Guild Wars 2

ManaCraft.5630:

Andele.1306:

Non sequitur, offensive sustain (in comparison to defensive actives and passive regen) HAS to scale of enemies, its basic requirement is hitting enemies and unlike passive sustain doesnt have a 100% guarantee nor like defensive sustain/actives has a alerting change in gameplay/playstyle one can assume.

Offensive sustain requires the presence of at least one target. However, it does not necessarily have to scale with the number of targets – circumstance and design dictate whether that is desirable.

Andele.1306:

If balance does dictate one might take actions like taking a max potential heal from a skill (so for example Holy nova can heal a max of 8k healing, if you are the only person in the aoe, you get healed for 8k, if there is a friend, you get 4k each; if applied to damage can be, assuming base damage is 75, max damage pre target is +50, thus if a aoe hits 2 people, both take 63 damage, if there are 3 people they take 58, if there are 5 all take 55).

No idea what a “holy nova” is, but implementing a maximum cap on the amount of healing received won’t work very well in this case. Some weapons land many more hits over time than others by design, and unless you compensate for that you’re still stuck with a system that plays favorites. If you can control how often the vampiric traits proc, you can make them equally viable for all builds (every weapon set can manage one attack per second) and much more effective than they currently are since aggressive scaling with healing power becomes possible. If the number of procs depends on build-specific factors, you cannot.

My goal is for the vampiric traits to become 1) reliable regardless of circumstance and 2) build-agnostic. A one second ICD accomplishes that. I’m not sure how you think that “butchers the intended purpose” of them. I for one call it a win.

Im sorry if this offends you, but: Come back to suggest sustain fixes after you played at least 5 years of WoW (where the skill holy nova comes from, namely priests), a year of EQ and a unholy amount of D&D, you clearly aint fit with enought data nor experience to understand why putting cooldowns on offensive mechanics which rely on enemy input is a bad idea (here is a hint, it will require a high base number thus hampered more by heal reductions and prone to being a nubstomp, skilled enemies will be able to shut down such build way to easy and it still wont do anything in 1vx situations nor will its effects be a reasonable function in burst vs attrition fights unless the numbers are flat out op).

Seriously just compare and contrast old spectral walk to new spectral walk.

Its basic functionality, its in the UI, why not if its kept out of combat and pve/wvwvw only (not pvp because that would actually disturb balance since the “be a kittening sissy and run away” strategy has been in meta since release).

Dee Jay.2460:

It seems like you guys mist my point entirely.

I wasn’t complaining about either class specifically.

But if you have two Zerker builds that can’t kill each other because of insane sustain from various traits then something is pretty broken. I can understand stalemates when you have two Bunkers duking it out, but Berserkers? I don’t think that’s ok.

Thats actually called balanced, if you both specced for defensive skills (and no a full zerk warrior doesnt get adrenal which btw is quite a op trait for its low requirement) and duked it out, properly using skills, you were probably of equal skill and thus in a tie.
Skill & Build>Stats

ManaCraft.5630:

Andele.1306:

As all previous MMOs show, ICD skills on sustain are bad… very very bad… hell even here in GW2, it butchered the usage of Swalk.

ICDs have a tendency to be bad on skills that are based on incoming damage. The vampiric traits are based on outgoing damage, which is why ICDs are appropriate. More than that, they’re hands down necessary if you ever want to balance those traits properly. As long as life stealing can trigger up to five times for each attack via AoE, balancing has to take that into account and the traits will remain relatively weak as a result. The whole idea behind an ICD is to limit the number of triggers per attack to one, regardless of circumstance. Then you can start buffing the traits without breaking them in situations where multiple targets are present.

We have ICDs on life stealing food and sigils for the exact same reason.

Non sequitur, offensive sustain (in comparison to defensive actives and passive regen) HAS to scale of enemies, its basic requirement is hitting enemies and unlike passive sustain doesnt have a 100% guarantee nor like defensive sustain/actives has a alerting change in gameplay/playstyle one can assume.

If balance does dictate one might take actions like taking a max potential heal from a skill (so for example Holy nova can heal a max of 8k healing, if you are the only person in the aoe, you get healed for 8k, if there is a friend, you get 4k each; if applied to damage can be, assuming base damage is 75, max damage pre target is +50, thus if a aoe hits 2 people, both take 63 damage, if there are 3 people they take 58, if there are 5 all take 55).
BUT applying internal cooldowns to reliable effects ALWAYS butchers its mechanic/intended purpose.
If vampiric skills plain turned into passive regen like adrenal healing or active heals like healing ripple, giving it a cooldown/tick timer is perfectly fine to since it has no reliance on the enemy.

Also no, we got ICDS on Blood and Strawberry because people which had good but active sustain already were able to ignore it and just spec into all out damage while having equal value sustain (tho in case of engie a bit lower) without a cost.
You would still need to forgo things like +50% crit chance or +10% damage to get this.

Bhawb.7408:

Vampiric: Vampiric/Precision both need 1s ICDs with very significant healing increases both as a base and scaling, and Rituals needs a boost to at least scaling (remains the only way to do AoE procs).

