Guild Wars 2

I am just saying that you don’t need only combat data from spvp. Everyone can roll a thief and have a look at the numers by himself when he goes to the testing range, then do the same with another class’ power build (try a necro).

However, I see why you don’t likt it. Oh wait, it is no real data because you don’t like it (besides the regular backstab bursts everybody can experience in spvp games by himself anyway). Good logic. Honestly, your effort to defend this build is getting comical.

Sorry, you are getting carried by a broken mechanic. I know for some it is hard to accept but…hey…life goes on /pat, pat, pat

Knyx.5926:

Still not a single shred of hard evidence. And don’t play the childish “there is no winning, we posted tons of screenshots and videos”. Interesting considering if we take a look back at all the screenshots posted;
Poster claiming killed in 1 second by backstab. Death window shows multiple backstabs and other abilities, which also clearly takes 5s minimum. Also screenshots do not show time… I know it is hard to grasp.. but you can’t prove how quickly you were killed with a screenshot.

Similar poster making same claim.
Shows a video of a thief in wvwvw with all orb buffs and food buff, dispatching enemies in a couple seconds (AFTER he gets into melee range). I shouldn’t need to explain why this makes said poster look dumb (Key hint: wvwvw).

Another poster claims their Warrior in sPVP who is built with semi tank stats, was backstabbed by a thief for 15k damage. Posts a screenshot of their damage log. Ironically on their bar is Frenzy and it is on cooldown. Younglings and trolls only see “15k”, then each go off into their little temper tantrum each making a thread in multiple sections ranting on how they “Personally” witnessed a thief doing 15k damage. Suddenly it becomes a game of telephone. You get other younglings and trolls replying to the threads claiming they also “Personally” witnessed the same and that it was done to them in less then a second and the thief was perma stealth. With the amount of ex-WoW players, this of course becomes an epidemic.

If I can kill my enemy and get away, I am doing my job
If I can annoy and frustrate my enemy, I am doing my job very well
If my enemy is uninitiated, unskilled and unwilling to adapt, my job is now easy.
I am a Thief
Welcome to Guild Wars 2 Ladies and Gentlemen

Ah sorry, ít is all your skill and there is no out-of-whack backstab skill.

Ok, let’s put sarcasm aside for a moment. You know, all the tantrum you throw here to defend thieves is so easily blown to pieces by everyone who bothers:
make a thief. Use the backstab build. Go to the target dummies and compare numbers with other classes specced into a power build. The difference is glaring obvious.

Oh, and before you even bother: save us the “we are glasscannons” crap and use stealth properly.

barti.7685:

in all honesty if you play a burst spec with no vit or toughness you cant really complain about thiefs damage because obviously you are trying to do the same thing to them..

its hypocrisy to its fullest.

if you think its so easy change class

Yeah, the necro power build blows people up in no time. I mean there are everywhere threads about how this build should be nerfed to the ground.

Oh wait…

Nope, actually if you want descent direct damage as a necro, which comes nowhere the thief dps, it’s one of the builds. And yes, you are more or less of a glass cannon. Nevertheless the “you try the same to them” argument is, especially in this case, ridiculous at best

Oh, and as was already said by an abover poster: why do you complain about tank specs when people are just fed-up to get blown up in seconds from out of nowhere – especially thanks to the crappy rendering of the game.

I saw how well a power necro worked when I faced him with my condition necro:
1. We traded some blows
2. He ran up to me
3. Switch to dagger + immobilization
4. Wells (no.3 and 4 came as SUCH a surprise uuuuuuuh hahaha)
5. I press plague signet
6. Dodge
7. He has all his crap on him now plus my condition and he dies

Point is: Wells are really not that hot

When I ran power builds I didn’t find DS to be really that great either (when I use my condition build I just use no. 3 and and to soak some damage when I am on the run). Simply because to get some decent dps in spvp you cannot put that many points into toughness/vit when you also want a viable DS.

To make it short: melees chewed in seconds through the DS bar.

Add to that the 4 skills which are not really hot either except no. 4 and number 3 is sometimes helpful, too and the whole mechanic feels…“unfinished”.

What also annoys me is also a double requirement for DS: life force AND a timer.

Suctum.6912:

shaolin.9716:

Such bad reasoning. Can’t kill a bunker 1v1. Now can’t kill a thief 1v1 either. Tell me what fun is left for the other builds out there? As soon as you’re caught alone you’re dead meat unless you play a bunker or a thief? And then have to run back to your team with your tail between your legs like a beaten dog?

