It’s pretty much safe to say they don’t know what they want from Dhuumfire. We’re better off coming up with something new.
Foot in the Grave is already good without near to death. It’s about 30% stability uptime (excluding the DS cast delay). Near to Death takes it to 40% and we’re not even counting boon duration.
If Furious Demise lasted longer NtD might be better though.
It’s not and I’m not having this argument again.
Thank God you’re not the only one in this thread. Never really understood why people feel like posting when they have nothing to say, but alas thanks for your useful input.
My point is I disagree with the assumption that the traits were balanced around assuming NTD is taken because most work fine without it with the blatant exception of the Weakening Shroud nerf. If you want a example of bad design of this kind, it would be ranger signets which are pretty mediocre and almost designed around taking a grandmaster trait. Near to Death doesn’t even scrape the barrel for worst trait for necros. We have an entire line (Blood) that could follow the logic in the OP and actually be highly agreeable. For example, bloodthirst was adjusted according to the assumption it’d always be taken with other siphoning traits. And thus they remain so bad that nobody cares.
It’s not an assumption. Whenever ANet posts about DS trigger traits they bring up Near to Death as a balance factor. Every single DS trigger trait was balanced to be average with NTD and ends up subpar without it.
The same is applied to all life stealing skills/traits and bloodthirst.
3 sec stability on entering DS is awful since 3 seconds are barely enough time to complete 2-3 casts of anything and you sacrifice our only damage avoidance skill for the next 7 seconds, assuming NTD. No other class has to make a choice of uninterruped short time for taking all incoming damage in the face or being actually able to avoid damage. Never mind that there’s an actual resource associated with being able to use it.
% of uptime is a lot less important than actual continuos uptime for stability, just ask yourself what is better, 3 sec stability every 7 seconds or 20 seconds of stability every 80 seconds? I’d take the 20 seconds even though it’s proportionately less, since with 20 seconds I can do a full skill rotation AND heal by the end of it.
You know, Near to Death was once a GM trait and was mutually exclusive with FITG. When it got moved down to Master, FITG was adjusted to take NTD into account. Oh wait, no it wasn’t.
And sure, 3 seconds isn’t that much, but it’s still fairly useful to block incoming CC if you know it’s coming, you know for what DS was inteded to do.
The game’s interface is one of its huge weaknesses and often hinders new players. The worst case of the interface has got to be the BLTP. Why can’t we filter it by stuff we can actually use?
The other problem is the arbitrary mechanics, this being one of them.
In b4 “technical limitations”
For now, metal scraps.
It has to do with the difficulty of typing while playing, especially if one is leveling a new character that needs to try. So you will find most chatter in Lion’s Arch.
Would be nice if we had a quick emote button somewhere. Or a predefined msg accessible with other keys.
It is very difficult to make a build that is viable for both. You will most likely need to swap gear or traits to be in a good spot. In general, large scale wvw requires more survivability because damage comes from many sources and you can’t dodge everything, while pve is generally revolving around DPS and using dodges and other active defense to avoid the deathblows from bosses.
Conditions are very bad in pve, thus it would be more simpler to do a power builld— something like 30 spite 10 curses 30 soul reaping is a place to start.
Ascii’s build is also very solid for WvW: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/necromancer/Ascii-s-WvW-Wellomancer-Build/2499132
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Oh power creep. Yea, I think they’re very opposed to that. That’s why there’s all this ascended… never mind.
The avalanche has already started. It is too late for the pebbles to vote.
“I play the way I want. But those guys over there are getting more shinies than I am. It’s not okay for them to play the way they want.”
There’s also another key notion. In a nerf-based philosophy, people always try to think of what to bring down (whatever is OP) instead of fixing what’s wrong with their class. This results in a lack of creativity and just a lot of screaming and whining.
How can you balance a game around people that whine about someone else being OP? You don’t.
Foot in the Grave is already good without near to death. It’s about 30% stability uptime (excluding the DS cast delay). Near to Death takes it to 40% and we’re not even counting boon duration.
If Furious Demise lasted longer NtD might be better though.
It’s not and I’m not having this argument again.
Thank God you’re not the only one in this thread. Never really understood why people feel like posting when they have nothing to say, but alas thanks for your useful input.