As all previous MMOs show, ICD skills on sustain are bad… very very bad… hell even here in GW2, it butchered the usage of Swalk.

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

Andele.1306:

1.) Im actually fine with just 2 dodges being here if we get proper wifesteal effects.

He’s mister steal yo’ girl.

ME!!!, MAD!? Hahahahaha… Quite likely~

Oh, but honestly thresh and cho from Lol show off how to properly do cc tanks which dont have direct counters, but do have counterplay, non heal utility and with mobility being their weakness.

For the Marks – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d7fBjaa0odE

1.) Im actually fine with just 2 dodges being here if we get proper wifesteal effects.

2.) All that needs to be done here is your suggestion (to i would make it 940+0.15Hp siphoning, thus making it damage enemies for the equal amount) and reversing Swalk to 3% LF pre hit without ICD that cannot be procced at the same time as Sarmor (so if 3 hits hit you while you got both Sarmor and Swalk up in the same second, you would get a total of 14% lifeforce, 8% from first hit and Sarmor trigger, second two from Swalk).

3.) As multiple people mentioned/said, FITG should be redone into stability in DS, BUT i would argue for a effect that just gives us immunity to control removal, not actual immunity to be interrupted (aka everything works like a daze, but doesnt stop cds from other skills, just cast ones), thus both giving counterplay, having a higher timing requirement, not making it cheezy (like 3s of stability pre 3s in DS), but functionally powerful enough AND by making it DS only, necros are still kinda weak to CC for about 40-70% of their uptime.

4) Aggression is the necros fine wine, the longer its there the better.
Honestly all they need to do in this format without major overhauls is increase the current tooltip values by 40 and make the skills actually do their tooltip values in damage and healing (e.g. my vamp setup says 44 damage and 39 healing, but its actually 42 damage and 36 healing), but make them mutually exclusive (except for well vampirism, thus being worth the master slot).

kirinelf.9216:

Looking through all of your points, the main thing I’m seeing is that you all simply do not consider weakening the summons in exchange for duration. You all keep mentioning how powerful they are and why they should not be of infinite duration, completely overlooking the fact that 2.7k damage, for example, can be nerfed to like 500 damage, or CC durations could be shortened.

Lakdav, you mentioned that it makes sense for thief and charr elites to have durations. Thief I won’t mention because there’s no real lore or background as to why you’re suddenly part of a guild in game (There might be one in the actual lore, but it’s not elaborated on in the game). However, with the charr stories…

Charr Personal Story

hide spoiler

You end up as the leader of your personal Warband, with the sole survivor of your original warband as your second in command. Granted, as the personal story unfolds you end up leaving to be second in command of the Pact, with the sole survivor taking over as the Legionaire, but the point stands: The warband is/was under your control, with someone who has complete faith and trust in you in charge after you leave. There really isn’t any real reason for them NOT to stick around with you, especially as the Personal Story shows that there really aren’t that many missions for them to go on (Considering how quickly you go from recruit to Legionaire and then just kinda muck around before the Pact storyline kicks in)

Unfortunately I don’t have the lore experience to comment on the other things you mentioned, but a friend of mine who’s played GW1 says that it’s not that they’re blind, it’s just that it enables them to ‘see’ into the spirit world better by blocking out distractions from the current world, just like… well, pretty much any seer ever (For example the Dalasian seers in the Mallorean by David Eddings). Again, I can’t confirm it, but it’s an interesting counterpoint.

It’s also highly contradictory how you mention that ‘Not everything needs to be the same’, when aside from necros and engineers, EVERY OTHER SUMMON has the same duration gating. Looking at it from a certain point of view, it’s quite hypocritical.

Actually those are just the player ritualists, in the same way as the player necros arent really hated by most people in GW1 and how assassins didnt grow up in under a royal master nor as a mo zing (street assassint/guildless); a identical example is Zei Ri from the ministriy of purity, being a ritualist only for the time since shiros abominations killed his family and there are examples of specialized ritualists which dont bother with spirits. Tho almost every ritualist master does have heavy handicaps (blind, weakness, low hp pool, etc).

As for the warband, you dont actually summon the NPCs you picked for your warband, which is a dumb thing i complained about, but it does make sense that you can summon them only for a limited duration strike, since you are of great importance in the Black Citadel, thus your warband is doing the duties youd have to do if you were there.

Also no, spirit guards and minion necros play pretty much the same… only with less cast times but with minion downtime not based on the enemy (you got 1 heavy cc knockdown minion, you got a high dps minion, you got a healer), tho what they dont have by comparison is a spirit weapon heal skill nor a sweapon elite, thus limited to just 3 slots.

P.S. Nor are kits a engie profession mechanic, nor is confusion a mesmer profession mechanic, nor is stealth a thief profession mechanic, nor is blocking a guard profession mechanic, but its either unique to them (mostly) or they do it best.

MasterAbaddon.7839:

Also, i dont know if it’s a glitch or not. But Unholy Sanct will heal for an extra bit of health that seems equivalent to the total amount of health healed while in Death Shroud, when you exit Death Shroud.

Its a visual bug since the HP globe cannot/may not move while in DS., but the hp is actually increased.

