Guild Wars 2

Let’s not. Leagues give you an incentive to even bother in the first place. The old leaderboards sure as hell did not. Rewards ain’t got nothing to with it, they’re terrible anyway. No one does PvP for rewards.

It ain’t. Team with a higher total of personal scores per player gets the win if it ties.

As bad as power creep is, this is more of a case of power necro simply being much, much weaker than condi nec. A better solution would be to buff power nec so it can compete with condi. If condi nec is nerfed all you end up doing is putting necro at the bottom of the meta again because power nec currently adds nothing to a team in pvp that another class doesn’t already do better. The only place where I’d say you’re ok with running power nec atm is in wvw roaming because fried golden dumplings make blighters boon not completely awful.

I guess the theme is like support, cc and neutrality and stuff. I’d call it the Sealmaster or something else that denotes a dude using magical seals. It uses mace mainhand. Color scheme for the new shroud would be light grey and spectral-ish. Anyway. Pics below has skills in them.

Edit: I forgot to explain how I envisioned Seals to be working. Basically they’re like kinda like Mesmer mantras. First you use the skill to put a seal down then you get a flip skill to activate it. The seal itself will do nothing unless activated.

Mace skills
Shroud skills
Utilities

I couldn’t be bothered to make a thingy for traits so this will do.

Minor traits

Adept:
You can now equip maces and gain access to Sealmaster seals. Death Shroud is replaced with Empyrean Shroud which has more supportive skills and crowd control.

Master:
When you grant yourself Might, grant it to nearby allies as well.
Might(5s)
ICD: 1s

Grandmaster:
Incoming healing effects are more effective on you. Gain Toughness based on your current health:
Healing Effectiveness Increased: 10%
Toughness above 75% Health: 200
Toughness below 75% Health: 300
Toughness below 50% Health: 500

Traits

Adept:
1. Entering Empyreal Shroud gives nearby allies Resistance(3s)
2. Deal extra damage to disabled foes(10%).
3. Reduces recharge of Seal skills(20%)

Master:
1. Increase vitality by 150 points for nearby allies
2. Gain 1% life force per incoming healing effect while in Empyreal Shroud
3. Seals give boons upon activation.

Grandmaster:
1. Heal nearby allies when you are afflicted by a condition
2. Your Mace skills hit twice. Reduces recharge of Mace skills(20%)
3. Your Seals can be activated twice.

Ples gib gems.

I felt this season is a lot more balanced than the last one. Got quite a few losses getting to Diamond this time, about 16 losses or so. Last season I didn’t even have a dozen losses before I hit Legendary, and it was not my doing that’s for sure.

Cynz.9437:

you would be surprised how many people i killed by spamming scepter AA and occasional heal

Nah I wouldn’t. I’m pretty well aware of the fact the majority of players are of course terrible at the game. But you can’t base statements of balance on the experience of the bottom of the barrel-tier majority of players. I mean come on, most of the inter-class complaints would disappear if those same players just bothered to play more than one or two classes to learn how to counter whatever they’re having problems with.

Cynz.9437:

condis also require 1 stats and often are applied by AA

Kinda not true in the case of Reaper. If you run Curses you more or less need Wanderer’s for the condi duration and precision for Barbed Precision proccs. And the majority of your condis will still come from corrupts and transfers since no team that isn’t utterly horrible will let you sit and freely spam scepter 1 long enough for it to stack up any significant damage.

If you run Spite you’re using Carrion and you’re relying on Might to boost both your power and condi damage your to 2650 Power/1950 Condi at which point its basically a hybrid build.

What if the last tick on Shroud 5 inflicted a 1s Fear?

That way both RS and DS has 2 CCs and its more uniform.

Ramoth.9064:

Necro is highly desirable in all of salvation pass

Condi Nec is.
Topic is about Power Nec.

Flumek.9043:

Thoughts?

Nerf Ele or give Power Nec some kind of utility that boost party dps more than vamp. No flat dps increases on skills though.

Thief should stay high damage.

Transgenders make up about 0.3% of people in the world. That means there should not be more than 0.3% transgender characters in GW2 or it’s story. Over-representation is not a good thing.

You don’t pander to super small minorities when there’s a majority to please. Not if you want to make money and avoid alienating your customers anyway.

Inclusivity is nice and all, but it should never come at the expense of more important things like focusing on an actual story and not irrelevant tripe like gender identity issues and cringe-worthy romance sub-plots . I’ll accept a final Logan x Rytlock romance because they’re the only characters with any noticeable chemistry at all in the entirety of GW2, but that’s it.

Flumek.9043:

2mes 2rev 1healbot …or a druid swap

beliv in the futur of necor
power nec top meta 2016
4 sure

Anchoku.8142:

shouts feel, to me, like they were designed for PvE?

u wot lad?

