Guild Wars 2

It’s interesting that most of those defending retaliation fall into some distinct categories- namely those that solo (so they don’t see the problem), and those that play thief or guardian.

The solution is simple: as the receiver of the damage, you can only receive one tick of retaliation per second. That still means one guardian can be doing retaliation damage on 20 targets a second without raising a finger whilst taking no damage themselves..which seems to be the argument guardians use to justify telling people not to use aoe’s against multiple targets- don’t use your aoe’s, they cause so much damage, and yet what exactly does your no brainer skill do?

Sounds like guardians want to have their cake and eat it at the moment.

All it needs is a cap for the amount per second any player can receive from it – at the moment it is potentially one of the most powerful skills in the game and you don’t even have to be near the other players for them to be damaged by you.

Gab Superstar.4059:

Terrahero.9358:

EFWinters.5421:

Terrahero.9358:

EFWinters.5421:

So…

• You know using Barrage will basically kill you if you fire it into a zerg.
• You still use Barrage, and promptly dies.

Sorry but I think this is working exactly as intended. Bad players die good players prevail.

Because facerubbing a gate, instagibbing people that AoE you due to Retal is the pinacle of skill. Amiright?

I never claimed it was the pinnacle of skill. But it sure as hell shows a lot more skill than AoE’ing that zerg even though you have died because of it thousands of times already.

Wait. You actually think that a zerg just facerubbing against a gate, semi-akitten or just completely afk, is more skillfull then throwing AoE?

Stacking Retaliation takes no thought whatsoever, it just happens because of how many combofinishers are going on in a zerg and how many Light-fields are just getting kitten all over the place by Guardians.

It litteraly takes no choice, sacrifice, or even a single sentient moment to do. Its a side-effect, an afterthought, to what you’re doing anyway. Its a great deal more difficult to NOT stack retal in a zerg.

You are just completely missing the point aren’t you?

• You know that pressing button A will result in an electric shock.
• You have the option of pressing or not pressing button A.
• You press button A. And again. And again. And again.

Does this seem reasonable to you?

In a game where i need to use button A to defeat my enemy.
The people i am attacking dont have to do anything for me to get a shock. So my choices are split between

1) Dont do anything, at all.
2) Kill myself.

Either way, i am not contributing to the fight because of a no-brain boon. So NO its not reasonable at all.

It’s kind of funny how people don’t seem to understand how broken retaliation is right now in wvw (in the maps where it hasn’ t been nerfed yet)

Simply put, if you haven’t noticed what a ridiculous amount of damage retal does, it’s because you’re not really contributing to the fight.

You’re probably doing l33t single target dps against that one guy in the 40 vs 40 fight. Then yeah, you won’t notice retal.

How could someone wants a passive 100% uptime buff that punishes people dealing damage while doing NOTHING in return? I know some people like running 30 guards/wars but guys, is that any fun?

Andy.9137:

lunyboy.8672:

Andy.9137:

lunyboy.8672:

Christos de Soufre.3802:

…I don’t know how many ticks Barrage hits for, but if you’re running any amount of Vitality, it shouldn’t be enough to kill you. Especially if you’ve got Regen and/or Protection up. And again, use your heal. If you’re actually dying to your own Barrage, then it’s because you’re standing in enemy AoE/in the way of their charge as well. Not just because of Retal.

Edit: As for the “it’s the same deal as Confusion pre-nerf” argument, Retaliation can’t be stacked and epidemic’d and it can’t cause several thousand damage per action whether single-target or AoE.

Wrong, wrong and wrong.

Protection doesn’t mitigate any type of damage except DIRECT damage.

Retaliation is duration stacked, up to a possible minute by blast finishing and/or leap finishing light combo fields. In other words, Guardian + Thief (SB) = infinite retaliation. Good thing there aren’t that many Thieves or Guardians in WvW…

Stacking a whole minute is ridiculous, the duration can only be stacked 5 times. I just tested it with a thief and with 5 blasts we got 10 seconds of retaliation. Maybe with enough boon duration we could get a few seconds more.

Can it be reapplied every 10 seconds? Because if there are only 5 stacks, and leap finishers grant 5 seconds per, then that is 25 seconds at a time…

So, closer to half a minute at a time, and then reapplied every 5 seconds as the effects of each application wear off. I stand corrected, it is only infinite retaliation, not infinity x 2.