My point is I disagree with the assumption that the traits were balanced around assuming NTD is taken because most work fine without it with the blatant exception of the Weakening Shroud nerf. If you want a example of bad design of this kind, it would be ranger signets which are pretty mediocre and almost designed around taking a grandmaster trait. Near to Death doesn’t even scrape the barrel for worst trait for necros. We have an entire line (Blood) that could follow the logic in the OP and actually be highly agreeable. For example, bloodthirst was adjusted according to the assumption it’d always be taken with other siphoning traits. And thus they remain so bad that nobody cares.
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Foot in the Grave is already good without near to death. It’s about 30% stability uptime (excluding the DS cast delay). Near to Death takes it to 40% and we’re not even counting boon duration. Flashing in and out costs like no life force, especially going deep into soul reaping.
If Furious Demise lasted longer NtD might be better though.
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It’s a reward directly associated with doing the dungeon. If it were in some way absolutely vital to other content, I’d understand but the alternatives are overwhelming.
All of this is really just solving a problem that doesn’t exist.
People speedrun zerker gear because in order to kill stuff faster, you need to do more damage faster. (duh!)
If you’re not speccing for max damage (while being able to maintain survival) then you don’t care about speedrunning. This game isn’t about speedrunning content. Nor does not speedrunning stuff impact your game in any possible way except for making gold faster. And this affects stuff that isn’t dungeons too, like open world and wvw. Wow, you spent 5 minutes longer clearing this area. I don’t care how fast you think should clear it.
You need to learn mechanics in order to run with “max” dps. Bad zerkers are worse than useless. Thus a difference in skill can be observed.
The true problem is the inferiority of toughness and vitality in actually absorbing damage. When you die in 2-3 hits anyways, you wonder why you even bothered with these defenses anyways.
The other problem is the inability of conditions to be competitive in PvE. That’s the elephant in the room that destroys build diversity, and as long as they hide behind technical limitation excuses, pve will never offer true variety.
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The argument that just because on profession got nerfed doesn’t necessarily mean another should. Each profession plays/survives differently. A blanket nerf(Guardian/Mesmer) like this makes no sense. And just to reiterate, the weaknesses are as follows since I failed to mention them earlier:
Exactly. Blanket nerfs without context aren’t a good idea, unless you want to homogenize each class to the point where distinctions are meaningless.
Let’s say that condition damage was nerfed on Necros and Guardians. Would be okay to say to necros, “Hey guardians got condition damage nerfed too!” Clearly one values condition damage more than the other.
Because espohts.
But in all seriousness, it’s nice that they’re occasionally breaking balance up into pvp/pve, and sometimes even splitting wvw even some more. It’s inevitable that there will need to be work as a 3 sided balance, whether anyone likes it or not.
These changes sound like trash. I hope that’s just not it. Nerfing the vigor with nothing to compensate?
“Hey, x class is too reliant on y. Let’s nerf it w/o giving alternatives!”
The vigor change isn’t limited to guardians. All similar traits will get the same treatment.
That doesn’t really make me feel any better. And honestly I fear more for my ranger who really only has dodges/vigor as a real defense and they have a trait that’s arguably better than VP.
I mean, not all classes have said trait, and I wonder how many classes have such a low health and is so reliant on close combat with active defenses.
The actual problem is that would it change my build at all? Does it look like more options? Probably still going to take the trait anyways but I’ll let the meta peeps figure it out.
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The concept of buff to equality leading to power creep as a legitimate concern is simply nonsensical in the grand scheme of things. While it is true in extreme scenarios that buffing everything would break intended gameplay, that runs under the assumption that the changes were made with the precision of a chainsaw, which is none at all.
Even if everything were buffed to the level of the most overpowered, it would not trivialize the game at all. It would not decrease the difficulty at all, because the player always had the choice of picking the most OP thing. Therefore, nothing has changed. Now this isn’t to say that nerfs aren’t completely necessary. You could possible bring Mr. OP to 90% effectiveness and bring everything else to that level too. But that’s not a nerf dominant philosophy. And also, if you buff everything else, then relatively speaking, OP gets a nerf.
Also, who cares if PvE gets easier? The game wasn’t balanced for that. Content should always be balanced around the highest level of play. And people that are too lazy to press the dodge button twice should not be listened to when it comes to balance. Until you solve the very core problems, it doesn’t matter what you do! And clearly the content is the issue here.
When something as good, and everything else sucks, it might be the fault of those thing that suck. Even after the zerker nerf, it is still the gear to use for pve. And there was nothing really wrong with it.
