Guild Wars 2

Slightly over a year ago, ArenaNet presented us with their ideal framework for balance. Each profession had their characteristic weaknesses and strengths. As gameplay evolved and the metagame shifted, some of them had their weaknesses and strengths adjusted, to the point where they are no longer characteristic
However, these original ideals have been cited numerous times by players when arguing for/against buffs/nerfs. But these are from a year ago, when the game was much different. And so I am left wondering:

Dear ANet, are your profession balance ideals still the same? If not, what are they?

I can’t quote the original post directly, so we’ll have to settle for this:

Class balance philosophies

• Warrior
  We want the Warrior to be capable of good melee damage in a sturdy body. They can still do some decent damage at range, but they aren’t as good at it as the Ranger (with their pet). They have a hard time taking enemy boons down, and instead, have to just go through them with raw force. They may have a hard time with enemy conditions, and may need to ask for ally help in order to keep themselves free of hampering conditions.
• Guardian
  The Guardian is a heavy armor class who relies on boons to make up for their low levels of innate health. They focus on area control and punishing enemies for the position on the battlefield. We want them to feel very powerful when their boons are active, but if those boons are removed, they will start to feel pressure. They can remove conditions more easily than the Warrior, but share the Warrior’s need to be in melee range to dole out maximum damage.
• Ranger
  The ranger class combines its own innate abilities with the skills of their pets. We’ve balanced the class around the idea that you always have a pet with you to aid in any fight. The fact that the ranger can have multiple pets allows them to combine their pets in ways that most impact the current fight. We want the Ranger to have some of the evasion enjoyed by the Thief, as well as the mobility other classes employ. The class is able to deal physical or condition damage, and it can do this in melee or at range.
• Engineer
  The Engineer is a highly versatile class. While it doesn’t have the long range capabilities of the Ranger, or the melee capabilities of the Warrior or Guardian, they are comfortable at medium ranges in most fights. They have a lot of control, and use their boons to keep themselves (and allies) alive in a fight. They can use different kits based on the situation, but this extreme versatility comes at a cost in damage on their main hand weapons.
• Thief
  Thieves are the masters of mobility, stealth and high single target damage. They can be very fragile if you counter their stealth with area of effects or large stacks of conditions, but they trade this fragility in order to have some of the highest burst damage in the game. They are able to help allies through traps, venoms and the mobility to flank most encounters.
• Mesmer
  Mesmers rely on illusions in order to accomplish their goals. They need illusions to accomplish some of their highest damage and control, and without the illusions, they become fairly fragile. They can deal with enemy boons better than most classes, but enemy conditions can often be a problem. They share some of the stealth and mobility that the Thief enjoys, but suffer from a low health pool if you get past all their tricks.
• Ele
  We see the elementalist as the king of versatility. The skill ceiling for the Ele is exceptional, as the ability to leverage all four attunements at the right time is crucial for understanding the elemetnalist. The Ele boasts some of the best team support and control abilities in the game, as well as some great area of effect damage.
• Necro
  The necro boasts the highest natural health of all the caster classes, and also has death shroud to extend that life total even higher. While they don’t have some of the escape or damage reduction capabilities that other classes boast, they do have a lot of ways to win attrition fights. They have access to poison on multiple weapons, they are able to combine condition damage with raw damage, and they have multiple disables to interrupt enemy skills. Necomancers also have multiple movement disabling abilities, while allows them to chase down enemies who are low on health.

As it turns out, having held out for while before moving was a good thing, since we got some napkin-back patch notes to increment the poll with, and one of them is fairly contentious on a fairly contentious trait. So, without further ado, I present to you the Spite poll. Note that I have included both the current (at the time of posting) and incoming Dhuumfires.
Let’s get rolling, shall we?

Luke.4562:

What about going on with the discussion on the remaining trees?

I’ll start putting the next poll together.

Luke.4562:

Why don’t we bring this on Profession Balance subforum?
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/balance

Mostly because I don’t want infinite Warriors and Thieves coming in a saying Dhuumfire is broken and skewing the polls. Once we, as Necros, have identified flaws we we want to change, I’ll move on to Phase II, which, given the advent of the new forum, will be relocated. But for now, I think it’s best to stay here.

Atherakhia.4086:

Balefire.7592:

Artaz.3819:

laquito.5269:

Haha some people are still serious about HS being balanced? :’D You basically got a perma Troll Unguent, combined with the highest base damage attacks, low weapon cooldowns, highest armor rating and highest base health pool. Oh not to forget Autostability, (which is a joke) tons of CC- and stun- chaining capabilities and lets not forget about 10s invul to condis/direct damage, but yes that is totally balanced.