Why are you concerned with 1v1 in a group oriented game? If balance was based on 1v1 you would have complete inbalance in game. Trust me, comming from Age of Conan, I have seen what 1v1 balance does to a game, it ends it.

That’s always the cheap reasoning in any mmo with huge balance issues. Don’t get me wrong, you will never have a “perfect” balance. However, as was already said, there are glaring issues between: guardians, thieves and mesmers and the rest.

Besides that, there are enough situations where there are 1vs1 or 2vs2 fights going on. And when you and your buddy meet e.g. 2 rogues they will more or less instant gib the squishier, stealth stomp him and then it is 1vs2.

Rottaran Owain.6789:

Parakeet.6083:

If by fall flat on their faces at your feet you mean push a button and walk away while invisible to try and kill you again in a couple of seconds when you don’t have your miraculous damage mitigate ability that lets you anticipate the first attack of an invisible opponent and reduce the 15k damage available.

You might want to do a little research into this “15k backstab”

You’ll find out that failing to do it means he’s blown multiple utilities, his elite, and his steal.

It’s not “a couple of seconds” till he can retry. More like 45.

It’s a minute, and other than maybe blinding powder or smokescreen + heartseeker, the only other stealth option he’ll have left is a healing skill.

Yup, every 45 sec a nearly guaranteed kill because if you get hit by 15k and are no tank, then the fight is over. Pressing a macro key must be hard. Maybe reduce the cd to 20 sec to balance the poor thieves? .)

1. Power
My biggest qualm is: range. The dps is too low even as a glass cannon build to fight that close to melees. Ok, you can use the DS to tank some. However, e.g. a thief will churn through your life force bar in seconds if you have no traits invested in tough and vit…which in turn would lower your dps. I cannot help it, the concept is lacking something.

2. Condition
The build I play most. However, as someone said above, the damage is slow especially because the conditions get so often wiped. Nevertheless is condition management fun – especially if the bugged crap works now and then

3. Tank/minion
Well, a minion build is pure masochism. Simply because of the bugs, the brainless AI and the terrible pathing. PLUS: unlike mesmer minions we need to sarcrifice valuable utility slots with the underwhelming abilities.

Tank spec is ok and can soak up quite some damage but it is pretty bland. It is like playing a punching ball which retaliates like a wet noodle. Well, at least it is easy to kill thieves with it hihihi

The problem is that the said combo from thieves basically kills easily even balanced specs not just glass cannons.

It also makes also builds of some classes problematic to play. Just look at the necro:

1. Power Builds
To have any kind of good dps you need to spec more or less glassy because the dps is pretty underwhelming otherwise. In addition this build uses mostly axe which has a range of 600. The idea of this build is to switch into death shroud for some more tankiness. Too bad that if you eat a 10k backstab, followed up by a 5k mug and some other moves leaves youhave no time to either build up life force nor is it a problem to get the last ca. 4k life of the build down. And even if you have life force the rogue can just stealth and when you leave DS to heal finish you.

Spec for being more tanky? Well, to build up life fore at a reasonable rate you use a trait which gives you LF on crit and has a 66% to trigger. Good luck with that build when you have a crit chance of say 10-15%.

2. Condition builds
To make this build work I need runes which prolong bleedings but I have usually 200 bonus in toughness and 100 in health from traits. That’s something in my book. Nevertheless I get backstabed for ca. 8k-10k. Now add to the scenario that bleeds to slow damage and that they can get wiped and it is a nasty uphill battle with really no room to even make a tiny mistake.

I win some and I lose some on this build and you may even say it is balanced. However, it is not. Simply because in such a fight I never ever had the feeling that when I lost that the thief player was better but I realized that I cast one spell at the wrong time or that the rng was at the beginning of the fight against me and I had simply next to no life left and the fight was basically over.

The bad thing is, the thief can just stealth and reset the fight once he screws up badly.

Note: I am referring solely on those backstab + trinket builds here.

I do not play a rogue but I think you have to be careful with rogue changes and do it step by step or the class might fail miserably. The problem is the huge backstab burst. However, the trinket is the problem…150% is just sick. Add mug to the scenario and it gets ridiculous as some already said.

Oh, and fix the render issues kitten

Blazer Hellsing.9184:

Merciless.5349:

@Ksp

That statistic about seeing the Thief 90% of the time, even if fighting somebody…

Let’s go through this again.