Blatant nerf hammering is just the simplest and least creative solution. It also hurts the notion of “fun”. It’s generally not fun to have your builds invalidated just because other people thought it wasn’t ok. Sometimes, we need to make sacrifices for the sake of a better game, but there needs to be a limit. Screw balance if it isn’t fun. I don’t care if that warrior over there can do it 25% as fast. If people are kicking me because of my class, they can go kitten off. I mean, I’d rather roleplay as some ungodly fighter as opposed to a “moderately acceptable one that is on par with the rest”.
For example, if I can kill you in 2 hits, but your HP was doubled, then I will naturally have a hard time killing you.
The ultimate problem with nerf dominant philosophy is that ultimately revolves around hammering the nail that sticks out. Ultimately, it will hammer down what’s unique about each profession and build. If you’re going to do this and nerf things across the board without considering the context of the profession, then I would say cut to the chase, and remove all but one class and one skillset. Nerf heavy philosophy = making sure all the classes are homogenized and pretty much the same. Because that’s perfect balance.
One of my favorite games is (obviously) Starcraft (1) Brood War, and I use it because people often hail it as the epitome of perfect balance. It’s not. It’s relatively balanced when the skill level is high enough and even that relies on a number of factors. But I’m just going to summarize this concept quickly. In Starcraft, pretty much every unit seemed overpowered if analyzed in a vacuum. You had dark templars that would instantly end the game if you couldn’t see them, the basic zergling (of which “Zerging” comes from) was by far the most cost effective unit in the game because you could send hundreds and once fully upgraded has NOTHING that can compete with it for cost, but it was okay since minefields would also blow them up by the hundreds. The Zerg could spray “dark swarm”, a shield in the air, that blocked all ranged attacks, of which the Terran race had no good counter because most of their viable units are ranged. None of them is really fair, and sure you can counter them, but it is sure arbitrary. The results were always drastic and extremely brutal, and in the hands of a better player made the game looked completely unfair. But it really wasn’t. Did they nerf stuff? Yes. Did they swing it around recklessly? Nope.
Balance because there are many awesome choices, not because every choice is mediocre. The warrior is in a good place because they have many strong builds. What’s wrong with that? All classes should be like that.
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Listening to the live stream sounds like the Ranger is getting some big ole nerfs. Fixing Empathetic Bond is a big one for some Rangers..
Havent used EB yet. It is counterproductive to the class itself. Another crime among rangers. One which never seem to go away and affect us hard in WvW.
If pet = ~40% of our DPS then why should we use traits that will kill the pet???
EB = -40% DPS….Wilderness Survival is one of the better thought out Ranger trait lines. All the minor traits are good (25% more endurance, protection on dodge and 10% more damage when health over 90%). EB is also one of the best method of reliable condi clear (until they fix it anyway). Condition builds also get a boost going down this line.
The 0/0/30/15/25 condi/bunker build is still a decent build at least compared to other Ranger builds.
here’s a secret: Bark Skin works on ALL types of damage…..
Wait, condition damage too? Usually that kind of thing works only on direct damage.
I like how they propose changes, and then proceed to ignore all the feedback; and then basically repeat the same thing when it gets released.
Flesh of the Master lowered to 25%.
WTF? I’d understand in PVE but in wvw they don’t get a boost!
And lol@ vampiric master nerf.
Not entirely sure of the specifics surrounding the healing breeze changes (like how much does it heal for now exactly?), but I think I enjoy these changes, especially those general changes. I’ve always thought healing breeze should’ve even been more supporty.
It heals for 50% of its value when used, then 10% of the value on each pulse for a total of 5 pulses over 5 seconds(1 pulse/s). The second part is what heals allies too, so you can expect allies to get healed for about 50% of the value stated on Healing Breeze(provided they stay in range of the cone for 5 whole seconds). They said about 4500 or so, and scales “really well” with Healing Power in the livestream.
These changes sound like trash. I hope that’s just not it. Nerfing the vigor with nothing to compensate?
“Hey, x class is too reliant on y. Let’s nerf it w/o giving alternatives!”
Actually we are all getting compensated. We can now have 2 sigils in a 2-handed weapon and also have each sigil on their own internal cooldown. So if you use your 2nd sigil as Endurance(50% Endurance back on swap), it compensates.
That’s still a direct hit to people that use one hander/offhand.
Though I’m curious on the change to begin with. Are two handers that inferior to one hander/off handed that they need 2 upgrade slots?