Warriors are a complete joke class-depth wise atm, lots of passive play & easy going playstyle. If ANet doesnt want to nerf the Healing Signet, they could atleast downgrade them to Midtier Health Pool. They may have needed a High Health Pool in the past, but ever since HS, Cleansing Ire, Adrenalin Health, & Stance got buffed, theres no justification for a High Health Pool.

• Mina – S/D Thief & Ranger
  Kodash*

Seriously, stop. There is no need to have a highly biased view of balance into an specific objective suggestions thread on one ability. You just described the typical traits taken in a Warrior sustain build. It’s akin to Thief perma-stealth complaints which involves multiple traits, utilities and a specific weapon setup.

Warriors received massive additions and changes for condition removal/mitigation is fairly understandable.

Warriors were horrible outside of a warhorn conversion (bugged with Soldier’s Runes and has been fixed since) and Shout utility builds with Soldier’s Runes in removing conditions including Mending/SoS.

There were no other options besides Mobile Strikes and Restorative traits which are exactly the same as when released and are very close to the garbage pile in practical terms of use (nothing wrong with those two traits but they are on par with baseline Adept traits).

By definition, if the Warrior developer vision is for them to have a fairly high sustain-option, Warriors must also have multiple anti-condition abilities/traits and a healthly HPS rate.

TL;DR If you can’t get past the all-in sustain build, you are missing the point.

As I recall, based on statements by the Devs, the rationale for Warriors having high health pools was that they were meant to have mediocre to average condition cleansing, so they used a huge HP buffer to stay alive instead. Given the fact that warriors have since been updated to have pretty good cleansing in some builds, it doesn’t seem inappropriate to throw base health into question if no other changes are made.

Except condition classes still counter Warriors. They just aren’t 100% useless against them like they once were.

What condi class honestly has issues against a power based Warrior? The only one that comes to mind is a condi Warrior.

Condition classes don’t counter warriors. If they did, you wouldn’t be seeing Warriors everywhere in a condition meta. Conditions may be anywhere from good to mediocre versus Warriors depending on how they are built. For example, some of the toughest match ups for DhuumTerror Necros, which have been called OP Condispam, are Warriors.
Nothing in this game counters Warriors to any real degree.

Artaz.3819:

laquito.5269:

Haha some people are still serious about HS being balanced? :’D You basically got a perma Troll Unguent, combined with the highest base damage attacks, low weapon cooldowns, highest armor rating and highest base health pool. Oh not to forget Autostability, (which is a joke) tons of CC- and stun- chaining capabilities and lets not forget about 10s invul to condis/direct damage, but yes that is totally balanced.

Warriors are a complete joke class-depth wise atm, lots of passive play & easy going playstyle. If ANet doesnt want to nerf the Healing Signet, they could atleast downgrade them to Midtier Health Pool. They may have needed a High Health Pool in the past, but ever since HS, Cleansing Ire, Adrenalin Health, & Stance got buffed, theres no justification for a High Health Pool.

• Mina – S/D Thief & Ranger
  Kodash*

Seriously, stop. There is no need to have a highly biased view of balance into an specific objective suggestions thread on one ability. You just described the typical traits taken in a Warrior sustain build. It’s akin to Thief perma-stealth complaints which involves multiple traits, utilities and a specific weapon setup.

Warriors received massive additions and changes for condition removal/mitigation is fairly understandable.

Warriors were horrible outside of a warhorn conversion (bugged with Soldier’s Runes and has been fixed since) and Shout utility builds with Soldier’s Runes in removing conditions including Mending/SoS.

There were no other options besides Mobile Strikes and Restorative traits which are exactly the same as when released and are very close to the garbage pile in practical terms of use (nothing wrong with those two traits but they are on par with baseline Adept traits).

By definition, if the Warrior developer vision is for them to have a fairly high sustain-option, Warriors must also have multiple anti-condition abilities/traits and a healthly HPS rate.

TL;DR If you can’t get past the all-in sustain build, you are missing the point.

As I recall, based on statements by the Devs, the rationale for Warriors having high health pools was that they were meant to have mediocre to average condition cleansing, so they used a huge HP buffer to stay alive instead. Given the fact that warriors have since been updated to have pretty good cleansing in some builds, it doesn’t seem inappropriate to throw base health into question if no other changes are made.

Votes are steadily trickling in as this thread remains active, so presuming that it’s not trolls/the same people filling the form out twice, by the time we’re done with the voting, we should have a half decent sample size. We’ll continue to discuss the results of the poll and the Curses line in general until Sunday, when I put the next poll up.