Stealth.

I’m not like you, feeling down and saying it’s my own fault when I get killed by a Thief who was invisible and did over 10k dmg.

I don’t think to myself, “Well, gee, that invisible Thief wouldn’t have killed me like that if I just learn to play.”

No, I say, “Well, not really much I could have done there. I couldn’t see him. Why can they do this much damage again?”

And the reason I ask this type of question and make this kind of statement is because, having played numerous other PvP games, I have never seen anything like the Thief in this game. And there’s a reason all the Thief defenders make ridiculous statements like yours.

You are not under powered.
Your skills are not terrible compared to the other classes.
You have the best defense mechanism in the game, Stealth. A lot of it.
You control the fight.

People like you are the reason people can’t take Thief discussions serious. Stealth is nowhere near the best defence in game. I’ve dodged many steal backstab combo’s, timing is key.

There is a lot you can do, you just don’t know what and refuse to improve.

I think it is pretty ironic that you are just doing what you accuse him of. Why not just type “l2p” that would have saved us all some time.

That aside it is funny that thief defenders, like mesmers, just say “be aware of this and do this (usually dodge)”. Too bad that you sometimes fight someone else and cannot react that fast nor has the resources to do so all the time. However, even under these circumstances and (next-to) instant kill is still not balanced. Else all classes would have such a super deadly mechanic.

He is referring to the bleeds which gets wiped when an elementalist uses his vapor form when he is downed

Infinitus.3712:

In light of this idea Necro’s, Rangers and any other pets will now no Damage also seems fair right?

The whole aspect of the mesmer is the illusionist role yes the main mesmer’s damage may be a bit much now an will be balanced in the future. ( I play a mesmer by the way) but the Clones/Phantasams are what make them unique and should be a decent source of damage for the mesmer as removing damage from phantasams would not only kitten them in PvP, but pve and WvW also.

Let’s see:
1. Necro pets need utility slot while providing next to no utility except the golem’s charge (the snare of the other minion seems simply not to work). Mesmer stuff is weapon bound and he can pick up powerful utilities

2. Necro’s elite vanishes in water

3. Necro minions: slow, often do not attack, low damage, low life. Mesmer: like heatseeking missiles. Spawn near the target, even on roofs and through walls

4. Necro minions: long cd once killed (shortest 20 sec). Mesmer…yeah what is it now terrible 15 sec for phantasms oh-my-god!!!! And illusions are easily reproduced

5. Blowing up minion: yeah have you ever seen a necro with bone minions? think about it

6. Moa morph: Poosh ALL minions are killed. What about your stuff?

Point is: Mesmers are so spoilt that they don’t realize how good they have it or have you seen minion necros lately

Another problem is that the damage of the class is simply too high compared with the very good survivability and obscene cc. The whole package is the problem not just dps, cc, etc

Infinitus.3712:

However I have to wonder what the essential difference is between Phantasms and Conditions in this regard, both require cooldowns to be rid of, just that

The problem is that you have to dps down the phantasms. That in itself is not the problem but you have to focus the phantasms AND need to keep track of the mesmer with all the visual spam going on. That is a huge problem – especially in group fights. That’s why the survivability is so good.

CeCaKonVeu.5734:

First open your eyes : Ranger and necro pets dont die at first breeze, they dont die when ennemy dies, they dont stand there doing nothing when the ennemy runs “a little” away (1200 range?) but they follow your ennemy no matter what, and they attack more frequently than once every 6 seconds.
Also they bring utility + dmg while mesmer pets are mostly to confuse you so u dont hit us .. and alternatively shatter food which indeed is a tradeoff since u suddently lose your “deceptive trick”.

It is so obvious that you don’t play a necro or do am I and the rest of the community suffering from mass hallucinations of pets not attacking? Also, if they attack jump from an obstacle or whatever and they will take the loooong way around it. Now, that’s hard, eh?

Secondly, the minions use up valuable support skill slots, mesmers’ don’t. Now compare the utilities a mesmer can pick and put on his bar and the ones the minions bring along.

Thirdly, the minions die pretty easily to aoe unless you boost them with flesh of the master but even then it is not great and when a minion dies…minimum: 20 sec cd plus cast time.

But yes, go on and tell us how great necro minions are. I mean we all see those minion specced necros rock the battlefields…oh wait…

By the way, I was under the impression that the downed mesmer produces new illusions from their auto-attack while downed. Is that right?