Leap finishers grant retaliation to ONE person….

Yes, as someone with a leap finisher, I know this…

Lets just be completely clear about this:

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Retaliation

all available sources of retaliation, notice the big showing for guards, mesmers and necros; it is easy to see where a few guards in a 15-20 person zerg could keep retaliation up pretty easily.

Save yourselves, Stand your ground, and Symbol or Wrath on rotations should do nicely when you aren’t blast finishing light fields.

Hey, I get it. It’s a big source of damage for you, and makes you even more OP and unkillable in a big glob o’ invaders, but it is disproportionately powerful and fundamentally destructive to a few of the lower tier professions… I am not talking about just button mashers. How am I supposed to do any damage to a zerg, when all of my anti-zerg skills are more likely to kill me before I down anyone in the group at all?

Especially when there is perpetual retaliation? I mean, if it were me facing a bunch of Warriors, no worries. They don’t have the access to it that some others, and they don’t share any of it that I know of.

So while you are busy trying to poke holes in my argument, you aren’t dealing with the fact that it is a bit over powered. Confusion I was fine with, I have condition removal, and I know how to wait out a few seconds of confusion if it is unavailable.

lollasaurus.1457:

Your using longbow, that’s your problem right there.

So it is one of em broken which one long bow or retaliation.

Because….? Badges of Honor are the standard WvW base reward.

Note: “Because I felt like it” and “Because I said so” are not acceptable reasons.

Blaine Tog.8304:

Kravick.4906:

I’m still predicting that a majority of their focus will be on the more populated classes.

Speaking of which, have you found the objective data to support that opinion yet?

find the original bug thread, read it

find the new bug thread, read it

now read the patch notes since release

fully objective proof

BadJas.5178:

Are all of you really this disappointed in the game? Is it all that bad? I really like playing Guild Wars 2, and I enjoy the game tremendously. So, when I see a thread called ‘The “Thank You Devs” thread’, and I feel like I want to post on the thread, I write a ‘Thank You’.
And then I see a whole bunch of players airing criticism in the same thread. Are all these players really this disappointed with the game? So disappointed they can’t utter a simple “Thanks”? And if they really, deep down, are THAT sad about it, why are they playing?
Logically, if you can’t find some reason to be thankful for what the developers of the game you are actively playing do every day, you should stop playing. Just quit the game, find one that makes you happy to play.
Because playing Guild Wars 2 makes me happy. Doesn’t it make you happy? Stop playing. Does it? Say thank you, or don’t. Just don’t post criticism instead. It’s weird. Post criticism in other threads. Because that’s what most other threads are for.

Love the game, enjoy the class.

I do not like the way the devs have been operating since launch. I don’t like their inconsistent comms (half the stuff we find out about is in informal chats in SotG ffs), I don’t like the rate at which they’re addressing bugs and I think their understanding of balancing is terribad.

I think the thing which really annoyed me most was weapon switch in DS. One day it was a recommended tactic and part of necro balance, then it bugs out and ANet decide it’s better like that.

Inconsistency. ANet bleat on about “not promising anything in case we can’t deliver it”, but the reality is they are still inconsistent in delivering required change.

Fix the broken kitten, talk to us, explain your design choices and get a dialogue going.

Ok ok no need to flash all the lights I know, but I liked the small encounters we had. I was on my engineer, and for some reason I couldn’t resist targeting him and trying all sort of CC and conditions.

It turned out quite well for him at the end, winning most of our “duels”. He even juked 3 of us with Spectral walk (Noobs ) I’m even happier that this class is getting a look at, and that Chaplan is testing builds with it!

I’ve grab a couple of small footages that I will try to upload to youtube to show you how he owned me hehe. (Still lack experience as an engi in pvp, I’ll get you next time, just you wait!)

Just wanted to share my… joy, I guess, maybe that next patch will really make me main a necro again! *Crosses fingers until they bend weird ways!

just reroll another profession and fight a (good) mesmer , you will see the world through different eyes … belive me, its worth it !