Evan Lesh.3295:

If players have inaccurate league mmr, then we’d copy a bad value. I personally prefer to have a single rating because the more ratings we have, the less accurate they all become because of split playtime. Ideally players should have relatively the same mmr on and off-season, but that is dependent on the styles of matchmaking.

Then by all means stick with a single rating if that is easier. Since that would give you more time to to deal with other stuff better.

Evan Lesh.3295:

This —>||<-- close to having this thread closed for going off topic.

The core desire behind wanting ranked back sounds like expected player behavior is different in the two arenas. If we enabled ranked in the off-season, would players expect to have a separate mmr from league seasons, or the same?

The same I guess. Good players want to fight other good players. It’s not fun for anyone when they have to fight players far below their own level nor is it fun for the inexperienced and less adequate players to fight people they have little to no chance against. Neither get a chance to learn or practice properly when the match-ups are volatile.

Zerthi.5493:

1. Throw a dark Spear what immobilize target for 2sec. Then in this time we can use #2 again and teleport.

Like the DH F1 skill?

I miss Death Shroud.

What do you lads think can be done to bring DS in line with RS?

Personally I think just making DS 2 targeted would go a long way toward improving it. Wouldn’t hurt to have Life Blast be more like Plague Blast either.

Nekres.1038:

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Spiteful_Talisman
- This trait is in the first three slots of Spite alongside Spiteful renewal and Bitter Chill.
Basically, you do 5% more damage to enemies without boons, which in PvP is almost never the case and when it is, the damage increase is so low that its just not worth picking it at all.

Spiteful Talisman is ok. Reduces cooldown on Chill of Death for power builds and does more for dps in PvE than the other two options, which are useless there since vuln is always maxed and conditions are rarely ever a problem. Renewal is by far the worst option. Both Bitter Chill and Talisman have their place.

OanSur.4590:

We need HoT specific gear (viper) to have 1- just ONE build viable for anything group related

Disregarding the fact that getting ascended Vipers is really easy to get since all you need is the insignias and inscriptions for the MF, as much as I think Power Nec needs to be buffed I wouldn’t call it unviable. It’s just not optimal. My group was among the first dozen or so to clear the first raid back when it came and I was on Power Nec for that. That’s something at least.

OanSur.4590:

Now when deathly chill was changed our class will fall in ranks even more

Oh come now. Deathly Chill nerf affected PvP because you lost the instant and really reliable damage from it. It was more or less always ticking for a decent amount despite players dodging around and kiting. This ain’t an issue in PvE. At worst in an optimal setting you lost about 800~ dps, you lose a lot more than that just by screwing up your rotation.

Ithilwen.1529:

I notice that Mesmers are NOT overwhelming the queue, unlike Hambow warrior for example.

Mesmers and Revs were by far the most common classes I ran into at Legend and the prestige ranks after. There were a good amount of times when there were 5-6+ Mesmers in a match at the start before rerolls started.

I’m the last person to want power creep, but I feel like the active skill on minions need to be updated to do something more than what they do today, preferably something utility like.

I also feel like Wells damage component is lacking since HoT but just adding more damage doesn’t feel like it would be a good idea either. I just don’t know man.

Mitch.4781:

Are these figures using all the buffs and boons the goldem test provides or did you just do this vanilla?

All of them on both. Goal was to see how each performed under optimal circumstances.

Einlanzer.1627:

Aktium.9506:

Those are terrible. What we need are the following:

Cestus for Necro/Thief/Warrior
Whip for Mesmer/Ranger/Rev
Chakram for Ele/Engi/Guard

I like how 2 of your 3 suggestions were the same as mine. And there were 4 I suggested that you didn’t. But somehow, mine are terrible.

Trolololol.

Well yes, the suggestions were awful until I suggested them. Besides, you only suggested whip.

Well tbh, I never use the lfg unless there is no other option.

Those are terrible. What we need are the following:

Cestus for Necro/Thief/Warrior
Whip for Mesmer/Ranger/Rev
Chakram for Ele/Engi/Guard

Flumek.9043:

youre doing 30k in the raid testing dummy with everything….youre doing i think 25k in a real raid…..and youre doing 15-20k in a 5man group…..a power necro i think nemesis had 14k but it has aoe capabilties

im saying dont mix 5man power necro with ideal testing zone planets allign 10man buffs

I run power for traditional 5 man content because its pretty chill to play but we need to keep in mind that you could run pretty much anything there and still faceroll it.

And even with optimal buffs on both, power is really far behind condi. And keep in mind you can’t get those sweet epi pings in the dps test area so the Necro dps in pic is lower than it should be.

Power Nec definitely needs some kind of buff both for PvE and PvP.