ChillyChinaman.6057:

Just wondering what happens to other “summons?” Like necromancer minions or spirit weapons? Do they persist? If they do, then for the sake of consistency they’d have to do the same for other professions.

Necros’ pets persist and should attack but often they are buggy and just stand around doing nothing.

However, comparing mesmers’ illusions etc to necros’ minions isn’t quite right. First of all the mesmer stuff is mostly produced by weapons and stays also after getting the mesmer to downed state. A necro on the other hand has to sacrifice precious utility slots to get the minions. Also once those minions die you cannot replace them easily. The lowest cd is 20 seconds. See the difference?

Regardless of that a mesmer phantasm seems to have more dps than the elite necro minion (assuming that it does for once what it should), is like a heatseeker missile, can be cast through walls, appears next to the target Mesmers’ stuff stays when they get moa morphed…necro pets vanish etc. T

he best thing of the flesh golem is the charge ability – which sometimes doesn’t trigger probably as well (oh noes, there was a tiny pebble…too bad Mr. Necro).

milo.6942:

I just don’t understand these kinds of posts. If you are tanky, the phantasms don’t deal large damage, if you are glass cannon just 3-hit them if they are giving you problems. I don’t remember any situation where I downed a mesmer and he had all his illusions still up to harass me.

1. Shatter wants a word with you
2. If he is specced into phantasms etc you will load yourself with a kittenload of conditions when you destroy them

Oh…and the mesmer can do stuff as well. I know, for a mesmer a total new concept that their characters can participate actively in fight as well, but really, trust me, your character can act, too and isn’t restricted to sit behind a wall, rock or pillar and spam the illusions etc away.

Decreasing the efficiency of bunker builds while leaving thieves in their current state would just lead to an even greater influx of thieves. You would just trade one evil for another.

And believe me…I hate guardian bunkers even as a necro.

Depends on the spec:

1. Corruption
Ranges from great to good depending on the situation. Maybe could use either a tad of a dps boost or a dispel protection on the bleeds. In team play they get wiped so often

2. Power
The dps in conjunction with being a squishy and the low range makes the spec problematic because melees are right on your toes. Either the range should be buffed on e.g. the axe or the dps of the spec.

3. Minion Spec
Who knows how effective the spec really is? The minion AI is so terrible that no one can really say for sure because often they do nothing at all. The spec is dead anyway because a mesmer would just moa the necro – which kills the entire spec.

No control over the minions make also for a bland playstyle and is just the icing on the poo pile.

4. Death Shroud
Nice idea. However, getting life force should be a tad easier and DS should have better synergy with corruption builds. Also…it is a bit bland and not seeing the new debuffs is a problem, too

Luigio.3265:

cant quote for some reason

@ asmodean , if you are playing a pet necro in pvp , your also doing it wrong, might be viable later if/when minion ai doesnt suck kittens

also your best and only viable pets dont need toughness since they are just gonna be spawned to blow up :hint:

anyways, my point was, downed state is fine, although i will agree that some proffesion’s downed state abilities could use a tweaking to bring them all in line with all proffs

I use only the golem and while bugged his charge is often quite nice for my cond. specced necro.

However, that doesn’t change what I wrote about minions because the aoe is strong enough to bring the golem’s health down and then you have a ticking time bomb, as said above, next to you.

Ayestes.1273:

Is it harder to 1v2 because of this feature? Most of the time, yeah. It’s more then possible to do though, heck it’s plenty possible to perform 1vX period in this game. I’d argue it’s easier to 1vX in this game then in other MMO varieties I’ve played.

Learn how to deal with the downed state – often you can use the downed person as bait and take advantage of it. Let them be the mindless victim that exposes themselves to damage instead of yourself.

Yup, that is nice in spvp: load a downed player up with bleeds and then spread the crap with epidemic as soon as the fight shifts or someone tries to revive him. Makes me warm and fuzzy inside each and every time.

Luigio.3265:

well unless they can spam interrupts on you, you can let him beat at you while downing the other guy , get some toughness and vit is all im gonna say also if you are roaming alone with an ele , your doing it wrong imo

Pray tell me, how can I give my pets toughness (if I run with one) as a necro? Because if I do not kill him and he kills my pet he is back up.