Right now, I’d like to hear your guys’ opinions on the following:

• If not in Curses, where should Spectral Attunement go? I feel like the default answer is move it to Soul Reaping, but what would you switch out of SR for it?
• What size buff do you think Chilling Darkness or Reaper’s Precision need? I wouldn’t be unhappy seeing them upgraded in tier with a sizable buff. (Personally, I’d kill Siphoned Power, move Target the Weak to Spite, and upgrade Reaper’s Precision to GM Minor.)
• For Enfeeble, would you rather it return to it’s previous incarnation, be adjusted based on what it is now, or something totaly different? (Personally, I’d merge it with Withering Precision → 5s Weakness + 5s Bleed on entering DS.)

Re-posting this from a different thread, as I think it’s important:

Ahlen.7591:

Because DPS IS everything.

Support does not win fights.

Control does not win fights.

Reducing the enemy HP to zero is the entire goal of a fight, and the most important thing in doing that is damage. Everything else is just a vehicle to deliver as much damage as possible while not dying.

I think this is, and forever will be, the main reason why Berserker’s and raw DPS is king. If ANET want to make defensive stats more viable, they need to create encounters where you don’t necessarily win by damage. The control chamber in the Molten Facility is the most recent example of this – yes, you still need damage, but most importantly, you need to not die to the random crap that occasionally flies at you.
If we had more bosses/encounters/events where the goal was to outlast an attack (Detha vs Gravelings/Magg vs Assassins), or you only had given periods to strike the boss (King Toad), or you needed to withstand damage to create opportunities (Iron Forgeman), defensive stats would actually be useful.

Ahlen.7591:

Because DPS IS everything.

Support does not win fights.

Control does not win fights.

Reducing the enemy HP to zero is the entire goal of a fight, and the most important thing in doing that is damage. Everything else is just a vehicle to deliver as much damage as possible while not dying.

I think this is, and forever will be, the main reason why Berserker’s and raw DPS is king. If ANET want to make defensive stats more viable, they need to create encounters where you don’t necessarily win by damage. The control chamber in the Molten Facility is the most recent example of this – yes, you still need damage, but most importantly, you need to not die to the random crap that occasionally flies at you.
If we had more bosses/encounters/events where the goal was to outlast an attack (Detha vs Gravelings/Magg vs Assassins), or you only had given periods to strike the boss (King Toad), or you needed to withstand damage to create opportunities (Iron Forgeman), defensive stats would actually be useful. However, those types of events are typically time gated, which people seem to dislike since they enjoy rushing dungeons/events for profit.

Should be fixed now, try again.

I would change the scepter. I think both Axe and Staff could use work, but Scepter, as polished as it may look, promotes terrible gameplay since all you have to do is spam auto-attack to deal damage and mess with bleeds. Moreover, it has little synergy with our profession mechanic.

Well, the one week survey period is complete. The survey will continue to accept responses, but as far as discussion is concerned, I feel like this is sufficient data to more forward. I finally got Google Forms working right, so here is the link for the data overview.

Do any of these results surprise you?
I was surprised by how many people would like to see Banshee’s Wail and Spectral Attunement moved elsewhere. In particular, the “move” slice is the biggest slice for Spectral Attunement. Also, I’m surprised how many people are happy with where Target the Weak currently sits, both in strength and in location.

Basically, I want to know, what is the ideally balanced level professions? Lots of eople say “I want paper nerfed, too strong” or “buff rock, weaksauce” or whatever, but it’s actually all relative to some imaginary balance point. I’m not interested in what the “most” balanced profession currently is (it’s arguable); I’m interested in what the balance standard people are looking for is, both in erms of game modes and relative to other professions. If you think we should balance around the current level of a given profession, that’s fine, but otherwise, please keep profession discussion outside of this thread.

What level are people hoping to get the professions to? Do we want every class to be where Warriors are at right now? Or perhaps stronger than Warriors? Or do we maybe want to bring all professions down to the level of an Elementalist? Maybe weaker than that?

For example, as far as PvE is concerned, I think all professions are currently way too powerful, though by differing amounts. People talk about dungeon paths being easy or whatnot because the current power level in PvE is set way too high. If everything gets toned down evenly, PvP/WvW will retain balance for the most part while making PvE more interesting.

I would alter mark animations to visually “charge” or something similar. As you cast the mark, the central icon appears at the target location, then some sort of animation
“grows” it out to it’s limits. By making each “growing” animation distinct, you avoid having to alter character animations, while adding discernible visual cues.
For example, maybe Chillblains would have it’s core flash, then green chains extend outward to the max radius. Or maybe Reaper’s Mark starts off tiny then grows while it spirals or something.