I was really expecting to open this thread and see “Mesmers are fine”, instead I started reading about how someone thinks they aren’t fine. That’s when I laughed and stopped reading.

We’re a very passionate bunch when it comes to our favorite profession, the necromancer. Though born from a sincere desire to see improvements made to the class and the game as a whole, at times our constructive criticisms can come across as more “criticism” and less “constructive”.

This isn’t an apologist thread, however; we’re far from it being all puppy dogs and rainbows where necromancers are concerned. There are bugs still left to fix, traits to be ironed out, and an overarching vision for the necromancer that has yet to be fully realized. That said, devs are human, too. It helps to hear a “thank you” or “good job” from time-to-time to balance the angry rants (legitimate though they may be).

So let’s use this thread to show our appreciation to the devs for the things for which we’re thankful. I fully realize this thread is ripe for derailment, hijacking, and trolling. For those who wish to remain true to the spirit in which it’s created, I would ask that we simply stay on topic and not allow ourselves to be distracted. A short but genuine word of thanks to the devs for whatever it is you’re grateful for (bug fix, new feature, trait improvement, etc.) and leave it at that. If it could be stickied, all the better.

To open with, I’d like to thank the devs for being more responsive and communicative this past week. It is heartening to see a red post from a dev in the necromancer thread.

They should just make this a combination of burst recharge rate and +% adrenaline per strike. So at 30 points, you’d get 1.3 strikes per hit instead of 1 strike per hit and your cooldown would be 7 seconds. This would be useful for all bursts (including condition damage ones), and would specifically consider the class mechanic better.

I would gladly learn to play against something that requires skill.
Regards.

(continued)

If life siphoning remains flat but is simply buffed a bit, this doesn’t help the situation. In a flat system, the amount of extra armor-ignoring damage life siphoning does will hit a point beyond which it would be considered OP before the extra amount of healing would reach the balance point to give us the sustain we need. This is because in a flat system that doesn’t scale with any stat, a life siphon build can continue to maximize power, precision, and crit damage in conjunction with the increased damage from the life siphons. This would quickly reach a cut-off point beyond which the devs would say, “No more!” because it would make a necro’s damage output OP (within the context of what the devs consider to be reasonable DPS for a necro); while still leaving us with lackluster life siphoning.

Conversely, by making life siphoning scale with a stat (preferably healing power), then a necro is forced to make cost : benefit choices. Do I maximize power, precision, and/or crit damage for raw DPS or do I maximize healing power to gain greater sustain through life siphoning?

The scaling system is even self-balancing. A necro maximizing healing power still retains some DPS because of life siphoning’s armor-ignoring damage. A healing power necro won’t have the DPS of a power necro, but they won’t sacrifice all of their DPS, either. A power necro will have better raw damage output compared to a healing power necro, but won’t have the sustain. They won’t be able to stay in the fight as long as a healing necro, which then balances their total damage output over the entire course of a fight.

By scaling life siphoning, it allows players the freedom to choose from a greater variety of play styles and builds; it balances DPS against healing through mutually exclusive accessory, armor, and weapon stat combinations; it fits thematically with the necro (“How much am I willing to sacrifice to get what I want?”); and it gives necros a more viable bunker/sustain build (especially in light of how few escape options we have, we need to tip the scales a bit in favor of even greater sustain as compared to other professions).

If we’re meant to stay in a fight and not run away, then give us the tools to stay in the fight.

I do agree with the arguments that caution must be exercised when scaling life siphoning. Since it deals additional damage, ignores armor, and heals all at the same time, it’s a mechanic that can easily become OP if even slightly out-of-balance.

All the same, I’m still a pro-scaling proponent. The current amount of life siphoning is mediocre at best and comes at the cost of significant investment into the Blood Magic line as well as the accessories, armor, and weapons needed to support a precision build. All of this to achieve a static amount of life siphoning which hardly qualifies as a viable form of sustain. The cost is appropriate; I take no issue with life siphoning coming at a considerable expense. However, the reward is not commensurate to the cost.