Down state is not bad and actually a refreshing design, however, some stuff needs to go like:

1. Mesmers’ and Thieves’ downstate…compared to others it takes ages to kill them

2. The damage output, which is significant, for someone who is downed and supposedly out of the fight

3. Warrior’s getting up (forgot its name) is also a bad joke. Especially when you are outnumbered you most likely won’t be able to finish the warrior off in time and then he adds 15 more seconds of pain

4. Finishing someone from stealth…it is such a joke. Play a necro who has usually no access to stability (grandmaster talent in a little bit borked line which also adds only 3 sec stability anyway) nor stealth and is rather squishy.

I prefer this pushing. Please do not report it ^^

The most played classes are usually also the ones which perform best in 1vs1 situations – simply because player also like to be independent and not babysitted by another class.

Therefore it comes as no surprise that thieves and mesmers are at the top.

I can tell you, it is such fun to fight an asura phantasm mesmer who just runs away, hides behind every small pebble and let the stuff do his job. Such a brainless class.

Zogyark.4597:

LoL you were moad? L2P already. Not only can you dodge it even if the mesmer is stealthed or even if theres other 3 clones already out there. You also have this huge casting time of 1 second I mean lol chances of you getting that off are slim.

Seriously stop crying, you can run while in moa (even though u cant use stun breaks so don’t get stunned) you can even dodge, you can even attack! People need to use their Moa skills more I mean it saddens me that the npc’s moas can use the skills better than players really, Kick your foe! Peck at your foe! Heck you can even Daze them! Just hope you don’t die trying to cast one of these.

If you were moad you’re just bad and totally deserved it, oh and you were going to lose the fight anyway I mean pffft.

Time Warp is a better ability anyway, but kitten it MOA is an annoying piece of garbage skill that should’ve never been created.

You could have saved us time and written “lol l2p suck3erz”. It is in no way constructive and doesn’t make the skill balanced. According to your logic we could give a the ranger class the skill “headshot” which kills you instantly with a 4 sec cast time and this would be fine and dandy, too?

However, back to your “argument”. The game goes two ways: maybe you are just not skilled enough to land your moa. Ever though about that?

Fenixz.7194:

If a thief is using heartseeker on targets above ~~50% then you should be able to own him , and if u can’t then the problem is actually in your own skills , build , pc preformance. Stop flooding the forums with thief QQ-in , they are far far far away from being the most problemable class. It’s just a butload of them on hotjoins. Start playing tournaments for pity sake god

…and that’s why you see the whining about bunkers. As someone said above, they are more or less the counter to thieves.

Especially in spvp you can do now either play a mesmer or a bunker or you get some of those nice backstabs builds shoven up your rectum.

The game has some deep design problems because of it. Nevermind, though, I just play 1-3 games per day and now I can play X-Com and have my fun. Win-win situation for me.

Killthehealersffs.8940:

U see it as ganking , but i see it as stratigical <<nutrilizing>> a character , like Arenas :P

I just don’t see the sense in it (except gathering “glory”) to chase a single target with 3-4 people over nearly the whole map while ignoring the objectives – in an objective based part of the game.

It is just bad game design if the designers’ goal is a non-deathmatch playing field and players get (even more so) rewarded by not following the intended “spirit” of the scenario. It is like someone yelling “Gin” when you play poker .)

MM feels a bit bland (imo). Mostly you use your weapon skills and that’s it. The golem’s charge is nice…but the rest. Blind has a cast time, and the bone fiends immobilization seems bugged because I have never seen it work (correct me if I am wrong there).

Too bad that you cannot do some good area denial stuff. The exploding minions are hardly worth it (are they ever near the intended target?) and the death nova does hardly any damage.

The spec lacks a jaw-dropper and something special. something unique. Simple as that.

And don’t get me started about the AI…especially the flesh golem’s AI. It is a big pile of dung and they clearly need capable AI programmers.

Ganging up and hunting down a single target while ignoring all nodes in s-pvp is getting, at least imo, more and more common. And it gets old – very fast.

A solution might be to share the kill points by every person who did damage to the target while increasing team-oriented points e.g. you get points for putting someone in downed state (not killing) while defending a node. This way bots wouldn’t get points and an outnumbered defense group would get at least some reward.

Actually it is way faster to load a mesmer or thief with tons of dots (if you run a condition spec) than chasing them for an eternity.

The downstates of them compared to other classes are just nuts.

Reading several comments here I think most of you miss the point the op wants to make entirely. It is not about how good or how bad someone is or how he got into certain situations.

It is about how some skills work and what effects they have – regardless of the situation.