That being said, I do think that stacking marks should continue to obscure which marks have been placed, since it’s simply spending resources in a more strategic manner. You know the marks are there, so if you chose to venture in, it’s on you, not the Necro, especially given Mark stacking would require using multiple skills and having to deal with their cooldowns.

Viking Jorun.5413:

I’ve mentioned it in the PvP forums, but I’ll do so here as well: A boon that works against conditions should be added to the game and classes that need them, as Torment was added to the game to buff conditions. If it were either implemented in a way that reduced condition duration by 50% or worked like Retaliation except it damaged the condition applier, I would be a happy camper.

Something needs to be done to change conditions in general. Whether that’s a new boon, or adding condition removal to specs that desperately need it, I trust ANet to balance it correctly.

They could call it “Purity.” >.>

Alternatively, increasing the damage scaling but reducing durations and/or reducing availability could also work. The current issue is conditions get re-applied so fast that a lot of cleansing can’t keep up. If conditions showed up with less frequency, not only would weaker cleanses be more meaningful, but we could start looking at condition immunities in a similar light to damage immunities (note how Diamond Skin/Automated Response have no damage equivalent). Also, I think it would make conditions somewhat more active since you couldn’t just frontload all your damage – wouldn’t necessarily be able to rebuild your stacks so easily. Instead, skillful use of conditions would would become a thing since you’d need to watch cleanse timers and save things like Signet of Spite until you’ve baited them.
Additionally, changing durations or availability would add one of two other benefits: (1) changing durations would place some emphasis on getting condition duration, which, while it’s useful now, is not necessarily needed since cleansing is fairly common and reapplication overwrites the need for time extension; (2) changing availability would help alleviate some pressure on stack caps, since unintentional, weaker application via traits or whatnot would be less common.

Two more days folks! Pass the word on!

Dalanor.5387:

And how would you apply this to skills to enhance them? What would they do after certain thresholds of HP / LF? If the fight goes longer and you keep yourself at high health (with fixed siphons) wouldnt be it op? Being at low health to get greater potencial is good on paper (high risk, high reward), but all of us know how this turns out on the live game.

In my opinion, I’d love to see something like:
Pain’s Reward - Damage yourself and nearby foes. (You suffer 50% damage dealt).

Think of these a the power/vitality complement to corruptions. Since we don’t have the sustain maintain our fat health pool, let me burn my health in order to kill foes faster.

Come on fellas, we still got a few votes we can reap!

I would like to see risk/reward skills in the vein of corruptions except the consume health instead. Having Deathshroud allows us to play with our health a little more than other classes, so I think it would be pretty cool.

sierras.6297:

There was a trait in beta that added +1 hit to every axe skill. This would make Powermancers damage via axe so much better. Instead of having a long cast, pretty low damage AA, it would be a bit slower, but with 1k crits each hit, the chain would do better damage. That or a trait adding attack speed to the axe. That would make the axe a much deadlier weapon just a 10% increase would be so great.
(If you can’t tell, I like the axe)

When you say +1 hit, do you mean that it added additional strikes? That would fit in well with Ghastly Claws and mayde the auto, but firing two Unholy Feasts may be a little too strong…
As far as increasing attack speed, that would be an interesting way to buff it – I don’t know of any existing traits that affect attack speed. Although in that case, would it only affect the axe? Firing quick Life Blasts and channeling fast Life Transfers might be a little over the top.

Cogbyrn.7283:

Personally, I’d love to see what having utilities/healing enabled while in DS would do to balance. Just a blanket change to the class. Part of me is concerned it would be too much, but I don’t know.

Personally, I would gladly trade gaining utilities/healing in DS for an increase in LF degeneration.

We are well on our way to surpassing the previous number of responses. Remember, the more data we get, the better representation of the whole Necro community we’ll have. I want to see us hit 100 responses on the survey at the end of this process!

Bhawb.7408:

No one ever takes that ever ever, period, ever. If they do the minions should turn around and slap them.

That’s an awfully big blanket you’ve set out.

In any case, let’s move on. Please fill out the following survey on the traits in the Curses trait line, and be sure to ask your Necro friends to do so as well. I’m hoping for more responses than last time.
Survey Link.

Luke.4562:

Ok, but please keep posting and keeping your threads up; keep some big thread to summarize the others, so that we can get more visibility (we aren’t spamming).

Soul Vision: Staff Major Your staff attacks will track their targets.
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/List_of_historical_traits#Necromancer_traits
What about something like this as a placeholder for Adept/Master? It would FINALLY hit the target and give almost sure LF every cast. I would get it instead of whatever buff at it’s projectile speed.