They’re nerfing Empathetic Bond.
lol….
Yea cuz ranger condi removal is OP or something. What a joke.
Edit: Oh wait, that looks like a bug. Whatever.
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These changes sound like trash. I hope that’s just not it. Nerfing the vigor with nothing to compensate?
“Hey, x class is too reliant on y. Let’s nerf it w/o giving alternatives!”
I wonder if anyone brought up condition damage.
All this talk about zerker dominance but one of the reasons why it’s so dominant is that the alternatives for defeating enemies are so bad.
If pve conditions were a viable alternative, then at least it wouldn’t just be zerker. If you want build diversity…
And personally, I like the fact that utilities, defense, control, and healing can be viable without having to wear crappy gear for it.
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This forum is generally filled with intellectually dishonest, myopic complaints that rant endlessly on “x has this why don’t I have it”. Sometimes the hyperbole is so disconnected with reality that you wonder if they actually even play the game. Not all, but the loudest are usually like this. The problem is that even if the grievences are valid, the hyperbole make finding a solution based on this feedback to be completely impossible. Thus, there is a low signal to noise ratio as arguments will be based around the little area of which they play the game to be the center of the universe. And this kind of nonsense leads to some people thinking the necromancer needs nerfed. (but there’s multiple areas in the game to take in context… nope of course that doesn’t matter)
And some people believe that if you can pick the best choice, then there’s no reason to pick anything else. It is indeed hard pressing to declare anything in pve in which the necro is the best choice. Maybe open world, but nobody cares about open world as it is too low skill to stroke one’s ego; same goes for zerging in both pve and wvw of whic necros are also strong at. Buffs > Debuffs in PvE and necros specialize in high single target damage outside of condi builds. We have plenty of strength from aoe condi side such as epidemic, but conditions are broken there.
You can of course make up the difference by playing better but the disparity still exists and there’s no point trying to cover it up. It’s honestly not gamebreaking. On the other hand, chest beating and excessive melodrama makes any solution harder to find.
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To be fair, to people who take an hour to clear something like CoF in their terrible builds , it would seem like hax to earn gold from grinding those dungeons.
I don’t grind much by any definition and don’t have much gold, but I don’t go around envying about how much gold people have.
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From what I’ve observed, there’s a huge correlation between having no gold and spending all your time complaining on the forums. Not you OP, just the incessant amount of complaints about it being “impossible”.
I’ve never “grinded” much myself beyond dailies and monthlies and don’t have that much gold, but I’ve spend hundreds of gold at the least gearing all my characters and making sure they didn’t look like they came out of the circus.
The easiest way to make gold is to jump around doing world events for minimal effort. There you go: http://us.gw2stuff.com/en/events/us
You can also guest on bigger servers if nobody’s doing it.
If you do nothing but those, you’d generate a few gold every day and you don’t have to spend all that time “grinding”
There’s also no end to the karma gear that provides different skins. (though you need to buy transmute stones). You can also get some skins for badges in wvw that aren’t as ugly as the level 400 crafter garbage— badges come with achievement chests so that’s not much of a problem.
And yea, Orrian Boxes if you must.
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FOUR HUNDRED THIRTY ONE CONDITION DAMAGE!
/dramatic zoom in.
Totally convinced. I’m going to cast aside my inferior ways and go buy clerics/celestial trinkets.
If everyone jumped off a cliff…
Actually as a necro you should jump first.
Since I play necro and guardian, in general I run by the assumption that I stand and fight, or die. Repairs are cheap anyways.
Sometimes I can get away if most have fallen but I use Foot in the Grave + WoP/Spectral Walk/Warhorn and then hit plague as a last resort but usually have to take advantage of elevation and stuff.
Also, when you engage, stay right behind the “meat” no matter what happens. Being in boon/heal range is critical to survival. If you get separated from them, you’ll get bonked on the head, and gg.
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Processing….
Actually funny thread on this subforum.
Does not compute. Does not compute. Does not compute.
The nested quotes broke the forum so I am not totally replying to you, just to let you know in advance.
This has nothing to do with someone else being angry at you. I don’t even know how you got that from this post. It has to do with feeling that you’re not contributing YOURSELF. It’s something that I’m keenly aware of.
Even in Guild Wars 1, when I entered Jade Quarry for my mapping title and I was looking for what I was missing, instead of helping my team, I was keenly aware that’s what I was doing and I hated every second of it.
So yes, that was a great post….to me.