Where OmegaProject states Vampiric is what is holding life siphoning back:

OmegaProject.9831:

Thinking about it a little more, perhaps the culprit that’s holding back Life Siphoning is, ironically, the trait that allows it: Vampirism. As long as this trait exists, “scaled Siphoning” is a very difficult balancing topic since Vampirism will Siphon with every hit, regardless of build. It’s too universal and all-encompassing to allow for too many buffs, which in turn forces the siphoning aspect to be held back. Removal of this trait would allow for buffs to the remaining Siphon traits (including the allowance of “scaled Siphoning”).

I have to respectfully disagree. Vampiric balances life siphoning by forcing an opportunity cost onto the necro using it. To life siphon effectively, a necro has to hit something and they have to hit it lots and lots of times; no sitting in the backline kiting away with a hit here and a hit there. This puts the necro in harms way, forcing them to engage in combat if they wish to benefit from life siphoning. Though at first this may appear counter-intuitive (risking damage just so a necro can heal up that damage), it actually isn’t when dealing with a necro.

As I see it, a blood necro’s power comes from the interplay of violence between two or more opponents. If there is no conflict, the situation is static; there’s no energy transfer. Once the battle is joined, however, now there’s a conduit established between the two parties. That exchange of energy is what the blood necro is tapping into in order to life siphon. The Vampiric trait is what makes this possible while maintaining a balance. A necro wants to life siphon? Then that necro needs to put themself into a situation (read: combat) which will open the door to that energy exchange.

Furthermore, because of this limitation imposed by Vampiric coupled with the low amount of life siphoning per hit, blood necros do not currently walk around automatically draining health from everything they meet. As Dadnir clearly states:

Dadnir.5038:

Currently to make a siphon build work you need to use multiples skill at the same time. I mean, you don’t need to hit hard but you need a lot of little hit (that crit). The fact is that’s something that we can achieve but for brief moment.

There are small windows of opportunity within the course of a fight where a blood necro is life siphoning just enough to keep up with the damage they’re receiving. This is usually in the form of dropping multiple wells, using the warhorn’s Locust Swarm, and dagger #2. Once those sources of multiple hits have reached the end of their durations, a blood necro’s life siphoning drops to almost nothing as they fall back to auto-attack. This can be mitigated with sigils and consumables, but blood necros are not anywhere near being OP at the moment.

Necros – and blood necros in particular – should be hard to kill. I would go so far as to state they should be the hardest to kill. It’s what we do; we cheat death. I can accept competing with guardians for the title of “Hardest to Kill”, but when engineers and elementalists (elementalists? seriously?!?!) can out-bunker a blood necro, something is wrong.

Couple Vampiric’s limitation that necros must engage in frenzied combat to effectively access life siphoning with our poor CC mitigation, and this forces a necro – once joined in battle – to see it through to the bitter end. This is wholly appropriate and balanced. What is imbalanced is the mechanic that is ostensibly meant to give us the sustain for that fight; life siphoning. It falls short.

Of course siphoning should be scaled with healing power. This should be for life transfer and all siphons. Ofcourse balanced and sorted but no scaling? Come on…

The wiki just copies the tooltip verbatim, and the tooltip is misleading. As someone who uses this trait I can confirm that as long as you’re below 90% health, this trait will trigger every 30 seconds when you get hit.

To my knowledge, all traits that reference health levels behave like this.

Edit: I honestly prefer using Regeneration instead of an additional buff because I feel like adding new buffs and debuffs instead of using existing boons / conditions will just lead to too many icons and prevent clear play / counterplay. As it is Soothing Mist still irks me a bit.

A baseball bat with a laser scope. Sounds about as fitting as “great” axe.

Necromancers are so much more than minions.

You have no idea what you are talking about.

Invictus.1503:

I see a lot of good suggestions (and some that make me cringe). What do you think are the chances of DS5 skill being brought in on the 5/28 update?

zero

Gorni.1764:

Dear Anet,
I can totally accept most of the changes in the last patch, for example the nerf of the healing signet. They make sense in a way, but what I still can’t understand is the change of RTL. A 40s CD on a skill that is used for movement only makes this spell not only weak but nearly useless. Even travelling with fire attunement and using dagger-3 only might be faster now, making RTL redundant.
The mentioned “problem” of “roaming tanks” in tPvP is not really a reason to make such a change. Even before the nerf an Ele could use RTL only once to travel between the points, so why nerf the CD?
The same goes for WvW. An Ele can still use RTL to easily escape combat and run away, but the overall travel-speed has been extremely nerfed – what reason for? Other classes can travel at that speed too or even faster.
I don’t even want to mention PvE where I least understand these changes.