Your diagram is very pretty. :o
As far as Soul Vision, how would a mark chase anything? A trait for a single weapon skill seems bad – as you can see from other staff traits, we used to have more than just marks on it, so it made sense back then, but traiting just the auto seems very miniscule.
I think the way I’m going to make this work is that this thread will serve for polling and discussing the current traits, and then once we’ve gone through each tree, I’ll make another thread to tackle new traits. This way, things stay more organized.

Luke.4562:

People doesn’t seem interested in talking about it, those who answered gave their idea about it. Maybe starting with another tree would have renewed the interest for this thread.
I can’t really say what to suggest to put instead of almost 4 traits which need to be substituted. It’s a hole too much big to fill. Without some approval from the Staff it’s an hard job. It would be nice if they would brainstorm some of their ideas with us.

Fair enough. I figured we could maybe try to submit traits like in Death Magic thread, then vote on those, but yeah, without staff approval, it would seem somewhat pointless, and would probably get messy. Maybe at the end we can try to highlight some general effects we would like to see instead of specific traits.
I’ll start putting together a similar poll for Curses, which I think is our second most solid traitline (it has issues, but they’re not the biggest ones).

RashanDale.3609:

Balefire.7592:

Luke.4562:

Shall we go on discussing other Trees?

Does everyone feel like we’ve reached a consensus on things?
Many people have mentioned that they would like to see some traits scrapped/merged, and I’m interested in seeing what you’d want to see in their place.

i feel like almost everything has already been discussed to death in this subforum. like every week another thread with suggestions for traits and skills pops up and the same old stuff gets repeated again. it’s pretty weird that some people just dont seem to get tired of it.

Would you rather not talk about it then?
Any possible discussion we could have in this subforum is limited to three archetypes: class commentary, build commentary, and gameplay commentary. The second and third topics pop up from time to time, but currently, they’re fairly trivial since most builds are cookie-cutter and most people have learned what to do where. That really only leaves us with the first topic.

Katam.8795:

First time ever posting to the forums.

I was thinking new weapons skills and got this wild idea about torch skill. Would be sort of anti-fire type skill that draws burning condition from people around, friend or foe and then applies chill to the target with small AOE. 1 second chill per burning condition drawn. Max 10 burning drawn in and 5 targets for chilling. So would cleanse max 10 persons and could inflict max 10 second chill on 5 enemies. Numbers are just an idea nothing too fix, of course.

I think this way it would be risk vs reward play. Also promoting thinking and timing of using a skill. As you could potentially reduce out coming damage but then again you would support your own team with removing condition. What you think about this sort of skills in general for Necromancer?

The concept is very interesting, but the problem here is keep the skill useful most of the time. If your allies aren’t chilled, this doesn’t do very much, and in my opinion, skills that rely on external resources create bad gameplay situations.

Cupnoodle.5431:

I also agree with Bhawb that the hammer should do something with the horrors, but I don’t know about using it for damage. My view of the necro is all about gaining by sacrifice, so you could somehow instead change 5 (since you said you weren’t particularly proud of it) to continue to be a big hitter but somehow sacrificing all your horrors for either LF or health and possibly have a trait where nearby allies gain some health similar to transfusion in a way. This gives an option for true front lining necros in wvw and an incredible LF power weapon option. I feel as though you should get a de-buff along with this skill, like poison or something (again gaining by sacrificing). I do have a question about the horrors in the first skill, is there going to be a cap? cause tbh if this happened, I could see myself running around with 15+ horrors in wvw and as much as I would love that, it isn’t practical lol

As far as a cap is concerned, my idea was not to have one, but have the chain be slow and telegraphed, so that through their own degeneration and enemy avoidance, you would only ever have 2-3 of them up from autos, and 3-4 if used with Blood Field. That way, it rewards you for putting more effort in, since you could potentially keep up 5-6 of them for a while via smart Mark/Well of Blood usage.
In regards to Hammer skill 5, the problem of scaling is still prevalent. Any effect based on the horrors would need to be secondary in order to keep the skill viable without them. Currently, I’m having difficulty ratifying primary and secondary effects – especially ones that sacrifice the horrors due to Death Nova.

Luke.4562:

Shall we go on discussing other Trees?

Does everyone feel like we’ve reached a consensus on things?
Many people have mentioned that they would like to see some traits scrapped/merged, and I’m interested in seeing what you’d want to see in their place.

I acknowledge the fact that it seems like the horror could be better used, but the problem is having the skill maintain some level of effectiveness with and without the horrors.
All of the effects you mentioned depend on having the horror, and you won’t always have one. But if you balance around having one horrors, the skill will be too powerful if you amass three or four (Lich/Reanimator). Plus, how would the skill interact with the additional horrors? Some proc Death Nova and others don’t? It seems kind okittenward.
I’ll have to put some more thought into trying to figure this out because this is a very Mesmer-like situation, but wasting a weapon slot for a “Shatter” seems bad.