Aha, that’s kinda funny. Apparently something being your opinion makes it invalid. I kinda felt sorry for you that you actually have to clear that up, that it was in fact your opinion, and if that’s irrelevant we might as well delete the whole subforum.
And yea, I can understand the feeling that people don’t want to be there taking up space, not playing the content as it was intended, blocking other people from joining. That’s because I play a lot of wvw and hate queues. It neither benefits me nor does it benefit them especially if they come in to rallybot. The rally system is bad, etc, but that’s another discussion. Season 1 WvW was a good example of PvE players only looking for rewards just flooding the wvw maps and those queues as well as overall quality of gameplay was pretty awful. At least the achievements directed them towards doing useful things for the server to. Pushing a bunch of pvers who don’t want to be there for map completion and who obviously won’t spec for wvw and will rally people by the dozens allows me to arguably say that this has a minor negative effect on my wvw experience.
Anyhow, as for the whole “handed to you” part, there seems to be a lot of ad hominem going on here that really isn’t relevant. In essence, that’s largely irrelevant. It doesn’t matter if the people who want this are lazy or bad or whatnot, but the discussion should be rather is it a productive part of gameplay. Talking about workarounds and solutions and whatnot and berating people for not taking them is working under the initial premise that the current system is infallible. Which is kind of a circular logic which would block every change suggested to the game as people would be instructed to just deal with it. This is the kinda crap where you get people opposing basic QoL stuff like account bound world ranks for no good reason other than it’s the way it is. Anet knows better than them at least.
Now a lot of you who may have read me post may have noted that I often do insult complainers and tell them to L2P. I generally hold complaints in this forum in very low regards and know it’s because people complain because they are bad and/or unreasonable and the game should not be changed. It would be worse if it were to be tilted to these demands. And while I insult people for needing to L2p or being lazy, it’s never the core of my argument. I just use it after proving their badness.
But in this case, I don’t really have a right to tell people to L2p (unless it means L2 pay). You can with skill, sneak and get all POIs/ wps but you aren’t soloing keeps (maybe towers) for most players. That would require a greater level of skill than your average wvw’er. Yes, I know it’s not too hard to gather together a couple of people to take a tower, but that’s besides the point.
And telling people to transfer? lol. Do people actually do that just to get map completion? I know I wouldn’t bother which is why I can’t get on my high horse I guess.
I speak from the perspective of someone that actually plays wvw and I will attest that there is nothing to be proud of getting the 4 stars from these zones, and that if you are able to access a keep, then you should be thankful that you are on a server that has nice coverage. I could easily complete all 4 wvw maps, because my server makes good pushes (or blobs, whatever) and I understand my fortune in being able to Karma train. Which is why I find these inconsiderate comments directed at people who don’t have these opportunities (most likely on servers with poor coverage) to be lacking in perspective, and honestly, if we want to sling mud back at them, spoiled. Literally bragging about karma training, lol. Typical zerglings. So I l2p’d by landing on a halfway decent server. Hmm…
In the end, I see nothing of value lost by removing wvw for map completion besides the loss of easy prey. (I guess I’ll never win a 1v1 again). It certainly doesn’t make me feel it trivializes my own map completion.
Oh, and I’m gonna complete map wvw pretty soon on my 2 other alts btw. Those skill pts on the sides may take a bit longer because ewww pve in wvw.
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I’ve never enjoyed teampugging, especially in a competitive mode when people are just sooo serious and sometimes aren’t that good themselves. Practically everyone I saw in Brood War/Starcraft 2 complaining incessantly about how bad pugs were were bads themselves, and meanwhile I had a friend that stopped complaining and got far playing with randoms just because he learned to get better and could be a carry and was briefly top #10 in 3v3 sc2 ladder (yea, team games in that game were a joke, but his carrying skills were pretty real. Shows what you can do when you don’t whine)
Regardless of game I’ve played, I’ve always subscribed to the belief that if I go for random allies, then I have no right to complain unless they’re actively griefing or being jerks. If I want to have teammates that I know and trust and I know will perform, then I will go for a premade team. I honestly think if you are good enough, that you will have no trouble finding just as skilled players to play with you unless of course you are an obnoxious kitten that nobody wants to play with, but you ought to change this because this is a multiplayer game. Sometimes I will try to “teach” people though honestly, you can’t really teach people over chat over the span of a few minutes so keep that in mind.