Man who the hell needs 500+ matches to reach leggy? Took me a little under a week of 1-2h a day of playing a few matches after work to get leggy this season. I probably played up towards 80-90 matches after reaching legendary and unlocking the final year of the ascension to get the wins conqueror achievement though. I blame that on matchmaking putting me against premades and partial premades of esports people while I had random solo queuers like myself with me.

Tim.6450:

If only power reaper wasn’t nerfed as well.

Yeah the Soul Spiral nerf felt unwarranted.

Nightshade.2570:

or people will just not play necro..

Well, what other people play has never been my concern. I played Necro at launch when we had more broken skills and traits than functional ones. I played Necro after the Dhuumbfire nerf when eventually Necros got so rare seeing another one was like seeing a unicorn. I kept playing Necro when other classes got all kinds of rad buffs and changes and Necro was largely ignored through most of it up until whenever it was they made the Signet Nec a thing and I’ll keep playing Necro for the foreseeable future.

gavyne.6847:

Power necros weren’t able to compete pre-condi meta. Don’t get excited just because condi got nerfed. Wait no, nerfed usually means toned down. I mean utterly completely gutted.

Back to the bottom of the barrel we go.

Oh, lighten up now, lad. This is a step in the right direction even though the nerfs do feel quite nonsensical. Now if every other class also gets the same amount of nonsensical nerfs we’ll be at an even playing field again and some of the power creep will have been reduced.

Tim.6450:

Aktium.9506:

Tim.6450:

And because condi necro was nerfed now magically power necro will be viable? NO!

No it will still be awful. But now I can feel less bad about playing a bad build because its not quite as bad compared to condi anymore.

hooray for smal victories. /sarcasm

Well to be fair, if there’s less condi necs then that’s a significant boost to power nec in and of itself since condi necs were definitely one of the biggest threats to a nec running power.

Tim.6450:

And because condi necro was nerfed now magically power necro will be viable? NO!

No it will still be awful. But now I can feel less bad about playing a bad build because its not quite as bad compared to condi anymore.

I was really starting to miss Power Nec tbh.

Patrick.2987:

We have been buffed since 23rd June? Last patch chill dmg was nerfed, pretty sure of that, blighters boon was nerfed before so not the case.

Chill was nerfed less than it was buffed prior to the nerf. Used to do like half damage to targets with HP over 50%.

Keadron.9570:

And I would happily take that over what we have now. There were still non meta builds that actually did quite well unless against an organized team

Balance should always happen from the top though. What happens in lower tiers of PvP is really quite irrelevant as long as it doesn’t go too far like with the turret engis back then.

Probably reverts on deathly chill and scepter auto. Nothing big. Would be nice if they buffed wells and power nec slightly. The damage on wells feels pretty outdated in HoT tbh.

People keep saying that the build and class diversity is bad now, but it’s never been worse than it was the whole year leading up to the HoT release. No, you couldn’t roll any class/build before before if you actually wanted to win against competent teams. The meta was rustled some by the introduction of burn guard as well as the mediham + thief duo for a short while then it went back to the same boring bruiser heavy team comp tripe that stacked cele amulet users with loads of sustain.

kreven.6017:

meh

Ain’t our fault you’re terrible at the game, lad.

The Rev/Guard duo should have been able to shut down those necros ez.

Search and Rescue is fine. What does need to be added to PvP is the Downed penalty from PvE. This has always been the case.

The metas before power scaling in Lich Form was removed was the best. Because of lichwells. I’d say this current meta is among the better ones though as far as balance is concerned.

Worst meta was hands down the travesty we had before HoT where a 5 Ele/4 Ele 1 Thief team actually was successful at tournaments. In general the whole Cele meta we had going for a good while with D/D Ele, Shoutbow and Cele Rifle Engi was the most boring period in the game’s history.

Going to say spectral armor since its more flexible, rise really isn’t very flexible. It’s more of a fire-and-forget skill. You’ll always get some value out of it while a badly used spec armor can end up doing nothing at all. If you ever find yourself with no lf and you’re running a build a bunch of traits invested in shroud, which would be most builds, the lf gain from spec armor can help turn a fight as well as act as a pseudo-invuln in some circumstances. It’s also a stunbreak. Rise on its own is definitely stronger though.

randomguy.1283:

That’s not how math works.

Rednik.3809:

No, it still will be 2-3% raidwide damage.

Well regardless of silly maths, anyone who doesn’t have at least 3 different sets of ascended gear is a filthy peasant.