@keloorie: I fully agree – we should be right up there with Eles in terms of Chill potential. Not so sure on the corpse revival though.

Sarrs.4831:

Lots of these skills look like they’ve been copied from other classes but necro-fied. I dunno if I like it.

Sword looks very, very similar to Scepter. The 2 is kind of like that Thief one that steals boons, but corrupts them instead; that could be cool, I dunno. The 1 chain and 3 look like Scepter-but-not-quite.
Torch looks like Warhorn-but-not. It dazes, but it’s a projectile, not a frontal cone AOE. It has an AoE movement slow which generates lifeforce.
I’m not entirely sure what to make of Axe offhand. Is Fell Swoop a quick whirl like warrior axe 2, or a spin-to-win like warrior axe 5? Also, Execute seems like it’d put it right in the territory of Close to Death, and I’m not sure how you’d balance it.
“Summon a Jagged Horror on hit,” how does that work, assuming it’s a cleaving attack? If I hit three targets, do I get three horrors? The Hammer 1/2 seem a bit like a Guardian rip, but that may just be me.

The skills weren’t intentionally copied from other classes, but there’s only so much design space you can use with certain weapons (swords slash, hammers hit, etc.). In response to the more specific comments:

• For the sword auto and #3, I’ll admit they’re similar to the scepter attacks, but they’ve been adapted for melee range and had their order/effect reversed, so hopefully that’s enough to set the weapons apart. For the #2, yeah, it’s meant to be a Necro-y riff on that.
• For the torch, the real potential here is for full control (note that it lacks damage). The conditional existence of two Stun effects (freeze is actually even more powerful) allows you to land big blows or heal without your opponent being able to do anything. Plus, the chill messes with stunbreakers, further improving your set up.
• The intention of fell swoop is to be a single spin, like Warrior #2, but slightly slower, so that later foes can evade the strike. As far as Execute, I reversed the effect in order to give it a different interaction with Close to Death, since I hadn’t thought of that.
• For summon on hit, the mechanics of it would be a basic boolean; it only cares that it hits, not how many people it hits, so only one horror would ever be summoned.

Bhawb.7408:

Sword:
1) Is this cleaving?
Otherwise, I like the idea, especially the 3 skill.

The rest of the skills I like, but I feel like some need more internal play. For example, Hammer summons jagged horrors, and the first 4 abilities have good synergy already. How about making 5 skill blow up all summoned jagged horrors?

Everything else, I like the idea of. Obviously they’d need numbers, but the ideas are cool.

The intention is to have it cleave (note the plural, “foes”). It needs to have some sort of advantage over scepter, especially given that you sacrifice a bleed for cripple in order to maintain melee range.

As for the Hammer, I thought about adding more minion effects, but I figured indirect was the way to go, since you want the other skills to be just as viable without active minions (utility or jagged). I’m not against having a skill that blows up the horrors, but them that would essentially make them Bone Minions. Plus, the Death Nova trait already gets them. Skill 5 is really the only one I’m not terribly happy with.

I’l see if I can’t toss some prospective numbers on things. I’m not very good at adjusting these types of things, but I figure it’ll make ’em look better.

Weapon/skill suggestion threads seem to have become a thing, and I’ve seen enough of these threads to get me thinking, so I figure, meh, why not post my own suggestions? I picked weapons I figured we’d have a reasonable shot of getting at some point (I.e. No bows, firearms, etc.). Brackets denote skill facts, Braces denote comments. All values denote base damage at level 80, as scaling would be subject to testing.

MH Sword - A melee condition weapon. Think butcher’s cleaver.

1. A) Slaughter - Slice your foes (133 dmg), bleeding them. (Bleed x3, 2s)
   B) Dismember - Slice your foes (133 dmg), crippling them. (2s)
   C) Spoil - Slice your foes (133 dmg), poisoning them. (2s)
   [The idea is without bonus duration, conditions expire as they reapply.]
2. Defiling Strike - Strike your foe (481 dmg) and corrupt a boon. ( 8s CD)
3. Mutilate - Strip your foe of all conditions, dealing damage (481 dmg) and gaining life force (3%) for each one. (15s CD)

OH Torch - A more controlling offhand. Think nether flames, or cold fire.

1. Frostbite - Daze (1s) and chill (4s) your foe. Stun (1s) them if they’re chilled. (15s CD)
2. A) Netherfire - Set yourself alight (3s), periodically chilling (3s) up to three nearby foes and gaining life force (3% LF/s).
   B) Hoarfrost - Cast your netherflames, encasing your foe in ice (3s). (25s CD)

OH Axe - A raw power based off hand, playing off of an executioners axe.