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Feels good though I am filthy casual who has no need to measure e-penor in a video game. Gw2 is lacking in that regard
The biggest problem to me atm is the game interface and performance issues in general. The most important thing about a game is being able to play it, all other matters are secondary.
Exploration should not contain WvW. There’s really no “exploration” done; it’s not like the map isn’t revealed to you anyways and there aren’t any difficult vistas or anything. It’s mostly just busy work and hope you can either draw the right color or nightcap stuff. This is the only gameplay factor that’s out of the player’s control to an unreasonable extend. You could guest on other servers for difficult wps or whatnot; but you can’t do this for wvw unless you pay quite a bit.
I don’t see how it adds anything to gameplay. At least with hearts and crap you’re interacting with the world. Do you even get a letter for completing wvw maps?
And yes, I have completed all 4 maps just by virtue of being a wvw player. And the chests were awful. How about this? Just allow dem pve’ers to not have to do wvw for map completion and give the people that did the completion and wasted their time on it an extra reward chest retroactively?
Well, I don’t really care much about map completion but I would definitely say it doesn’t really add anything and if removed, I don’t see much negative effects either.
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Nope, we have more these days for whatever reason on SBI. We do like to make “mass exodus” jokes for some reason. It has to do with SBI being called a terribad bandwagon server. Which isn’t true at all. We are most definitely not a terribad bandwagon server. We may only karma train EB all day, we may have no concept of fighting without siege, we might not be able to count enemy numbers or even allied numbers(and count the enemy NPCs like river drakes as red, thus 30:5 odds when it’s really a 10:10 fight), and we may even be a terribad bandwagon server. But I repeat, we are most definitely not communists.
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The problem with ascended was with the method of release.
If it were all released at once and we were assured “Yep we felt like we were missing a tier at release, so this is it!” , people would be annoyed but at least you’d be able to plan out what you wanted to do. A lot of people would realize the nominal boost wasn’t trivial but at the very least you could point out it was a whole lot of work for not that much gain and ignore it mostly.
But because it was released bit by bit there were time gates and people feeling like they had to hoard all kinds of materials because “what if…” and if they were done crafting the crap they wanted, they had to stand around waiting for w/e new ascended crap to be released.
If people could get dark matter and fragments and dragonite from the very moment ascended came along I would bet there would be much less squabble. But here it just feels like you’ve completing one annoying task only to be beset by another. By staggering the release, they dictated the pace of this “long term” goal. And that’s something I don’t like. I really don’t care if someone acquires full ascended in a month. I care about what I gear myself with.
It just seemed like a tacky way of getting people who just want to grind for gear to stay around longer. That’s a futile task. It also didn’t help that ascended trinkets were missing stat combinations, giving an additional feeling that this wasn’t thought over much.
Ultimately, it’s not that huge unless you’re like roaming wvw or something. The main source of angst is now that there is no guarantee that this is the final tier. The sliding ascended releases just made a few feel “is this the end yet?” And I think a lot of people don’t even mind (even if they don’t like) spending a bunch of effort to get something. But if said time and effort gets tossed aside because more crap gets released, then why bother? Same reason why exotic jewelry feels like quite the waste.
Also, alts. The end.
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I’m really not sure why people want to end the “meta”. There’s always a better way of doing something and it always goes that way. If you don’t want to follow the hip build Just don’t party with kittens and be happy. Get some friends.
Not having golem underwater is a pain because it goes on cooldown if you wade in deep enough. Just stop it already.
Well Parasitic Bond is only 5 point investment and while most people wouldn’t bother, it’s still a nice “on the way” trait.
The others don’t have that kind of excuse at all. I think Siphoned Power should cast Well of Power @ 25% health+1 might stack. This fits in fine with the name and would actually be useful.
We have received concerns about the length of the name “necromancer” and because half our player base cannot read large words, we agree that it is imbalancing the game in relation to other classes.
The class has been renamed “corpse”. This class will always be downed when combat is activated to appease those that want easy kills. It’s not like they could escape anyways, so we believe this will affect zero players.
Fixed a bug where this class could kill other players*
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I’m pretty interested in the way you’re like plucking conditions off allies. It’s certainly something else.
Does the bloodthirst help much though?
