I am thinking power reaper has counters and ways its attacks can be avoided. Greatsword is slow, totally obvious, and very short range. By itself, it is not a problem. You can easily kite someone camping greatsword, or dagger.
However, chill increases cool down and nerfs movement. Combine Reaper Shroud and other sources of chill with scepter, which is very difficult to avoid, and a condition build and opponents struggle with their skills always being on extended cool down, even their mobility skills.
The real nerf was in chill durations. Switching Deathly Chill to a bleed is, I think, their way of disconnecting chill duration from Reaper’s condition damage because they knew duration needed nerfing
Once the dust settles, and if Deathly Chill is too under powered, they might adjust bleeds without needed to mess with chill, or they might further reduce chill duration without dropping condition damage from bleeds.
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Dhuumfire 2.0
Chill durations broke PvP with perma-chill, not condition damage.
/15 char
I use axe in place of staff in many situations, now.
Compare axe AA and staff.
Also, I agree with Dead that axe AA needs faster vulnerability stacking. Its attack is too weak to allow for more than a hit or two.
I just do not use axe without traiting it because I cannot bear normal cool down on Ghastly Claws or Unholy Feast. Both axe and focus use valuable trait slots when I run them.
The only weapons I do not feel compelled to trait are greatsword, dagger, horn and staff. Perhaps that means something.
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Necromancer may have been nerfed but I like Deathly Chill being a bleed. There is suddenly synergy with Curses and scepter.
Maybe on some future patch Chilling Darkness gets reverted, Lingering Curse is broadened to cover all bleeds, another bleed or a short poison is added to the GM, Mark of Blood is reverted, whatever. At least Necromancer is not stuck having to maximize condition duration for everything but confusion just to be adequate.
What would Terror be like if it applied a separate condition like bleed or a stun?
What were people getting for chill dps, before?
Does greatsword now proc an 8 sec bleed on every third hit with Deathly Chill? That seems pretty good to me but I was unable to get online, yesterday. If greatsword can maintain 2-3 stacks of bleed on AA, plus 8 sec bleed on every single source of chill, and bleed duration boosts are easier to build for, power/condition damage hybrids look more attractive than they did, before.
Bleed stacks also have a high cap so I do not think Conditionmancers will need to worry about the chill cap trimming condition damage in PvE.
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I would guess Chill of Death would use the new Spinal Shivers and see it as a buff to Spite-based power builds.
Deathly Chill being converted to a bleed may actually be not so bad. In fact, it looks fairly good to me.
Chill, the soft CC, had its up-time trimmed but there is still a lot of access.
Also, 8 seconds of bleed will happen on every chill application. I do not see mention of a cool down on the trait. Chill often to stack long bleeds.
Then, there is also the new synergy with bleeding duration runes and greatsword. Mad King or Krait runes along with the expertise stat and consumables could help Necro/Reaper get more bursty in condition damage. The Runes of the Reaper might be useful on condition/shout builds if they are chained.
Finally, there will also be synergy between scepter as a ranged condi-weapon, greatsword as a short-ranged hybrid, shouts, and other sources of chill like Spinal Shivers and Chilblaines so bleed stacks do not diminish to nothing after swapping out scepter. The way it was, nothing but scepter could apply significant bleed stacks so condition damage dps was almost reliant on camping scepter AA and staying out of shroud.
Edit: The bleed on chill sounds like a pretty good way of separating the soft CC from condition damage. The dev’s can adjust applied bleed duration independently of the various chill durations. It gives them another knob to turn in tweaking Necromancer condi damage output.
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Wells for ally support received minor buffs – probably due to lower popularity.
The problem I see is that CD reductions on group support wells still will not make those wells useful outside of rare and special cases where event mechanics favor them. For example, Jormag where I may be carrying a missile launcher or flame thrower and need AoE heals and fear removal along with two wells for crushing ice.
^
And Reaper’s Shroud has cleave, a leap finisher, a whirl finisher, and ice field, a stun, stability, and an AoE fear.
Also, Slick Shoes got nerfed a lot harder, if I am reading the notes right.
To the OP, chill damage is weak compared to other condition damage but the control effect is strong. Perma-chill is causing the main issue.
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Personally, I am hoping the next expansion becomes so difficult that players must join groups to survive open world.
Then, groups will sort out roles amongst themselves for the most efficient way to grind and not waste time dying.
I do not mean that players will have only one role. I do mean that one player may be primary for a roll while acting as secondary, tertiary, and emergency back-up for all other roles.