1. Fell Swoop - Spin around (WHIRL), dealing increasing damage to each foe struck (371*(#strikes+1) dmg). (20s CD) [If not evaded, you hit the first foe twice.]
2. Execute - Strike your foe, dealing more damage the more health they have. (336*(1+N) dmg, 25s CD) [N is opponent’s health % rounded up to 1/0.66/0.33]

Hammer - A melee support/power weapon (as opposed to the “in between” Axe).

1. A) Cruel Blow - Strike your foe. (279 dmg)
   B) Dreadful Blow - Strike your foe (279 dmg), making them vulnerable (x4, 4s).
   C) Horrific Blow - Strike your foe (279 dmg). Summon a jagged horror on hit.
2. Crush Spirit - Smash nearby foes (581 dmg, BLAST), gaining life force for each foe struck (2%). (6s CD)
3. Blood Field - Summon a bloody mist that regenerates allies (7s) and weakens (7s) enemies. (15s CD)
4. Into the Maw - Open a void that pulls foes (x1) toward it and pulses (x3) torment (x2, 4s). (25s CD)
5. Putrid Burst - Explode (1592 dmg), poisoning (10s) nearby foes. (30s)

A lot of these skills are far too complex, and I feel like some are stepping on the toes of other weapons. Moreover, the current skills seem very split between minions. conditions, and power, and the health expenditure seems random. I also get the feeling ANET doesn’t want us to spend life force on weapon skills. I think these could use some more refinement.
The idea of creating conditional skills is, in my opinion, a step forward though.

By coupling Furious Demise (Fury) with Deathly Perception (50% Crit Chance), all you need is a crit chance of ~30% to maximize your critical hit potential. That then leaves you free to invest into Critical Damage, which spikes your numbers. A healthy dose of Might also helps.

Adding to what Bhawb said, also try to CC the crap out of the Necro. Condition Necros (at least the cheesiest builds) are basically guaranteed to have two stunbreaks at most, and both are on long cooldowns, so if you have the Necro blow them quickly, he or she can be pin-ponged around without trouble.

Well, ideally, this is a resource that Devs can refer to in case do ever decide to change anything. Having a hodge podge of unfocused talk spread out among several threads is less likely to get their attention then a clear, concise discussion in one place.

Having acquired good survey data, we can now try to hone in on specific problems, and figure out what changes we would like to see. Specifically, there appear to be 6 traits where the majority of people are unsatisfied based on the charts. I would ask that until we reach some concesus, we focus all discussion on these traits.

• Strength of Undeath - Do we only want increased to match the standard?
• Fear of Death - Is this because it’s a death trigger? We aren’t the only profession with something akin to this, but what would we rather see here? Well of Blood?
• Speed of Shadows - Ideally, we should get at least Signet passives in DS, but if that were the case, what would we prefer here? If we are doomed to lose passive effects in DS, should we keep this? If so, should it be buffed?
• Mark of Revival - This is meant to prevent stomps, and it does an ok job of it, I think. What could be done to improve it? Well of Darkness?
• Soul Marks - This had the largest number of “relocation” responses… Where could it be moved? People also seem dissatisfied with it’s current iteration – would like to see it buffed or merged with another staff trait?
• Foot in the Grave - Presumably, everyone wants Shade back. However, assuming recent trends continue, and Devs withhold that from us, what would you like to see here? Periodic stability? (I.e. 3s of Stability every 3s or the like.)

DuranArgith.1354:

ok, but what does moa form has to do with condition immunity and its counters?

Nothing, but the argument presented by the poster I was replying to is that Plague is somehow a god mode transformation. Which it isn’t – it’s a stall tactic.

DuranArgith.1354:

toughness quardrupled. No, you don’t take a lot of damage and continously keeping the attacker blinded anyway

Plague Form is the complement of Moa Morph – you essentially stop the attacker from doing anything, but Plague Form is built around defense, since you become more tanky and prevent damage, while Moa Morph is built around offense since the attacker loses sustain and most escapes along with their damage.

Reevz.2617:

wtb more counterplay for necro (travel time or delay on marks is ideal)

I agree. Your stated changes to the Necro nerf conditions some, but do nothing to address their lack of counterplay, nor do they address the subpar sustain the Necro community has been asking for forever.