“Completely useless” and “not as good” are two terms these forums never manage to separate. There is too much hyperbole and the masses are fickle, the meta and the game changes as the game gets changed.
it is true that in PvE, the necro’s strengths are just not as needed. Bosses are immune largely to control effects and boons reign supreme. You don’t really need condition manipulation. However it doesn’t mean that if you step into a dungeon you will die instantly and do 0 damage. Don’t bother with conditions in PvE; they are broken due to the 25 condi cap. That is an issue to consider.
If you want to grind hundreds of gold in a short amount of time, then don’t roll an necromancer. You would be a little bit slower. But in these cases, you’re not concerned about rolling a class, rather you’re rolling a farmer and there are better classes for this need— it would be redundant to spend all that time and resources to start up and set up a new toon solely for gold gain and in that case you would be better off just sticking with your established ones.
I think in the majority of situations the difference is harder to notice than some profess and frankly, in your situation you should pick the class that is most fun. It doesn’t matter if you pick a class that is 25% faster if playing every moment feels like a chore.
If you have any interest in WvW though, roll a necro.
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Parasitic Bond I thought was crap too, but it is in fact very strong in large scale wvw since necros have such an easy time tagging foes. Also applies to zerg events or anything involving many adds. It is almost the effect of an omnomnom compote.
Spite 15 is so irrelevant I forgot what it does.
Spite 25 is so bad, it gives you negative utility due to the fact you see it, realize it’s an insult that anyone could have possibly thought this was a legitimate minor at the grandmaster level, and start taking the game a little less seriously.
But it’s ok. Guardians have a trait “Kindled Zeal” (power to condition damage) which is grandmaster in the POWER tree for some reason even though the class has like one source of condition damage (burning). It’s almost certain this trait belongs to necromancers but got misplaced. It would have made more sense for guardians to instead have a trait that procs burning on crit or something since burning seems suited more for guardians as guardians have many proc on crit traits and a lot of their dps mechanics revolve around burning due to having a trait that does 10% more (direct, not condition) damage to burning opponents and another 10% to opponents with a condition on them. Wonder where that went.
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- No nerfs, please.
- Remember pet names (really, what?)
- Barrage doesn’t root when firing. Yea, I get the idea of unloading death from above via safe distance. But reality has it that it is neither unloading death nor is the distance that safe.
- Merge Eagle Eye and piercing arrow. There is no reason to spend 2 traits to make a weapon barely usable. In PvE that would be generous to call it even that. Then we could take spotter and not be useless to the people around us.
- Aoe ranged pet
- More on demand condition removal, eg. Lightning Reflexes also removes cripple, or Hunter’s shot removes immobilized. Or something. Anything.
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Well, it is kinda unintuitive that killing other players isn’t a good way of gaining wxp.
To even play in WvW as a Ranger I had to sacrifice a lot of damage to be survivable enough and then there wasn’t much a point. In a large group I could be somewhat useful providing ranged pressure at a choke, but as many have said there are classes that do that better. Perhaps if they lowered the barrage cd and make it not root us to finish, it would be more useful. And of course, as many have said, the pet is absolutely useless in large group/zerg. I have never ever had an issue with Ranger’s pets while playing one of my other 80s. I don’t even notice them, or quickly kill them…but usually I barely see them.
You make valid points; though I think ranged pets survive a lot easier. They still are stupid and take 30 years to hit anyone though. They need a consistent ranged aoe pet.
But I’m curious at the “sacrifice damage to be survivable in wvw part” complaint that’s been floating around here. Most classes for zergplay have to do that too. 0/5/30/30/5 is pretty standard for zerg guardians even though it does terrible damage and is very selfish compared to other guardian builds but it makes them bricks that can give whatever support they can. I suppose that has a purpose though, being the brick. But in any case, pvt is generally stressed in large scale wvw and we generally call dps zerkers “rallybots”. Plus the standard is usually to stack anyways so you can be close for boons. (which also makes range pretty lacking in surviving, honestly).
From what I gather though, the main advantage of classes like the guardian is that their traits can be gained with minimal investment. For example 5 in virtues offers a lot more support by turning virtue activation into giving a lot more useful boons. 5 in honor gives vigor on crit and synergizes with the 15 honor minor which heals on dodge. These traits all work together.
Ranger adept traits are mostly, quite bad or selfish and you generally have to trait much higher into the tree to get anything done. The synergy between the minors is well… pretty meh. Well, wilderness survival is good, but it’s also all selfish stuff… In essence, these things are really good in small scale, but it doesn’t make that big of a difference the bigger the numbers are.