Tei.1704:

WereDragon.6083:

Unfortunately this is the PVP community we’re talking about. If the change did take place there would be no sweeping adaption, just a wave of intense complaining from the Elementalist battle-stack crowd and guardians. To the point we might even see said classes simply drop Tpvp matches when they notice a necro on the other team.

Logic wise it makes sense, balance wise it’s tricky and grey.

Corrupt boon is instant cast, 1200 range and unblockable. There is no way to outplay that. You can get a lucky dodge, but that’s about it. The only way to adapt to corrupt boon is to not use boons. That isn’t really an option for most ele builds. All the boons eles have really just evens the playing field. Even without a sigil of battle, eles have fire fields and blast finishers. Guardians can’t exactly do their job without boons either.

Actually its a projectile effect , thus a pile or rocks or shrubbery will have a tendency of stopping it. Also you cannot cast it while casting other skills.
Tho it is true that a buff build (which arent the only option for ele nor guard, tho the most popular and easiest to use/the nubstick/chun lees kick spam compared to a chained double akuma combo with hit confirmations) is very much ruined by corrupting their boons.

kirinelf.9216

Necros are able to summon a few permanent minions as a trade off for not using more powerful sentient beings and fresh corpses as the basis of it, thus not needing to sustain the minions with their blood nor using energy to keep their control; its pretty much removing both quality and quantity for reliability.

A reverse of it for example is Venom in Kessex who summons 3 flesh golems from dead merchants, thus having very powerful allies for a time but doesnt sustain them with her blood nor directly control them (just promises them revenge) to save energy to fight the centaur, thus they actually degenerate trough the fight before falling apart.

Also necro magic doesnt require a connection to grenth himself, just a trade (FMA equivalent exchange style) of energy.

Guardians are technically a fusion of Monk training, Paragon teachings and Ritualist charms/holy knowledge. Thus because of paragon weapon enchanting powers and ritualist abilities to use beings from the mists to help them in their fights for a while, they can use spirit weapons. IF you do however manage to keep a spirit out in the physical realm for a longer amount of time tho, they take their toll, just like necro skills.
Sadly guardians aint a quarter undead and a quarter living in the underworld, thus over time they would go blind, then their extremities would stop working, then all of their musculature would collapse before finally dying (ritualists lost their vision for being able to use most of their skills for extended periods of time, while some masters were so physically crippled that they couldnt fight).

Also it doesnt matter which decision came first (tho probably the duration gating because it made sense taking the context of GW1), minions do on average half like half the stats of ele summons and guard spirits.
Ranger spirits on the other hand are just effect based banners, which you can trait to follow you around and do fancy stuff with stronger effects at the cost of being counterable (in GW1 spirits affected everyone in the aoe, even enemies, thus current versions are kinda a very kind).

P.S. Spirit hammer is 2 hard cc with a 2.7k active hit, thus imo useful no matter if traited or not, same for shield (tho you have WoR which is more reliable).

Actually no, its a 7s cooldown, the ui/tooltip is just bugged (you can time it).

coglin.1867 – let me explain this is the way that even a idiot undestands this: Because necros have 0 of the following: http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Block http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Invulnerability http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Evade (everyone has base 2 dodges ofc) http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Teleport (shadow step section counts too; all of the necro ones require pre casts and are easily countered, while all others are get out of jail free aoe targeted ranged cc ignoring blinks).

Thus necros do need stability to keep their in yo face you cant get away from me role (defined by anet themselves).
Be it by turning Foot in the Grave to Shade, swapping how DS cd works while adding at least 1 more second to it or Stability on a utility (actual stability so 5+ seconds on a under 90s cooldown utility skill with other effects or just stability under a 40s cooldown/pointing to Bstance and Stand your ground).

Also how do Eles which can benefit of net 10 stability pre 10 seconds in a functional way without sacrifices have worse stability application than necros who have to give up their profession mechanic for 30% of that gain?

Carighan.6758:

Oakwind.6187:

It’s been most interesting to read up on all the adamant opposition to a reliable source of Stability for the Necromancer. I wonder if most of the complaints would tone down if Runes of Nightmare got deleted?

I just dislike Stability in general. If it were only one class having any reliable access to it at all ,and that class was all about stability (basically, their entire defence was that they’re un-CC-able, otherwise not having anything going for them), then I would feel much better about balance.

Stability is a stupid thing. I’d rather have balanced CC than balanced Stability. Why fix symptoms?

Because it arent symptoms, what you are saying you would rather have a slew of mild diseases with no medicine or antibodies than dangerous diseases but with proper protection against them.

You know its totally that Cholera, Influenza, Tuberculosis, Smallpox, etc which were all prevented/death rates reduced from over 20% to less than 3% with proper antibody strength via vaccination werent such cases…

Id rather go with the case where only natures apex predators can outdo our scientific defense than where every little pathetic insect can be a death toll (aka actual builds designed to counter necros should hard counter necros, not anything with cc slapped trough its kit).