I main Necromancer. The way the profession looks right now, potential main roles might be tank, power damage, debuffs, crowd control, pets. Secondary roles may be tank, power damage, condition damage, debuff removal, and healing. I can rebuild anywhere OoC by changing equipment, traits, and skills.
Do you want roles? That was eight right there. Between members of your group, there are more than enough options for developing roles.
Now, all we need is open world trying very hard to kill our characters so we are forced to group up and assume some responsibilities.
HoT is heavily layered with narrow paths compared with older open world.
Also, I am sad because there is so little new under water content.
I’m not sure how pets or minions are harming other players but a good answer to this would be for my /zen suggestion but have it go automatic when someone is idle for a specific amount of time. Basically I suggested a command that would put the user in a floating lotus position and they wouldn’t be able to get reward or get killed until they move. The pet/minions would be put away. Maybe even have it automatic if they stay within a specific radius.
Interesting idea
How would players be kept from camping dangerous boss areas until an event spawns, if they choose /zen?
Playing last weekend after a lot of time off, I noticed scepter’s animation might look good on axe and axe’s animation might look better on a magic wand.
Check it out. Consider it a mind virus I am gifting to you.
There are already classes that have position of best whether it be healing, support, or damage and they tend to blow the others out of the water. Why prolong the inevitable with nonsense? The Warrior has a signet that heals him for more than three skills on the Engineer combined, the Elementalist spins circles around just about everything in just about every way and requires only a medium level of play skill, and Dragon Hunter (note: not guardian) is ridiculously better than the actual ranger who ironically turned out to be a furry loving Druid who heals things and can’t use a bow to save his life.
Please just admit it. You had your fun Anet, righting the stream, but let’s reel it back in and come home.
Most professions can do at least one of the typical trinity jobs with the right build and still be half-way functional in the other two. The whole point of not having fixed profession builds is to ensure each character can be tuned for multiple roles, rather than have one character only being good for one role..
Also, Elite specializations do not come standard with a profession. They take a lot of mastery points to unlock so think of them as end-game-plus builds that allow a player to fill a specific role better than other professions.
Tl;dr intentional mechanics that allow pet kills to give experience and loot =/= permission to afk farm.
This is absolutely correct.
If your pets are doing the killing and your mastery is doing the looting; you’re okay as far as GMs are concerned. This does not mean design can’t/won’t/should/shouldn’t update the system as it works today.
Also, using an unapproved method of preventing the inactivity timer from logging you out is very bad.
AFAIK, only Ranger and Necromancer can afk in areas that are not completely safe but afk-farming in those areas and still “playing” according to the activity timer rules is a huge waste of time.
Botters were much more obvious in the past so great job to the Arenanet team on balancing rewards for participation.
Screwing PvE over for PvP & WvW what else? Seriously that’s been happening since day 1 and without separating PvE out it will remain the same thing every balance change.
Thats why Anet will prob up power based GMs, cause they are bad compared to the DoT counter-part most of the time
Giving more power damage to the necromancer would be an arguably bad solution. The necromancer do not need more power damage. Beside, deathly chill do not strictly compete with any trait that focus on power damage. Although outside of Close to death which is an okay trait is there really any other strictly power based GM trait on the necromancer?
PvE is way more friendly to Necromancer than it was the first two years; waaaaaaaayyyy more. Just relax. Necromancer is no longer a completely useless pariah played by insane, masochistic die hards.
It is actually reasonably decent.
Unyielding Blast – damage no longer decreases with distance, add 1 might along with vulnerability.
Fear of death – decrease CD for all fears by 15 per cent
Unholy martyr – reduce CD on condition transfer from 3 sec to 2 sec
Shrouded Removal – increase conditions removed from 1 to 2
Reaper’s protection – reduce CD from 60 sec to 30
Furious demise – increase fury duration to 10 sec
Rending shroud – increase radius for vulnerability application from 360 to 600
Sentences ending with, or being stuffed randomly with, kappa are an old anime meme. Kappa are water ogers (roughly translated) in Japanese mythology. Animators wanted kappa-based or kappa-like characters to sound dumb, repetitive, cute in an ugly way, uncultured, rural, and totally obvious to small children that they are stylized water creatures so they made the characters say kappa.
You might just as well toss “ribbit” or “oink” into all your sentences.
Should axe get scepter’s animation and scepter get axe’s?
Or should Arenanet sell weapon skins that make axe look like a wand and scepter look like an axe?
Vote now on this irrelevant pre-balance question.
Does anyone use Terror, anymore, outside of testing it?