By continously nerfing RTL you’re making this weapon-set less fun with each patch. I still can remember the days when RTL could be used to bypass canyons for example … it was unique to Eles and very much fun. You’re just taking away these mechanics and the fun we can have with them for no reason.

So Anet, what’s the exact reason for the RTL-Nerf? And even if you stick to those changes could you at least fix the problem with stealthing/dodging/blocking/outranging enemies? Regardless of having a target when casting the spell (in sPvP) it will have a 40s CD 80% of the time.

Whelp, for being ‘useless’, it sure helping your mobility a lot still, innit? Elementalist is still in the top tier of mobility rating among all the professions.

The reason for the change was primarily PvP/WvW. Too much abuse to.. well, never die, ever. You get the good cooldown rate when you use it as a gap closer – you get punished when you use it to zap to a node or cheat death.

It was totally warranted, whether or not it makes you sad that your favourite weapon was nerfed.

Oldbugga.7029:

Personal opinion.

As an ex-systems analyst/auditor (among many other things) I have learned that you should not try to design the basis of any system around outlier low probability results.Outliers need to be accepted as low frequency and seen as such and the circumstances that caused them should be addressed specifically…not only through restricting the activity itself (eg is 2 CBs and 2 epidemics produce an outlier you potentially place a DR on them WHEN USED CLOSELY TOGETHER….NOT generally or in different circumstances). It is almost impossible to incorporate system balance to equitably deal with those improbable outliers and the run-of-the mill results that will overwhelmingly be more likely outcomes.

In many of the arguments here, and as seen by the hesitancy by the devs to even contemplate the occasional outliers in out abilities, reasonable suggestions for the bulk of the potential gameplay suggestions are being too readily dismissed by the slight probability that once in a while the planets will line up and some exceptional outcome is possible…occasionally and NOT consistantly.

I think for balancing and skills development the devs should not be focussing just on the outlier results as reasons to limit abilities but should also consider the likelihood of such aberrations and address that as the balancing factor.

Also, Necro players are not some unique breed of game player. I don’t think “blaming the players” for adopting the “cookie cutter” builds because they work is helping anyone’s cause. Other professions are doing exactly the same and it is the comparitive results that are causing players to be gun shy in trying newer builds which usually have proven to be less effective. I trust more the fact that the competively focussed players will chose the most effective builds rather than hypothesizing that the reason for that choice is that they are lazy or stubborn or reluctant to change. I don’t think the players are at fault for expressing their disatisfaction at the poorer necro performance when adopting the same build strategies as any other profession and achieving inferior results.

Posts like these shouldn’t be ignored.

Making a tier list based on classes is plain stupid without considering builds. The strength of a class changes immensely depending on what type of build it is running. For example, ele is only top tier due to 0-10-0-30-30 w/ toughness amulet, mistform + variations of it.

A proper tier list would be something like this (my opinion):

Tier 1 +/- variations:

0-10-0-30-30 d/d, s/d Ele
0-30-30-5-5 trap Ranger
Any guardian that isn’t running something like glass cannon condition dmg
20-20-0-0-30 Shatter mesmer or phantasm mesmer w/ portal, illu of life, time warp

Tier 2 +/- variations:

Every other mesmer (i.e bunker)
0-10-0-30-30 staff ele
25-30-0-0-15 Burst Thief
30-30-10-0-0 Staff+S/d well or condition Necro w/ res signet
30-10-0-30-0 HGH Engi / Bomb Kit Engi

Tier 3 +/- variations:

Bunker Ranger or SB ranger w/ 2 signets + stunbreak
20-30-0-0-20 100b Warrior
30-30-10-0-0 Staff+s/d well or condition necro w/o res signet
0-30-20-0-20 terror necro
100nades Engi / bunker engi
Attrition thief

Tier 4:
Everything else

I think i’ve gotten most of what I usually see

GuardianOMS.8067:

Make it karma based. Moving along!

We’re not allowed to get anything useful out of our Karma. Didn’t you get the memo?