Going with whats already in game as a mechanic somewhere, let me throw together random kitten:
1. Blood Rites (aka order of the vampire if in orders) – Your life siphon effects are applied by your allies while you are in DS, heals from sources other than yourself affect you for only 66% tho (doesnt include downed form heals)
2. Vile Pestilence – Enemies deal 3% less damage pre non damaging condition you applied on them.
3. Refracting Shadows – While in DS, secondary effects from hostile projectiles are reflected to their owners, but life force degenerates 250% faster for 3 seconds each time that happens
4. Seeping Power – For every 20% hp missing, nearby allies gain power and condition damage (tho only works while you are alive and kicking)
5. Cold Grip – Enemies you afflicted with chill deal reduced damage the farther away they are from their target (100 range = 3% damage)
6. Alluring Horror – Enemies run towards you instead away from you when feared (will stand still if they come to 150 range from you).

Bhawb.7408:

a) It wasn’t removed “just for funsies”, it was a bug that they figured… eh screw it we’ll leave it in. They literally just accidentally broke DS and then decided to not change it.

Except that you can see from the earliest cases of DS being the current transform DS, that weapon swapping was a option (way back from 2012), thus not being a bug (the demo releases/technically vertical slices were polished out of bugs), nor was it ever mentioned as such by devs.
Tho yes they just decided not to fix it back when they went bonkers.

Edit: you could have just said, remember devs for necro balance/fixes are lazy if you ment why it went away.

sorrow.2364:

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

Necro got survivability buffs in 1v1. Anything more than one opponent and their survivability has actually been nerfed (due to ICD’s) since pre-dhuumfire.

And it’s because necros have so little in the way of active defense that they really can’t hold a point alone. When you have a Necro and the Guardian or Warrior peeling for him sitting on a point…why not dump the necro, use the guardian or warrior to hold the point solo, and get a free spot for someone else?

You are not supposed to hold 2vs1 for extended periods of time.

You have tools to mitigate damage, but if you’re getting several people focusing at you, then you are supposed to either disengage or waiting for a teammate to back you up and to put some pressure on the offenders.

Warriors and Guardians can’t hold a node solo too against multiple people.

Yeah, we totally didnt have a meta which consisted of engies rangers guards warriors and eles keeping points up to 1v3 trough sheer heals and invuls, ignoring any damage in their build to ensure a cap and there totally aint videos of it on youtube *cough just type it spvp 1v2 for results or even a thief 1v2ing phoenix level opponents from 100% like 3 months ago which blu put up on youtube *

Flat out no, sustain on necro got nerfed because of the removal of DS absorb and spectral icds. You are supposed to disengage on professions which have get out of jail cards because they usually have high damage multipliers and are based on poking/bursting enemies in such situations, you are supposed to stick in and fight on guys like necros warriors and guardians.

Seriously please, you are putting even people who dont really go for pvp as their main thing (but just casually watch streams/highlights) to shame with random stupid posts with no historical basis.

Rennoko.5731:

manveruppd.7601:

Yes please, that would be nice!

And off-topic, but another good QOL chance would be: don’t replace your health bar with your Life Force in the party window when you enter DS. A lot of times when I’m pvping and I enter DS with only a little life force left a teammate will see it and shout “DUDE YOU GOING DOWN??” because at a glance that shade of green isn’t that distinguishable from the brownish shade of red they use for HP, especially if you’re colourblind. Just show HP in the party window at all times.

I hate the health bar change…. why would my team care at all about my DS bar? considering I could leave at any time, it could jump up or down at anytime without warning.

Simple change:

Normal Bar goes reflects current HP, not current DS. Bar turns GREEN while in DS, but still reflects current HP. Now people can see when you are in DS without being able to see you on screen through a particle storm, they can know when a heal will go through on you, how dire your need for a heal is, they can call out for you to DROP OUT of DS to get a heal… and so on….

So yeah, basically what you said ^^

Or they could actually improve the UI to reflect stuff like elite cooldown, heal cooldown, DS/attunements/virtues/burst skills, etc if the player allows (as in checkbox for what you wanna share with your team on the ui).

flow.6043:

I’ve seen this suggestion quite a few times by now, and yes, it would be a really nice QoL upgrade.

There could be one issue though. The UI would easily allow for the utility cds to be displayed because all it shows currently is a locked skill. But what about the regular weapon cds? Or the shroud cds while you’re not in DS? Should any class generally be able to see any weapon skill cd while they’re on a different set?
Of course, all of this would be nice but at the risk of cluttering your UI, especially if you’re playing ele or engi with a lot of kits. Should necro utility skills get “special treatment” just because the UI space is there and unused?

Well there are 2 points to that: a) weapon swapping in DS should come back, it was gameplay nuance removed for the sake of removing it instead of actual balance or functionality reasons b) (something which would if they added like 1 seconds each make spiteful spirit and foot in the grave on par to similar taits) If DS actually triggered its cooldown how the skill suggests instead of on exit (remember, only the on entry one has a cooldown display and when kicked out of DS via 0 life force it remains on entry cooldown), the weapon and DS cooldowns wouldnt be a issue and treated the same as weapon/kit changes, thus not shown for balance reasons.