Amineo.8951:

Why would people invest over 1000g for something that only increases 2-3% in the stats? Juste because people don’t have it doesn’t mean they suck and shouldn’t raid, I cleared the 1st wing with ascended trinkets only and there was no timer issue at all, so please stop saying it’s required or anything even for a dumb Vale Guardian, maybe for tank or healer but certainly not for DPS and condis…

Unless you’re soloing the raids, 2-3% x10 more damage is a pretty big difference.

Aw man, it’s been 10 months already. God dang time sure flies.

I should note two things apart from the fact that the current Rise isn’t anything like the skill I made this thread for back then. Back when this comment was made there was no Viper gear and I was thinking from a a PvP perspective at the time. And despite their strength in raids, jagged horrors are still not very good in any PvP situation.

Slothasor and Matthias were pretty well made. I hope we get more in the same vein.

The three bandits we mistook for a trash mob event like the ghosty stuff before Gorseval in Spirit Vale though.

Jourdelune.7456:

Aktium.9506:

Jourdelune.7456:

So, you will get your BADGE and Legendary stuff REALLY for your SKILLS and not because you GRIND the SLOT MACHINE.

:)

The #1 player on the old leaderboards was a turret engi back when that was a thing with a 48% or so win percentage who got there by grinding matches though.

You are wrong. Turret engi was a thing in TEST SEASON 1 and TESt SEASON 2 grinding stuff.

Old leaderboard system, you coul be top 1 with 30 games played because you did win versus the best teams of the game.

The decay algorithm was not fast enough, so people simple sit on their rank. That was in need to get tuned up.

I can’t remember any other leaderboard seasons than the one during the days of turret engi.

I also remember being at r300~ when I played seriously and quite some time later on when I simply grinded wins for Champion titles I got to 150~ or so. Either way it wasn’t a good system.

Jourdelune.7456:

So, you will get your BADGE and Legendary stuff REALLY for your SKILLS and not because you GRIND the SLOT MACHINE.

:)

The #1 player on the old leaderboards was a turret engi back when that was a thing with a 48% or so win percentage who got there by grinding matches though.

zapv.8051:

Twilight, cause I made Twilight.

Tho Volcanus is good too. I wish I could dual-wield them

Just because of Spectral Mastery I think it should be similar to Troll Unguent in functionality. Weaker heal but with a pulsing or channelled condi transfer.

Tim.6450:

That’s the thing with this trait, the statement "2s damage negation every 10/12s on top of our natural bulk " is not true by coupling the damage negation through the shroud, well unless you get bursted so hard that your 30K shroud is evaporated (which would the situation this trait should work against anyway). The more life force you amass the longer the effective cooldown your damage negation will have so our shroud bulk is working against the trait. It’s not like while a lot of other traits/skills where using one of the defensive effects helps you cross the gap to the other defensive effect since the 2 are tied to the same mechanic.

You’re forgetting that in small scale fights like 1v1 and 2v2 you could just flash your iframes since you won’t need the full DS and this would give you an inappropriate amount of survivability for small scale and you’d still be able to use the trait for negating full focus fire if you get rotated to. I would rather have us stay weak to focus than risk us becoming like Scrapper and Ele/Chrono pre-nerf.

Tim.6450:

First these traits do not promote getting hit, they merely accept getting hit as the fate of the necromancer and try to reduce its impact. A trait that promotes hitting is radiant revival. Second the point I was making was not that we don’t need another minion boosting trait but that we don’t need another non-defense trait in DM.

Well I said “sort of promote getting hit”, ideally you should avoid getting hit by stuff in general, but the traits are made with the assumption that you will in fact be getting hit.

Tim.6450:

Why is it OP? a lot of classes have high amount of Iframes which includes thief, revenant,rangers and mesmers (i’m talking about evades here). Also this trait is still lower then an Iframe since conditions can be still applied, stuns can be done,… . Making it a block could even be considered a buf. Also the trait gets less effective the longer you stay in DS which is a nice trade off.

As much as I dislike equating Shroud to an actual healthbar, we do have 30-50k effective HP in most builds. A potential 2s damage negation every 10/12s on top of our natural bulk is ridiculous.

I do think Necro needs a skill or trait that gives actual damage negation, but it should never be anything even remotely spammy.

Tim.6450:

I’m not really a fan of this, death magic centers more around defense and is already restricted by haing 3 minion traits. Especially considering how many types of defenses there are.

Well I was thinking of traits like Putrid Defense and Reaper’s Protection in the same line which sort of promote being hit, the trait wouldn’t be any more of a minion trait than Transfusion.

Tim.6450:

I would like a an anti-burst in DM with this being my favorite: “Rest in peace: when entering shroud your life force will not decrease for 2 seconds. Exit shroud’s cooldown is increased by 2 seconds.” .

This is far too strong. Having iframes on shroud like that without a 1min+ icd would be incredibly broken. Maybe if it was Blocking since that has counterplay.