Nerfs
Shortened chill durations
Reduced damage mitigation for Shambling Horrors
Reduced minion toughness
Buffs
Fix skill FAQs
Thank you for the ping plotter tip.
It shows nothing but red from my router outbound.
This is what is causing huge lag spikes and frequent disconnects.
Tapping a key repeatedly to use a skill the instant it comes off CD is not spamming.
Using every skill the moment they come off CD or using just a few skills all the time is spamming. It is also face-rolling, keyboard mashing, and other terms of similar reputation.
Spamming examples are burning a stun break just because it is off CD or swapping weapons without a plan. Restraint on skill use until you really need them to counter, disengage, or burst takes lots of training time.
MM is easy mode. You can play it effectively with many builds in many situations. Now that minions do not get wiped by AoE, they are very strong.
I think dungeons should be places to grind for special loot.
Right now they are long event chains along linear paths. People just skip as much as possible to trigger the next event. The whole purpose is to complete the sequence as quickly as possible. That is what kills the fun, not the bosses or environments, though they need refreshes.
If I could camp an area challenging a variety of bosses spawning there for specific loot, dungeons would be more fun.
Also for use in Lich form.
I want to like HoT and Raids, I really do, but the difficulty in getting a reliable group, maps opening and closing, and long, complicated event gates or chains all dissuade me.
Grinding an area with a group for specific materials is discouraged by the game design. I would love to see a map where everything is a champ and a group could find a spot to work on timing and use of combo’s and skills, or die trying.
Raids are heavily gated, linear, instanced, and rely on death traps/AoE and timers for challenge.
Still, raids and HoT open world have more challenging and deadly mobs that make it fun to play against so there is great potential that can be used.
AI is the key: mobs should counter, dodge, kite, cleanse conditions, and better prioritize which skills and opponents need an active response.
If I try to give the group a large heal, my team should expect the boss to try countering it and screen me until heal goes off.
Tanking should work similarly where team heals are required to survive and personal dps is sacrificed to hold aggro and position the target. This works in raids right now but is still under utilized.
Combo’s are also under emphasized and hard CC on break bars is less reliant on timing than I like.
Most of GW2 is casual. I am fine with that.
Please give me an optional area that is not instanced, does not have long, complicated event chains, does not close when population drops, and challenges a full group at survival. If I am going to grind, give me a spot that makes it challenging and requires team cooperation. Just one place is fine. The rest of Tyria can be casual or some complicated, gated puzzle.
Edit: I miss living world content, though it was not quite what I am looking for. LW1 had some really challenging open world events.
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Necromancer could have a short bow that applies AoE bleeds, fear or a real stun, and boons like protection under 300 distance as a sort of front-line support weapon.
Edit: I still want a land spear for that role, though.
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Yes, we want two different things – two opposite things: You want a casual mode for raids and I want less complicated raids that require more focused roles via builds to prevent wipes.
This game kind of bores and frustrates me because I am used to belonging to a few statics where skill, knowledge, trust, and utter dependency on other roles forges teamwork. Nearly all PvE runs counter to that.
Raids need to push roles even further for my liking. If a raid needs lots pets, for example, it should demand Engineers, Elementalists, Guardians, Necromancers, and other roles to keep them alive (Ranger), do max damage, buff the pets, hold aggro to position the boss, hide pet owners, etc.
Ps
This game does not train players in PvE or even WvW for advanced team strategy and tactics like other games. Most of GW2 is very casual so there is very little team play tutorial content to teach tactical and role skills.
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Burning access, uptime, and CD/stacking are watched for balance. The days of my Ele stacking 25 burning in a few seconds are gone.
I main Necromancer, which takes a while longer to build good dps on conditions. The trade between condition damage bursts and smaller but longer build-up is part of the endless balancing.
GW2 needs super-elite trait lines that force team dependency in order to break away from “Elitist” problems. Roles create demand for specific professions resulting in more flexibility on who fills that role.
No.
It just needs to accept that “super role-oriented” gameplay is not gameplay that GW2 should have. There can be individual roles to perform, but they should be very flexible to enter into, less reliant on build and more reliant on the desire to take on that role.
I was discussing this in the “Easy mode raid” thread, but it would be nice if at bosses like VG and Gorseval where they focus on the guy with the highest toughness, if there were a shrine of some kind outside it, that would apply a single +200 Toughness buff on a single character per run, perhaps even higher, to allow for almost any character to choose to be the tank, regardless of his own gearing, or the gearing of the rest of the group. Or just make it a straight up “agro buff” that has nothing to do with Toughness.