Well as a warrior you can be a very nice torment stacker, having both low cooldown heals for the runes, the sword F1 for vast sigil triggers and Sword 4 stacking 5, if combined with the easy 100% bleed duration and pretty much perma burning on the target, with the average 2.4k cond damage a proper build has (that is, solo, not even counting for might from the group).
You can probably dish out around 4.7k dps with just condis counting average 7 bleed stacks to be overwritten and fall off by other people.

Compared to a zerker builds average 6k dps (assuming banners and co), you would deal enough damage to carry yourself.

(with the build being something akin to this: http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fJAQNAscTjMdU5Z3HGewJaghgyUAcuBChnPdSMEHBA-TRCBABHcgAc+UA8i+gp3fAgjAgPq/ApSQwU+p9DAgUAwMNC-e)

LastDay.3524:

Necros were intended to be THE attrition Profession.
Slow, but incredibly hard to escape from, extremely hard to kill due to their Death Shroud and Life Steals.
At one point, I’ve been told, a Necro could bunker 5 people alone by himself!
Overpowered? Yes, for sure! Nerfed rightfully! …but way too hard.

Necro was able to bunker 5 people solo not because of Shade, nor because of lifesteal, but because of the following: Ritual of Protection pulsed with wells instead of being on cast, DS itself counted as a stun break AND most importantly, people were bloody stupid back then. Mesmers didnt understand how blurred frenzy worked (which was a immunity and not a evade back then) and were using stuff like Scepter/Torch, Guardians did consecration builds (which just recently turned actually viable), Sword and shield was like the “true warrior” build back then, etc.

If youd retrun it and implement the same mechanic that confounding suggestion (mesmer GM, that on applying daze has a chance to stun, but it still applies the daze effect on the cast skill if used as interrupt thus triggering all effects of it) and most medium sized bosses with cc immunity have (that using cc on them still interrupts their channels), thus making a GM trait which gives immunity to control loss in DS, but not to getting interrupted or cced with conditions. It would be seriously all it takes to make necros fine in terms of everything but bunkering (for which lifesteal values would need to be raised by around 40-50).

NeXeD.3042:

When exactly is the stupid spite gm worth it. WvW massive conditions cleanses. Pvp it’s useless in small scale fights. Pve yah OMG so useful let’s play conditions in pve…. It was a nice idea but it’s not really good in practice

Except that both in high level fractals and Teq/Wurm a carrion scav build is very strong (bloaters, grub pops so ERT and north shipwreck defense/husks respectively).

Sors Immani.8429:

@Bhawb I respect your opinion on this as I’ve sought out your posts on several occasions for advice in the past, so could you please elaborate? I can understand staff mark blast finishers being a little strong but not the others.

A LB projectile that when traited functions the same as Staff 1 is too strong?

Changing the field from light to water on Well of Blood is a little steep of a change, admittedly, since it’s supposedly one of the strongest heals in the game but a lot of people complain about the necro’s group utility capabilities. This would help solve that issue by granting a (traited) targeted water field that grants (traited) toughness as well.

Again, with all respect, please elaborate on why it would be “too strong of a change”.

Easy to explain:
Chillblains self combo would be bonkers and in general 3 blast finishers on one weapon, even if they rely on enemies to proc is broken (not to even think about wvwvw potential). Like 14s of ice armor or 9 might in a pop or chain aoe blinds with wells.

Life blast could be a 100% finisher, doesnt matter, non factor

WoB would, if a water field, be officially the most bonkers healing skill, having a 5.4 healing power ratio and a 10 second room for additional 1k heals and 0.2 additional scaling.

NeXeD.3042:

20 seconds is a wicked long time in pvp……. unless it’s two extreme bunkers fighting almost all fights should be over before 20 seconds, unless of course one of the fighters is a little kitten and keeps running away.

Fight hasn’t happened yet, I work 24s so I can do it Wednesday night est after 8, or all day friday.

Not to be a buzzkill, but even in tournament warmup games there were instances of something like a engie and guard going at eachother for over 2 mintues…

Flumek.9043:

ive recently come to the conclusion that, if you would combine:

- spite condi heal GM
- death DS mini regen GM
- blood draw 1x condi GM

i still dont know if i would take it for 30pts

Actually just the spite gm would make it worth it since it is actually strong when you can use it, problem is all of them are clunky and their uptime/reliability is nothing compared to other traits.

Bhawb.7408:

Different classes different balance in this case.

Unholy Sanctuary isn’t weak on its own, it is weak because it is unsupported by a build that could take use of it (a non MM bunker, which isn’t viable atm).

Actually no, its weak on its own, in its total uptime its worse than most master adepts including bloody vampiric (seriously, over the molten duo fight, you get more hp from hitting kitten with base vampiric than US, thats with maxing out DS uptime).

TLDR: worst circumstance base masters are better than this grandmaster.

a) Stop balancing for wvwvw, its a worthless format that should not be taken into account for balance
b) Learn to counterplay, there is a warrior or necro with cc, melandru rune set, there is a +40% cond dur on the enemy, get your -40%, enemy has a power build, use blocks and evade moves

Using Chillblains n Dark Path (and if you dont trait em, hydro sigil which also gives like a auto attack worth of damage in a aoe) with your other condi cc (tshackles, dark pact or ufeast) will keep enemies in permanent kite situation.

flow.6043:

Andele.1306:

Unholy martyr actually has a lot of potential as a good blood trait…

How?
If anything it should be in Soul Reaping instead of Renewing Blast. You know… put the healing trait (like Transfusion) in the healing trait line and the life force generating trait in the line that buffs DS.
And of course it’s total garbage, at best it deserves an adept or master minor slot.