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I still have a knight set that’s been collecting dust in my bank for ages. Can I have my 25 gold back? :p Just kidding, it did its job back then so we could learn better stuff later. It’s just the reasoning was questionable since the idea that toughness draws aggro has never really been proven though.
As for Nemesis, since I used to play necromancer, I came across his guides and never really agreed with them but at least he had his reasons besides really strange ones revolving avoiding Curses 5. But here he doesn’t have it right at all and really needed more time to learn the class. It’s not intuitive that +% modifiers are what really boosts damage and certainly a lot of dps guardian builds were made after Strife that pretty much ignored the idea of 25 virtues. Yep.
“Ryu’s fireball and DP are really easy to do so he must be top tier” is basically what I got out of this rant.
Also, hyper beam does so much damage, so it must be the most OP skill in pokemon. [hundred blades]
This is a game where everyone needs to bring their own sustain. Fine.
This is a game where enemy conditions will drop you fast. Fine.
/looks at Ranger condition removal options.
>.>
Nothing will be fixed unless they improve the ability to combat conditions in a condition dominated meta.
They can choose to follow you or not. It’s their choice and their problem.
This game needs way better methods of communicating. In Diablo 2 (a 15 year old game) you could hit the number pad for some predefined voice messages. Something that allowed for pre-defined phrases with the push for a button shouldn’t be too hard for a game in 2014… I hope.
Because it is inferior for zerging, although I’m just going to say there’s much more in wvw to do than to follow a zerg and press 1.
I have like 70 hours on my ranger to find out what the QQ was about and it’s not THAT bad really. After hearing all the QQ about how bad they’re on in PvE when they’re really not (“I tried a bearbow and it was terrible, reroll”) and the amount of bads that still can’t use the sword properly even allegedly having played the class as a main and the general tendency of forum posts to hyperbolize grievances into atrocities , I’m just not inclined to take people’s anecdotes seriously. Sure, sure I main guardian but a blind monkey can play a tanky wvw guardian and that’s a problem with the mode itself. The nature of the game greatly favors melee due to the AOE cap and being in range for boons. Ranged weapons are also frequently underpowered compared to their melee counterparts; of which becomes blatantly clear in PvE…
What is true though is a few things:
- Ranged Aoe damage is balls. What’s the use of 1500 range when it’s all single target unless you take leeching, whoops I meant piercing arrows and then you have to sacrifice either spotter or kitten , 1500 range? In addition, barrage is pretty bad. Yea, I’m gonna just root myself here and leave myself totally vulnerable to classes that can close the distance in a single swoop.
- Stability (and thus ping ponged). We have the elite skill, but I think it’s pretty dumb that your source of stability has such a long cast time that it leads to you getting CC’s anyways. There’s also Signet of the Beastmaster + Wild but that requires another trait in marksmanship and ugh and that’s a long cooldown. My necromancer in WvW has access to stability every 10 seconds and that’s considered one of the worst classes handling CC.
- The only way to have a pet in a situation involving more than 10 people is to use a ranged bug pet and spam f3 when you see red circles. The response of most pet skills is a terrible joke. Rangers and Necros have the same problem— they are revolved around a mechanic that increases survivability and damage, thus it gives an excuse to make them terrible in all other aspects when it comes to survivability. Rangers have pets, necros have Death Shroud, but Death Shroud is actually useful + necros have real aoe damage.
But in reality, even in large fights wolves are still nice for the fear before it kicks the bucket and by f3 spam I may do crap dps but I can usually swap pets in time every 20 seconds— it’s usually just enough. The spider is actually great for the immobilized, but more for small scale. There’s really no zerg pet though besides maybe that silly bear for condi removal.
— Lack of on demand condition removal, which makes immobilized completely destroy ranger. Signet of Renewal and Empathetic Bond are nice at removing conditions but only Renewal is on demand and is reliant on having a pet… and then we have healing spring which arguably is where all a ranger’s worth revolves around, almost. Oh and there’s also that bear, but yea.
And the waterfield/vigor/fury/swiftness/ combo is great support for situations where you have to stack anyways and since this is blob wars 2 we’re talking about this happens a lot. And since I usually play guardian/necro being able to actually escape from fights seems pretty awesome, honestly.
In any cases there are a number of issues that makes it clear that this class isn’t “working as intended” and that the conceptualization is flawed— which is a bigger issue than whether or not the class is the best way for you to pick up loot bags. And honestly, zerging is about having more numbers anyways…
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