Compared to the 3 alpha classes the necro is lacking – bugged traits or not.

Power Spec:
Survivability: You need to get too close to melees if you use the axe. If the dps stays the way like it is now, the spec needs either range or a good escape mechanic or better life force build-up. A thieves rips through your life force bar in what feels like 2 seconds
DPS: Not bad but no real eye-opened either considering the burst damage which is dished out by other classes

Condition Spec:
Conditions get wiped off repeatedly. It is not bad but it is not that strong as some people make it out.
Possible solution:
1. An ability where the necro can remove the conditions themselves before the enemy does and deal x% of their total damage. That way he has to gamble and would get a little burst damage

2. A flat dispel protection over a certain time

Tank Spec / Minion Spec
The horrible minion and pet pathing issues aside the build is bland.
1. At least some of the minions should be linked to weapon skills like the mesmer. It would open up new avenues for the spec because some utility slots would be available

2. The minions should be commandable. That way you could play tactical. At the moment it feels like playing in autopilot mode

3. Some traits to further individualize minions like additional condition damage etc

Galandil.9641:

Tinius.1380:

but that doesn’t make the skill OP in my eyes

How could you honestly say that?

Except for dodging it (mostly randomly, as you stated), it’s a skill that has no counter at all after you land it on your target, except fleeing away, and most of all it renders ALL the elites of another class (Necro) useless, since it breaks Plague/Lich/Golem and even the Death Shroud.

Could you mention to me another elite skill (of any class in the game) that counters perfectly all the elite skills of another class without the possibility to avoid it?

Not only the elites. It kills any pet a necro has out (= utility abilties) and puts them on CD. If you want to kitten a necro really off, moa him when he is in death shroud. He cannot use any abilities of DS and cannot even cancel it draining ALL the build up life energy for nothing.

Necros should have an elite in return: destroy all illusions, clones and phantasm and stop their production for 20sec. Also negate all elite ability of said class.
That’s basically the moa morph for a necro.

BishopX.6453:

just because he is low rank, dosent mean his opinion is not valid .
i agreed with prett much everything he said, with the exception of the one GLARING descrepancy… did a NECRO try to aoe down a guardian and say “this took too long” ???

necro is the one class that can devower a guardian in under 10 sec and you choose for the video to not only NOT use conditions or buff removal, but to use AOE attacks on him?

I admit that I have no guardian character but I fought guradians who a. were easily healing the slow damage the necro conditions did to them b. wiped a lot of the repeatedly off.

There were other fights going on in the vincinity so I cannot excluded that someone else was aoe cleansing.

SameHH.1048:

I agree that spvp has a lot of issues and one suggestion to improve it a bit is to not allow players to quit after a minute or so from the start of the match.

I had the same problem on my condition necro because I attracted thieves like s*** attracts flies and kiting them for an eternity (if I got not killed by the backstab combo at the start) was beginning to annoy me. I respecced him as a tank and it is so fun to kill rogues with him – it is delicious to see their startled reactions when the necro still stands.

All in all gameplay is a bit bland but the number of rogues provides ample entertainment. Especially the ones who want to come back for more ^^

And people complain why more and more tank specs appear haha

Quickness is not the problem. The problem is the wrong classes / builds get quickness: the burst dps builds and classes.

A damage over time spec with that thing wouldn’t be dramatic because of the much cleansing going on. However, on a class with nasty burst dps the thing gets, sorry, idiotic. However, the worst design decision: AoE quickness. Yaaaaay!

It is surprising that most people seem not to be aware that there is a huge increase in tank specs (none guardians) like eles, necros and engineers. It is more or less nearly a hardcounter to the burst dps.

SPvP is the biggest letdown. The problem is that there is no incentive to actually defend the nodes nor is teamplay rewarded because winning or losing give hardly any points. Sure, it keeps the bots away but the consequence is that there is only one huge “zergfest”.

You can easily sum it up in two ways.

Summary approach 1: Watch a hunting chase in the Benny Hill Show. Seriously, do it. It will be an eye-opener. The title theme should be played in every spvp match.

Summary approach 2:
Do the following steps in no particular order
1. Do not defend a node (you could get outnumbered and killed and even if you down one player you cannot finish him and get zero points)

2. Take every empty node you can. Leave them afterwards because of no. 1 and also so that the enemy re-captures them and the circle begins from the start

3. Run with the herd and hope they catch the bullets for you.

4. Pick off every lone roamer you and your herd find while running from node to node

At the end you will have earned a lot of “glory” points. “Glory”… isn’t that ironic?