Overall, Path of Corruption makes sense, and Parasitic Contagion would if it was in Blood Magic and we could heal in DS. The rest is just bad.

Well, its protecting your allies, something the supportive/life siphon tree is thematically about (tho it is more about healing). Yes it does generate life force, but thats to offset the fact that you are kinda murdering yourself (25 bleed stacks, immobs, etc)

Spoj The Second.7680:

• Parasitic Contagion: Makes no sense putting a second condi trait in the power line. Wrong place for this trait.
• Path of corrution: A good wvw/pvp trait. Would of preferred something useful in pve aswell but im happy with this.
• Unholy Sanctuary: Nice concept. Not strong enough and relies too much on heavy lifeforce generation.
• Unholy martyr: Seems pointless as we already have utilities and traits which do this. I would put Parasitic contagion as the blood magic grandmaster and get rid of this one.
• Renewing blast: Complete trash.

Overall all new grandmasters are either terrible or pvp focused. Last time I checked necro needed the most help in pve and some help in high lvl tpvp. So why no new utility? Utility is something that would help necro in both pve and high lvl tpvp.

Well Parasitic Contagion could have been in Blood with Fetrid Consumption being put into Spite (since it already has Training of the Master), tho its not really a problematic placement overall (lose some gain some).

Path of corrution feels very good and has strong pvp power, but it would have made more sense if it did something like give additional 10~20% cdr on Dark Path.

Unholy Sanctuary – let me just point this out, most master minors (inluding our bloody vampiric) are better than it, 130 pre second while in DS vs permanent 360 regen, 130 aoe for the entire team pre 5-7s, permaregen for free and 1300 pre 10 seconds for entire team…. yeah both most selfish heal trait and worst not even being a minor trait.

Unholy martyr actually has a lot of potential as a good blood trait… it just doesnt have the target count nor does DM 6/shrouded removal pulse like all simmilar traits pre 3-5s to remove a condi; nor does UM have a trick like making said conditions last 50% longer but are applied counting 0 condition damage/doing base 43~328 damage.

Carrion, dire, rabid, knight, soldier, valkyre – stuff that works in wvwvw roams without dying to every 2 man group in 3 seconds, tho zerker ofc works as a siege well bomb.

dancingmonkey.4902:

Your justication for stability applies to engineer, thief, and mesmer as well. Only they do not have the HP to take the damage while stunned. Are you good with them getting similar levels of stability?

It doesnt because evade, block and teleport skills which have identical function but with the addition of mobility or damage immunity.

Necros designated weakness is mobility, not cc.

Kiriakulos.1690:

You are, however, ignoring the problem of positioning and susceptibility to enemies.
For lifeblasts to hit that hard you need to be within the 600 range and since you have Deathly perception there’s no stability available.

Yes, Necros hit hard, I’ve never seen a single person who knows this profession well complain about damage, even before the Dhuumfire patch. But the class as a whole has too few survival tools, almost all of which are passive abilities for mitigation. This has always been request and complaint number 1 from Necro players.

Just ignore the dude, my guess is hotjoin + wvwvw player.

leman.7682:

History repeats itself.

I think the devs, at some point, just lost the necro in translation.
Nerfs to great mechanics (Putrid Mark) and introduction of cheese have been happening for months now, with almost all the other professions receiving quality of life changes.

Necro lags behind other professions in design department and the balance devs seem to have no clue on how to proceed.

Been so since beta weekend 2. Tho i think that just before the dhuumfire patch, a dev was on necros for like 2 months doing stuff like pushing DS/downed fix, reducing cooldown of Sarmor, fixing Swalk detection, removing stand still requirements from necro skills, etc

Dakota.4591:

PVE Tank Necro is not a thing.

PVE Tank anything is not a thing.

Actually, its one of the 3 kinds of necro people seem to take in and real fractals, next to full DP zerker and scav carrion true damage/siphon builds.
Tho thats more for a carefree mai, ascalon and dredge fractal.

ManaCraft.5630:

Andele.1306:

You know, how about we make siphons scale on something actually related to death shroud… like vitality? Or make a overall triple imput (vitality boosts both components, power boosts damage, healing power boosts healing) with current scaling multipliers (0.2% for P/HP and 0.4% for vitality?)

I wouldn’t outright dismiss the idea, you probably have some room to work with, but it’s a mechanic that easily gets out of hand. It depends on the extent to which you think it’s healthy for a class to be allowed to double dip with an attribute. Or triple dip rather, since vitality would then boost life, life force, and healing. To be honest, with the already high amount of base life on necros, you’d probably have a hard time justifying it.

If the blood line was designed properly, no one would care about dire gear – they’d be worried about apothecary’s instead.