I’m very much in favor of mechanics that use bundles or buffs to control the rolls you play, where any character can pick any role and be handed the tools needed to perform that role, rather than requiring roles that require you to build your character to that role.
I think you are wrong. What you describe is easy mode for raids.
There is plenty of easy content.
There is some hard content.
Only organized team PvP requires cooperative combat. All other content is semi-cooperative individual play, at best.
Raids are a step in the direction of forcing team play in PvE by encouraging players to assume a few roles. The new elite trait lines and skills also encourage functional roles.
Unfortunately, there is little other content in the game where a team will fail if it does not have players bringing specific builds with large handicaps meant to be covered by other roles with advantages meant to fill those functional gaps.
“Stand on this block while I pull this lever” is just a complicated easy mode. You can have it. I do not want it. It is a simple puzzle to memorize. GW2 and L’l Big Pl’nt. have plenty of that.
I want PvE with roles created by skill and trait selection that also force dependency on other players (or people die).
No more “zerker only” PvE design.
I like seeing posts like “Have 2 dps and buffer. Need healer, tank, light tank, condi, ranged dps.”
Teach people to be dependant on cooperative play to reduce the “I’ll just do whatever I want because I am the only one that matters on this team.”
The player community is not trained (by the game) to be cooperative. GW2 does not encourage players to be dependant on team play. “Roles” do not exist. Everyone plays solo; even in a team. This result in far more selfishness than games with dependant “roles” have.
GW2 needs super-elite trait lines that force team dependency in order to break away from “Elitist” problems. Roles create demand for specific professions resulting in more flexibility on who fills that role.
It is a very interesting balance problem. GW2 already has a history of profession preference; old dungeons.
Make more content requiring more extreme roles. Raids are a step with a small amount of role dependency. Go further! Spread role dependency everywhere.
Ps
Roles are not professions!
Just make sure you inform your group, and those around you, that the rewards are better if the temples are left undefended when the undead try to claim them. Wait until the undead capture the temple and the rewards are better.
I just want to convert my town clothes to armor skins or, at a minimum, outfit pieces.
PvE world events cough this out like Bloodstone Dust.
Empty maps, frequent offers to move to a new map, and loss of progression on a move are known issues Arenanet should be addressing soon.
For a power build without Reaper, Soul Reaping, Spite, and Blood Magic is my favorite, though you can swap Spite for Death Magic if you are running minions.
Axe/focus, dagger/war horn are common combinations. Axe can be swapped for staff as your ranged weapon but main hand dagger has the highest dps and gives some sustain, too, along with movement speed increase. Many people run staff and dagger/horn in PvP.
Soul Reaping is just too handy to compromise on most of the time. It supports Shroud, spectral skills, and staff.
Spite supports signets, vulnerability and might, has Close to Death, and traits axe and focus.
Blood Magic supports wells, vampiric/siphons, dagger, war horrn, and can be switched quickly for second-tier medic duties using Transfusion and Life from Death, though LfD is a little clunky because the AoE heal comes after leaving Shroud, which would interrupt a resurrection.
Death Magic is indispensable for minion masters and can help with defense in a condition damage build using scepter. Use it with minions or for bunkering.
There are lots of ways to do a power build and most people use a variety of utilities. Keep stun breakers for PvP or you could get CC’d to death. A couple of condition clears or transfers are also recommended. Minions, signets, wells, and spectral utilities all work with a power build.
Look at metabattle.com for build suggestions.
Regen and a lot of little heals do not even add LF through Shroud so it feels like these heal skills work best when Shroud is only used as a last resort. Maybe that is an acceptable trade. Obviously, healing and staying in Shroud all the time would make Necromancer very strong.
It is fine like it is. Some players still flash shroud, though there is less reason for me to do so anymore.
Rise! feels kind of cheesy with its 50% damage reduction.
Perhaps Rise! should have something like a passive 8% damage reduction per active Horror rather than a flat 50% for attacking minions. That might help diversify MM builds away from Death Magic. Add more damage on the shout or a brief stun to promote more active play.
I would also like to see Reapers Protection changed to support shouts by adding a 1 second Fear to Shambling Horror deaths.
Rise is very strong compared to Spectral Armor. It is quite strong compared to most utilities.
There are builds that work without using Decimate Defenses. Chilling Victory is great for Shroud builds and Soul Eater is great for max dps builds.
Having precision from equipment or trinkets opens more build possibilities. Both Ele and Mes can use it, too.
