible MoC and Plague and CC as corruptions are? Not a single word.

Sorry, but all I see is Anet ignoring blatant problems because they have 0 understanding of just how much they kittened this profession up, because not a single one of them plays it. Even the dev resposible for Necros doesn’T play Necromancer – how the hell would he even know what the kitten he is doing? They said it themselves, no matter how much they “playtest” *COUGH*plague suicide got noticed by numbers alone COUGH their stuff it is already overtaken a few minutes after launch. Yet they refuse to have a Moderator/CM for each profession forum whose job it is to skim through feedback and relay it to the devs…And don’t come with the Forumspecialist, they neither listen nor provide correct info to him/her, and change some stuff 24 hours before release without a single word.

Not going to happen (but I wish it would too). The last time a dev graced us with their presence was a fluff post about why they fixed the axe animation. If you look at their track record, serious discussion about balance, traits, utilities etc. will never be gifted to the lowly players of the (this) class. Almost three years now and all we have is the hope that the next patch won’t kitten us over any worse than the one before it did.

xitsLuisx.2480:

Brokensunday.4098:

necromancers are the masters of transfers not conditions any class can deal more condi damage than a necro

No other class has epidemic.

… which is … a condition transfer…

Bhawb.7408:

Fun fact, way back in the day But of Corpse had very tentative plans to talk with a balance dev about Necromancer on a show, since back then Chaplan (I believe is the correct name) used to watch the show (this was back with Gibbly and Tenderly), but it never happened because they wouldn’t do it unless every profession would be represented.

But yeah, it will never happen. They wouldn’t do it unless it was on their terms, and their terms would end up giving us a type of show we simply wouldn’t be happy with. Its a lose-lose situation for them, there is no way they could give us what we want, so its better to not do it.

Its not the Necromancer community’s responsibility to create a podcast for every other profession and discuss them in major detail. Its their respected communities that need to do that.

“True power does not come from within. It comes from blowing into my butt.”

Bring on the ele warhorn for Battlekok is ready.

I’ll give it a start according to my experience.
My experience is subjective to my own perception, so don’t bother flaming me for being inaccurate according to YOUR perception.

This is from a PVP point of view:

List goes from SSS Rank to F Rank

SSS Rank:
Elementalist
(D/D basically is invincible in 1 on 1 when played on decent Ele players, while they’re still extremely strong and helpful in a team fight. 0 counter because it’s jack of all trades, master of all, with great burning damage, great survivability, great mobility, and great support)

SS Rank:
Mesmer
(The current Mesmer is God of death in any +1 situation, able to quickly spike down any target in a +1 situation with stun lock, instant burst, boon removal and such. It is also good in 1 on 1 thanks to the buff in all kinds of manipulation skills, access to cleanse currently, and long lasting instant on demand stealth. An excellent team fighter, and the most needed dps class currently)

A Rank:
Warrior
(Rampage can down a group of people in 3 seconds, while the user himself is near invincible during the process. Immune to CC, near immune to direct damage, near immune to movement impairment. The 15 ICD quickness with such an easy requirement is also kinda strong. Double Endure pain is also annoying)

Guardian
(Extremely strong Burning application. Good survivability from Mediations. Good cleanse. Doesn’t sacrifice much for such a high condition dps. Lots of classic anti-burst invulnerable or block. Currently one of the saviors against Mesmer who doesn’t run too much cleanse XD.)

B Rank:
Necromancer
(Unholy Matrax makes Necro gets life force much more easily, thus making them very durable post patch. MM Necro can troll the current burning god Guardian lol. Power build does good damage)

Thief:
(Higher burst, excellent mobility, but kinda a one trick pony now. It’s not weak, just that other classes become abit too strong for thief to handle)

Engineer
(Suffers quite abit of nerf. Condition spec becomes stronger, but survivabilty gets quite a big hit. Elixir condition spec still works, but Celestial Rifle suffers alot in the current bur sty Meta)

C Rank:
Ranger
(Kinda terrible against the current Meta, while suffering numerous nerf during the process. Too much and too easy access to retaliation on many classes. Taunt is no longer useful against Mesmer, Ele. and Guardian who has long period of invulnerable and block. Was relatively weak even before the patch because of the node restriction that forces Ranger to fight in small space. No game-changing skills like Rampage. Sustain got outlasted by Ele. Burst is inferior than Mesmer, with too much counter-play)

F Rank:
Revenant
(Incomplete class is incomplete. DPS too low, Survivability is meh. Not able to handle the current overtoned Meta)

Laraley.7695:

Imo, well timing your dodges requires more skill and therefore should be promoted than relying on passive defense. I would say that 100% endurance regeneration was a bit too high, but nerfing it to 50% was too much.

I agree, the dodge mechanic is skillful mechanic, and judging when to dodge is crucial, especilly now. That’s why I’m saying that energy sigil is so good, too good. Now nearly every spec is running it. Got it on my ele and i don’t see difference from pre-patch. Nerfing vigor could be a good move, but still there’s a unnerfed weakness. Btw in wvw food gives you 40% regen, almost free perma vigor.
As for the s/d thief – it was master of evasion, now ranger have from minor 20% endurance regen (thief has 25% from vigor boost) and simmilar ammount of evades on weapon skills (and have nice vigor uptime too). Acro got passive stunbreak, passive condicleanse and passive movement impending effects reduction. When you hear acrobatics first you think are passive defences…

IMO vigor boon should have 100% endurance regen, but should be harder to get (I’m critting lols moar dodgez).

Vieux P.1238:

Or maybe you need to require some skill’s & L2P

Aha, our first mesmer player!