Well thats kinda exactly the point since the more hp a profession has, the longer it takes for its burst to go off (seriously think, the 3 professions with instakill combos are medi guards, air eles and thieves, while both warrior and necro rely on a buildup to slap someone; tho warriors being actually able to stick in there because they can regen 400hp pre second with minimal sacrifice).

ManaCraft.5630:

2) healing power can become a relevant attribute for necromancers, so that we can get a proper tradeoff going between offense/defense.

You know, how about we make siphons scale on something actually related to death shroud… like vitality? Or make a overall triple imput (vitality boosts both components, power boosts damage, healing power boosts healing) with current scaling multipliers (0.2% for P/HP and 0.4% for vitality?)

Carighan.6758:

Anhomedog.7968:

You should see me on my thief… Torment is quite fun when you have enough torment on to do 1k+ a tick on top of the poison, multiple bleeds, and Confusion that does 2k a tick…It’s quite fun when I can down a person in like 2 seconds with a condi build.

Uh huh. So let’s look at this a bit further. For some reason you:

• Got 10 Stacks of Torment. AFAIK only Thieves can apply this much, and only with partymembers around them.
• Got ~15 stacks of Confusion on top of that. I don’t even know. Maybe if you’re fighting en entire party solo, and one of them is a Perplexity-Engineer?
• Only have ~7,5k HP.

Seriously, couldn’t you at least invent an “example” which isn’t that blatantly thought up? Hrm?

I dont get what you actually mean, but a thief can keep 10 stacks of torment and confusion on a person with perplexity runes on p/d (bleeds torment and gap creation) s/p (initial gap closer with daze spam and reliable condi removal/anti cc) combo and sigil of torment procs…

Bhawb.7408:

Lightsbane.9012:

well then. that would mean that half of the chill effect does not affect the thief class. other than utility skills. maybe anet should address this?

Its been talked about before. Generally what I hear from people (who I trust to not say unreasonable crap like, “THIEVES ARE BAD NEED BUFFS, MUST DO 50K BACKSTABS”) is that while thieves aren’t affected by chill in their weapon skill CDs, they are much more strongly affected by the lack of mobility, because they are so heavily based on mobility. With that massive reduction in mobility hurting them even more than others I’ve heard good arguments that it fairly covers the loss of CDR on their weapon skills.

It is certainly debatable, but I think I tend to agree that it is fair it doesn’t affect them.

Its totally not like they are immune to mobility reduction skills because of 4 dodges, most of their skills having evade frames which ignore movement speed factors and have a teleport on every weapon set except double pistol.

In general id say necros are fine in WvWvW, but this video is just putting 20 bunnies infront of a crocodile and expecting a real fight (half the people dont even use stun breaks).

P.S. Noone cares about WvWvW balance.

Login.5102:

Andele.1306:

wifesteal).

Stay away from my woman.

Anyways it would have to be a huge healing buff like in your example. Because most life siphoning wont do anything about get focused down.

Lol and if they want us to be ping pong balls, how about gain health evertime your CC’d.

Thresh got 100% wifesteal from lucian~

Also as for cc, it would be a part of it, either DS cooldown working off entry or us getting shade.

Login.5102:

HERE IS THE PROBLEM

Anet wants us to be the attrition class.
+
Anet does not want to give us block,aegis,vigor,stability,evades or invulnerability.

Why the hell can they not see these two ideas are not compatible in Guild Wars 2.
Classes that can evade and dodge ALL incoming damage or skills when they choose(or simply be invulnerable or block) makes a better candidate for attrition.

Being ping ponged around and being team focused is not attrition.

They would be compatible if they werent afraid of giving necros the healing needed to do that (like for example, healing for 20% of the damage delt to DS in the last 7 seconds? Or around 94 base hp on hit from vampirc (but it being mutually exclusive to other forms of wifesteal).

Loco.4561:

Right then, so according to you the way to beat condition builds is to stack more vitality and more condition removal…it is now MANDATORY to use condition removal skills in every single build you use for pvp. And what happens when you stack more vitality and use condition removal utils/traits…?? Your damage goes down, so how are you going to break the tank of that condition player who only has to use ONE stat to give him high sustained damage and then he uses 2 defensive stats?

How are you supposed to break his bunker when you are FORCED yourself to spec just to stay alive? And then there is the matter of condition removal, most condi players can stack conditions faster than you can clear them or your char doesn’t have a lot of access to condi removal, so what are you supposed to do then?

Or you just go zerker and instakill the person with a proper burst build… and dont say its impossible, even if that person has dire (so wvwvw) you can 100-0 people with around 18k hp and 2.6k armor with eles thieves mesmers and guardians. Or you can go condi yourself and give him a taste of their own medicine.

Fun fact: did you know that the “optimal” pve condi setup requires not only being able to reliably get all condis off and keep em on over 10s (which is impossible unless you get 2+ professions working together) and his zerker counterpart hitting a enemy with 3.8k armor (average being from 2.3 to 2.6) for one to be bale to compare dps~

Also lets go alongside the counter list:

Universal counters – block, dodge, invul, evade moves, blind, ripping/corrupting might, ccing the source of damage before it can get applied.

List of counters to condi damage – melandru runes, hoelbrak runes, rune of lyssa, condition removal which every profession should have just like they wear armor pieces.