Luka.6831:

SPESHAL.9106:

Isn’t the Mesmer class cheesy enough already???

What’s cheesy? We dont have inherently high damage or a simple, cheap class mechanic.

Compare you defense and damage (especially in a shatter build) to a necro and come back again and post your experience.

As one guy already posted above: the class does insanely high damage considering how many cc/utility tools for survival it has and how much visual confusion they cause.

My initial reaction was for a second, like some people’s here, to gloat. However, that has more to do with his comment of “they have to learn to use DS properly” which I considered arrogant.

However, after said first impulse I must say that it doesn’t matter how he specs (actually it is great if he tests as much as possible), how he performs (maybe if his character needs some vaseline in his rectum after several matches it might help us) or his preferences are.

What’s important, however, is, that he gets experience playing the class and coming to the right conclusions.

@Varyag: I think we didn’t speak about warriors in the last posts despite the tread ^^

I haven’t tested it and so far I have seen no difference but I will ask anyway: Does Vital Persistence also apply to damage you take or does it just reduce the “natural” drain from DS’s life force bar?

Xloz, your logic is pretty screwed. If a class can do with 1 button what other classes can achieve by switching weapons, setting up combos or self-buffs, then there is a balance issue. Simply because the one-button-wonder can a. hardly screw up b. takes less time to perform the given feat c. the setup cannot be disrupted…because there is no setup.

Currently in this mmo the gap between some classes is huge. Especially because some classes with extremely simple mechanics (and yes, thief is one of them) feels not only like having training wheels to keep you steady in a fight but they also perform better than the complicated classes at upper end of the skill curve. Which simply means there is no reward in having a hard to master class. Quite the opposite.

Also your statement that most of the necro community has to “l2p” or is “bad” just shows your ignorance and arrogance. This is usually the case when a person applies sweeping judgements and generalizations about a group of people. However, of course all rogues are skilled and know how to play, right? /chuckle

HellsMachine.4083:

The average human reaction time is less than half a second, so if you’re taking longer than a second to react then you’re just slow. Shouldn’t change the game just to cater to slow people.

Luckily there is no ping or a render problem. It is fun to get 3 attacks from nowhere and the suddenly a thief appears. Cool thing. But yes, people should just expect that. No skill and such, right?

Yukishiro.8792:

djtool.8372:

I struggle to see how a “bunker” necro can be so intimidating due to necros almost complete lack of stability. If you cant kill or move the necro then you just have to work around a bad matchup.

Plague is the best bunker skill in the game. 20 seconds stability, aoe blind every second? Yes please.

It does mean necros are somewhat gimmicky bunkers though because they are only super good at it for 20 seconds of every 3 minutes.

…until the enemy mesmer finds his moa morph button

Jordan.9132:

Guardian worst bunker class? okkkay buddy
stopped reading your post there

what do you expect when he claims that a necro can get invulnerable (I guess he means death shroud) and (I love that part) heals to full while sitting in the DS

“I don’t get why more people don’t take Well of Darkness.”

Most likely because of the 60 sec cd. However, you are right. It is great because it demands from your enemy to be aware of something and not just spam their skills. Against the average thieves it works like a charm because they are used to just spam away. Too bad that there are also some who know what’s going on

Moa is even more op than some people are aware of.

Against necros:
1. Minions: kills every minion also the elite

2. Kicks you out of your form. Sounds not that terrible? Imagine you worked hard to build up enough life force to have a full bar to use your death shroud. Then you get moa morphed. You stay in death shroud but all bars are replaced by the moa abilities. You CANNOT cancel the death shroud. The whole life force gets spent. So you do not only get most likely killed but even after death you can start from scratch once more.

The game balance is just a bad joke.

Oni.6841:

Kalar Meadia.8439:

They’re typically not using Moa on the tanky type of the two of you, so yes, your ally should be able to survive the 10 seconds.

Or, he can disengage WITH you, back off from point, and simply reengage when you’re recovered. No one ever said your buddy was obligated to sit and take a beating.

Again, this is irrelevant theorycrafting.

I just pointed out its a 2v2 and you COMPLETELY ignored that while I am Moa birding you, my other buddy might actually be using his skills as opposed to just standing around.

Further more, any coordinated group of two, racing in on another two will have a cc train coordinated if they know they are using moa bird.