Chaith.8256:

• Death Shroud no longer removes Spectral effects (massive focus fire buff)

In exchange for that, they now have a 1 second ICD, so in reality, they are objectively worse when being focused fired by multiple people. Moreover, running out of Deathshroud can no longer serve as Aegis – the damage rolls over. These were substantial nerfs to sustain.
Whether or not Necros are weaker than before in terms of damage is questionable, but Necromancers a certainly much weaker to focus fire than they used to be. Hence, their DPS was increased (far too much) to offset, and has been brought down slowly.
Many Necros would gladly trade condition damage for sustain (see Necro forums), given they’re meant to be the “attrition” profession, but ANET doesn’t seem to like that idea.

ArmageddonAsh.6430:

Vital Persistence – With the buff it got, it is now great imo. A move in the right direction. Curious about those that said it was okay and why it was just “okay”

Master of Terror – It is good, for the right builds. Personally i think it is in the wrong tree so i would have to agree with those that said it is okay.

Soul Marks – Needs work. It is rather weak for such a cost in my opinion.

I cut out portions of some of the longer comments people submitted via text, but in regards to these traits:

• More than one person stated that Vital Persistence, while nice now, should be the default LF-degeneration rate, and that the slot could be used for something else.
• More than one person commented that Master of Terror does not belong in this tree, as it is not the condition duration tree.
• There were comments that Soul Marks is great, but underwhelming in comparison to other options, and that it (A) belongs in Death Magic, or (B) should be merged with Spiteful Marks.

There also multiple comments regarding the fact that beyond Master of Terror, there is very little in the way of Conditions (appication and cleansing) in this tree in comparison to the others.

Muchacho.2390:

Balefire.7592:

Muchacho.2390:

Balefire.7592:

If anything, I would like to see the movement reduction altered to make way for Cripple. Currently, Chill not only slows more than Cripple, but it has additional effects, leaving Cripple in the dust. I would take longer Chill applications at half effectiveness (or something similar) in order to ratify this.

I disagree, chill was always supposed of a stronger version of cripple but rarer.
Chill has to stay as it is.

The problem, however, is that’s about as common as cripple. I don’t have any preference regarding what to do with Chill, but it currently outclasses Cripple by too much, too often.

Really? If i look at gw2 wiki is see far more skills that apply cripple than chill and those normally last longer than chill…
And more importantly more classes have access to cripple than chill (without runes,sigel,racial skills, etc.).

I count 43 reliable sources of cripple spread out over all land-based weapon, utility and elite skills excluding downed and racial skills, and there are no “external” Cripple sources. On the other hand, there are 27 skills (chosen in a similar fashion) that do the same for chilled, plus three rune effects and two sigils (which will proc at some point, so they cannot be ignored). When comparing traits, there are 8 Cripple inducing traits as opposed to 5 Chill traits.
Hence, we currently sit at a relative ratio of 1 Cripple to ~0.63 Chill. Whether or not you agree with me is up to you, but I personally think it’s too high given the disparity in power. Condition duration further compounds this, as an extended Chill is far worse for the opponent, and while we have runes and a sigil that increase Chill durations, nothing similar exists for Cripple.

Muchacho.2390:

Balefire.7592:

If anything, I would like to see the movement reduction altered to make way for Cripple. Currently, Chill not only slows more than Cripple, but it has additional effects, leaving Cripple in the dust. I would take longer Chill applications at half effectiveness (or something similar) in order to ratify this.

I disagree, chill was always supposed of a stronger version of cripple but rarer.
Chill has to stay as it is.

The problem, however, is that’s about as common as cripple. I don’t have any preference regarding what to do with Chill, but it currently outclasses Cripple by too much, too often.

If anything, I would like to see the movement reduction altered to make way for Cripple. Currently, Chill not only slows more than Cripple, but it has additional effects, leaving Cripple in the dust. I would take longer Chill applications at half effectiveness (or something similar) in order to ratify this.

Charts of the responses may be found in the attachment.
Given these results, have your opinions changed? What changes can be made to traits people feel are subpar? Should we completely remove them or improve them? For traits worth relocating, where should they be moved? Should we merge them with another?

EDIT – My spoiler tags are freaking out for some reason, so I couldn’t make the comments a bulleted list…

The poll has not had any new responses for a few days now, so I’m going to start working on synthesizing the data, as Google forms has kind of butchered the response tables due a maximum character limit on charts.

Bhawb.7408:

I guarantee even if they gave us a flower as a weapon, if they did it right it would make an awesome weapon.

ANET, PLZ. PLZZZZ. I NEEDS IT.

@Ash/Andele: Currently, those are wildly overpowered.

Some more I thought up.
Adept Trait
Sweet Suffering – You gain protection when you apply three or more conditions to a foe. (In 1 hit.)
Grim Return – Death shroud recharges and you gain 50% life force when you rally.

Master Trait
Premature Burial – Apply torment to foes whenever you impede their movement. (Immobilize, Cripple, and Chill)