So what builds actually make sense and don’t require 3 keyboards of hotkeys to play? This really shouldn’t be that complicated. When looking through the builds, I found like over a thousand different ways to build a build. I build the most synergetic and get crapped on in seconds. That’s too complicated for little to no results. I prefer to play a utility character that meatshields for my team as they faceroll the opponents. Unfortunately, I’m garbage if I can’t handle the top meta builds one on one.
Ah, the problem may be that there are no true utility or tanking professions in this game. All professions have a little of everything but there is no such thing as a meat shield. There is only maximizing dps while surviving on the minimum possible defensive stat’s and utilities by skill alone. There are no real roles like some other games.
More skill means less defense is necessary and more offense is possible. The professions have been balanced to all be roughly equal against each other provided you get lucky choosing a build your opponent’s build is weak to.
Keira, here are a few tips for making a build.
1. Build synergy between equipment, traits, and skills. There are a lot of traits that support specific weapons or utilities. Try to get dual use out of as much as you can.
2. Build with a focus on something. There are many types of power builds and a few condition builds. Research what sounds good and try to at least partially optimize it.
3. Try builds posted by other players. These people put effort into developing those builds and sharing them for your benefit.
4. Recognize you cannot have everything you want in a build. There are trades that must be made. Learn which trades give you the best value. Your friend’s healing on condition damage cost something. Is it worth it?
5. Have more than one back up plan. Teleport, condition clears or transfers, stun breaks, invulnerability, things like that help keep bad situations from getting worse.
6. Post your own builds and ask for review and suggestions. It is rare not to have some truly constructive feedback.
Maybe these tips are too vague but I hope they help in some small way.
The armor is account-bound, not soul-bound so consider whether you might move it between characters.
Berserker is a good starting point. Viper’s is another 36-40 gold for a full set of black diamonds, though all light armor professions will benefit from it.
You can change stat’s in the forge cheaply but the old insignia and runes are lost
I still run it but then I run pretty much everything for comparison.
Historically, Necromancer was always good at tagging with its AoE. Necro was great at trash mob farming but was bad at everything else.
Then Necromancer gained some power boosts, followed by trait reworks, and ultimately a very good elite. Reaper Shroud can tag even better than Death Shroud.
Minions now only die when tanking for you rather than dying to untargeted AoE. I have commented on their durability, before.
MM also offers new players some of the best training wheels in the game.
Finally, a lot of players who never cared for, or developed, a Necro are discovering their mule is now useful.
The lack of Death Novas on most minions is a point of contention with me. In PvE, they only die against bosses fully capable of surviving or when I switch between land and sea. Against other players, most minions are not targeted and, if they are…
I kind of wish I could slot Bone Minions twice in my utility line for base Necromancer but Shambling Horror is good with the Reaper line, though Reaper means sacrificing Blood Magic if you want to keep Death Magic and Soul Reaping.
What do you think of this variant? No Reaper Shroud, though.
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vRAQNBIhZakjGaqxuawvG4wxx0QRnhdYTlDQBEAzH4CqAA-TZxHABzXG4k9HA4QAIwJAIgnAAA
Berserker has Power, precision, and ferocity.
Valkyrie has Power, vitality, and ferocity.Precision give critical hit chance while vitality increases max health and max life force.
No I mean in that build, which trinkets should be berserker trinkets, and which trinkets should be valkyrie trinkets? berserker rings, valkryrie accessories? or valkyrie rings and berserker accessories? Should the back be berserker or valkyrie? etc.
It does not matter where the stat’s come from. They all get tossed into the same calculator. You can have berserker armor and valkyrie trinkets, valkyrie armor and berserker trinkets, mixed valkyrie and berserker armor and/or trinkets, or even favor one over the other for more precision or vitality. There are no rules for where stat’s are equipped.
Runes and sigils are also not affected by equipment placement. They only affect, and are affected by, totals shown in the hero panel.
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Would recent changes to amulet selection favor Necromancer?
“Amulets
Removed the Celestial Amulet.
Removed the Sentinel Amulet.
Removed the Settler Amulet.
Removed the Soldier Amulet.
Added four new PvP amulets:
Mercenary’s Amulet
1050 Power
1050 Condition
560 Toughness
560 Vitality
Sage’s Amulet
1050 Power
1050 Condition
560 Healing Power
560 Vitality
Paladin’s Amulet
1050 Power
1050 Precision
560 Toughness
560 Vitality
Mender’s Amulet
1050 Power
1050 Healing Power
560 Precision
560 Vitality"