But yes, newsflash – bad players can mis-use good skills and be easily countered. That isn’t what everyone is complaining about.

Of course it gets ignored. Would you want to lose you I-Win button. In small skirmishes, as you said, like 2vs2 it is even deadlier. Just one snare and you can focus fire one target and it is 1 vs 2. End of the story

“Blood Magic
Deathly Invigoration – Heal in an area when you leave death shroud.
Best for support which high healing power to maximize the effect.”

Ummm…it heals like 300+ life. One more trash trait

On my thief I use 1,3 and now and then 2 or F1. Weapon switching? Rarely because it is easy to stay on a target.

When I play my necro or (now and then) an elementalist….weapon switching, death shroud dancing / attunement dancing.

While the results of the latter ones can be good sometimes…the results of the thief are quite more devastating and it is easier to run off if things go the wrong way.

And actually this is broken in GW2: classes which are hard to master in this game should be rewarded with a better perfomance at the top of the skill curve.
Here however, the classes which are delivered with training-wheels (thanks to their simple class mechanics) are also the ones which perform better at every part of the skill curve.

Jordan.9132:

I can tell by your post you are really inexperienced in pvp.

7. Necros have never had issues since day one, they are very good in teamfights and can dish out a ton of damage and easily kill a bunker, or can build to become a very strong bunker as well.

Well, but you seem a pro considering what you write about the necro. Obviously you have never played one.

1. Bugs gallore – not even the Starship Troopers would have enough manpower to stop them
2. Ridiculous lack of synergy of traits.
3. Ridiculous high cooldowns on some stuff (Well of Darkness 60 sec)
4. Traits in the wrong lines (power build traits deep in condtion tree and vice versa)
5. Lack of stability – and if you get it, it is a grandmaster talent and you have to choose between this and a much needed 5 sec cd in death shroud. Plus it is only 3 sec and the life transfer ticks are at the beginning very weak anyway. Once more a piece of junk

But the biggest crap of all which makes the class basically stink to heavens DEATH SHROUD:
Per se not a bad mechanic…but…the time you need to gain energy and how long you can stay in death shround – our defense class mechanic – is a bummer. A thief or warrior will rip through it in 2-3 seconds.

And what also makes this mechanic bad is, that every skill is subpar because “you have death shroud, a second life bar”.
- dps sucks
- range on weapons sucks (axe 600 range for a glass cannon power spec, daggers…melee range)
- escape mechanics…just forget it because you can tank because…yes, “you have death shroud”

Oh, and “necros are bunkers”. Seriously, pull their pets out of LoS (they cannot prevent it because they have no control about the pets hahaha) and kill them easily with AoE. Then the bunker is soft because he gets toughness for every pet. If the necro follows you…even better, he is now in melee range.

hehe I love it when people still defend such a thing. Next you will tell people to buy a tarrot deck so can try and divine when they get stolen+ backstabbed ^^

However, it is not just a problem of thieves. The burst damage is simply over the top. There are classes which have moves that kill you nearly instantly when you eat them in an unfortunate moment (e.g. when your stunbreaker) – on the other hand there are classes which do not have such extreme things nor have they something similar fight deciding. Which makes a poorly balanced game.

Don’t get me wrong, burst belongs into the game, though.

merch.1026:

Im afraid to coin a phrase but we all as a community of necros need to use DS better. I think a few people are starting to see the potential it gives.
Aireroths example is a vaid one.
The necromancer is not a warrior its not a thief its not a class to press one button for insta death. The necromancer needs skill and practice, and in some case with DS timing it needs Luck.
Additionally I feel that necromancers need out of the box thinking inorder to come up with combos of skills.

The problem at the moment is that DS makes the necro an attrition class. You can see it quite well if you spec into power. The damage falls dramatically short of other classes’ glass cannon builds.

The problem is, however, that even with perfect “stance dancing” in and out of shadowform it is often not enough. And not only the skill of the player is to blame here (especially not on other classes. Playing another class except ele after a necro feels like driving with training wheels).

The reasons for that is that the dps is…
1. DPS is pretty low (even, as aforementioned, in a glass cannon spec)
2. Gathering life force is hard

Imo one of those two points should be changed to a degree. Both would most likely result in an op class.

Gathering life force in combat is also problematic because
1. Power specs won’t survive for long enough to gather a meaningful amount
2. Condition spec generate life force very slowly

And regardless of spec or utility choice you either lose dps, survivability or something else which you would badly need.