(remember that conditions get boosted by only cond duration and cond damage)

List of counters to direct damage – armor, protection, weakness

(direct attacks on the other hand benefit from % bonus damage multipliers, critting, vuln on the enemy, crit damage and ofc normal power itself)

In a reasonable world why are you complaning about something so very basic as attacks that are just delayed over time giving you not only easy time to avoid them initially but also mitigate most of their damage with a button press.

Pyriall.5027:

Most new GM traits were out right bad, should not be GM, or are in the wrong trait line. Terrible? Yes. Surprised? Nope.

Well except for said UMartyr, they arent really terrible, just underperform with current necro setups. Even the healing on life blast has a good idea behind it (tho with medicore execution compared to one superb and one bad in normal circumstances but godsend for necro traits).

sorrow.2364:

Tim.6450:

Correct but warrior has reliable acces to poison (sigil of doom + fast hands means 50% uptime of poison with one sigil)

So can Necro. The only difference is that Necro isn’t forced to use a valuable sigil slot to apply poison.

Tim.6450:

Necromancer do not have reliable acces to aoe chill (unless you count epidemic).

Chilblains is a reliable access to chill.

Tim.6450:

Well, you have to consider that necro with aoe condition skills is actuallly a condition spec while the hambow is a power spec. By the way fan of fire is AOE.

But it still applies burning. Even in full condition build, all of the warrior’s condition are single target, except for burning.

Tim.6450:

Wrong, cooldowns come into play in this discussion. 3 out of 4 marks have 20 seconds cooldown or higher and mark of blood has a 6 second cooldown. Warrior longbow 3 skills with a cooldown lower or equal to 10 seconds. So while the necromancer marks hit easier (I’m not even sure about because fan of fire has a low tell). The warrior can use his skills more often and have more chances to hit someone thus more reliable.

Cooldown isn’t related with the reliability of a skill.
Casting a skill isn’t like rolling a dice and hoping that the skill lands.
Also, you, purposely or unpurposely, have ignored the LoS factor which is quite big in competitive play.

Tim.6450:

Fierce blow has incredible uptime of weakness unlike all those other skills. 75% uptime untraited, ungeared is alot more then 25%, 20%, 30%,25%, 16% uptime.The necromancer has at least with 3 of them to reach the same uptime then Firece Blow.

Uptime matters very little when you have to stay in melee range and can’t reliably mantain it.
Throw Torch has a much higher uptime compared to Incendiary Powder, but that doesn’t mean that Throw Torch is better compared to Incendiary Powder in terms of burning application.

a) Why are you comparing utility conditions to active defense? The two have about as much in common as losing a boss vs skipping him or doing a wall immob on him (as in getting the bosses hitbox and pathing stuck in a wall to keep him in combat and on low hp while in forced pathing like lupi on the lower right door). Yes you do get the same results, but one requires effort/a trade of skill and focus for it while the other is easy effortless and with almost no cost.

b) Dont even freaking dare compare a aoe utility weapon with a less than 2.5 times power ratio (on actives not aa) with long cooldowns to a might stacking condi weapon with 4.1 times power ratio (not counting burst skill in addition to not counting aa which have the same 0.6 as necro staff) with low cooldowns.

c) Are you telling me that a 8s cd gap closer with a 1s stun does not allow you a reliable 3/4 cast time hit despite having minimum 3 more cc and maximim 7 more? Because that is bs…

Bhawb.7408:

Really, I just wanted to adapt Contagion into GW2.

You know that that wont happen, devs are too scared to make sense to even think about doing stuff like giving 3s of retaliation on DS a new name and implementing real SS.

Cogbyrn.7283:

If someone ever created a thread where people posted their own definitions/ideas of what the words “mitigation”, “sustain”, and “attrition” meant with respect to GW2, I bet no two people would have the same idea for all three.

Death Shroud is a sustain mechanic, regardless of whether or not the tip-top competitive teams currently have a Necro who uses it to sustain for a long period of time in a fight. It just isn’t currently balanced to be usable in a tip-top tier situation without sacrificing too much for the team in the current meta of Conquest mode. That’s a very specific situation, and does not in any sense mean Death Shroud is just no longer a sustain mechanic for the rest of the game.

http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/sustain – no, by book definition DS is not a sustain mechanic.

Or how about, every 3 seconds (starting 3s after entering DS) pull a condi from up to 3 allies onto yourself whos scaling has + 50% cond duration (so kitten bleed is 10s post transfer to you), but with 0 condition damage (so 100+ bleeds are now the basic 43 bleeds).

Bhawb.7408:

Andele.1306:

Then you meet a meditation guard, a decent mesmer or a ranger and the rest of your day is ruined.

And… what happens? I could see some of them being annoying due to boon removal (although I don’t see what a Ranger would do at all) or trying to burst, but there is no way they’re bursting through 30k+ HP with 3k armor.

I’m honestly curious to see if there’s a way to make the builds as good as possible while having awful support/bunker weapons.

What is the main requirement of a bunker to function? Keeping a point alive, said guys murder from safety while keeping you off point.

Then you meet a meditation guard, a decent mesmer or a ranger and the rest of your day is ruined.