Guild Wars 2

Thanks so much Robert!

Reaper looks really powerful and has a unique and diverse kit. Looks so fun to play and impactful.
Also the trait changes they talked about made me excited (transfusion rezz, vampiric in ds, vamp aura).

I think poison is a good choice. Melee/power builds have really low access to it so it’s nice to have some independent of weapon choice.

Also i believe they said in the stream that the current implementation of GS 4 pulses blind and cripple.

CD is probalby to low (6 sec) to warrant a projectile reflect/destruction.

I thought they would introduce a projectile destruction on shout activation. It could function similar to d/d ele earth2 projectile deflect but it seems like they didn’t go that route.

Slow and easily telegraphed is simply detrimental?
Looking at how strong hambow was last meta and how impactful lich can be I’d say wait and see.

Maybe i read it wrong but from the announcement we get Dark Path changed to a dash ability with a poison explosion at the end.

So not only more poison access (which was lacking in power builds) but also a movement skill that probably doesn’t require targeting for our DS2 ability (dash is most likely something similar to warrior GS mobility skills/ele D/x burning speed – we’ll see tomorrow what the range is).

Wait for presentation please.

Also want new emote .

Depending on which game mode you look at blind might become more of a problem than low-to-no stability access. Especially since melee shroud and melee GS might make staff more of a must have, leaving no room for warhorn OH.

But yay for dovahkiin Giantdad! Really awesome. Looks like a beast!

spoj.9672:

The symbol almost reminds me of a shield. So maybe we will have an extra f skill to use/toggle our lifeforce as a shield/health buffer without entering the transform.

That would be so endlessly sweet.

I have to say i like DS skills but i also think that balancing pre-emptive heals (shields) is probably way easier.

I like the announced name and think most suggested names are actually worse and don’t fit the theme at all.

Why are so whiny about big changes? From the 2 shown elite speccs it seems like ANet fixes classes by giving them what the community always wanted.
Also the necro community, once again, raised their voices and got a thread supervised by Gates (thanks mate!) and an article on TTT.

So there is hope for necro. Even after that uninspired trait rework…
And even if this hope will get shattered after they announce the changes to the class, like so many times before, atleast we get the revenant as an alternative to our favourite dark caster. And if this day comes then my green bloberino might finally rest in piece, but for now there is hope.

Also guard changes look like every guards wet dream. Even if you don’t touch longbow and traps that traitline offers so much raw dmg modifiers and additional utility through virtues.

Make Close to Death the Spite GM minor, then the new Spite Grandmaster traits are an actual choice and not overshadowed by CtD.

Add traits that play with necro mechanics like boon removal (lifesteal/heal on remove trait – a real Feast of Corruption) and condition transfer (convert boon on successful transfer trait) and if I am on it: bring back Dark Armor as some kind of interrupt defense on channeled skills(auto casted Dark Path on interrupted channel) or something similar to eles auto ice armor on getting hit but maybe with poison(short poison or weakness on hit) or dark (lifesteal on hit).

Also it would be nice if they addressed the no heal in DS mechanic(vampiric atleast?) and if signets would work in DS.

For critique on existing traits there already were good suggestions here and on other threads.

So since everyone else seems also kind of disappointed with Spite GM minor and having to choose between CtD and one of the new GM traits (which is sadly not a choice at all), what would happen if CtD became the spite GM minor?
If it would be just too much additional power, then would be lowering the bonus dmg to 15% or even 10% be enough to compensate for added utility through signet or axe3 trait?

And a suggestion. When they showed the changes for other classes, often times they improved on “ways to play the class”/augmented their strengths and what they are good at.
When necro came up i didn’t notice a trait addition like that.

What i mean in generell are traits that would alter or strengthen skills like condition transfer and boon removal. Also dark armor would’ve been a candidate to receive some cool thing as a trait that “alters” our channeled skills.

As some simple suggestions in this regard, there could’ve been traits like life steal on boon removal(with icd ofc) or convert 1 boon when transfering conditions. Dark armor could be about debuffing or hurting foes who interrupt a channel.

The Gates Assassin.9827:

If players post me some good feedback and suggestions, it’ll get to the devs and things will change. Watch.

Then give them feedback in regards to Spite GM traits beeing conceptually cool (Auto Signet and especially axe3 on DS enter) but simply outshined by Close to Death (20%dmg under 50%). Also the Spite GM minor is still kind of meh.

Additionally, if they seriously want to make Deathly Invig not about leaving DS and about party support then why not make it some pulsing group lifesteal procc? Maybe the PvE crowd will get some use out of it then.

Well ground target is good overall, especially with curses having no relevance for power anymore.

Also to bring in some constructive stuff (i cried enough on other threads…):
Spite minor changes are great.
I hope they number tweak vamp stuff significantly.
Dagger recharge trait has really awkward conditions. I believe it was 33% cdr when over 75%. This is kind of strange and more limiting than other new cd mechanics, imho.
I am kind of disappointed that they didn’t do something cool with the class by adding interesting mechanics (dmg on chill- power equiv to terror; vamp lifesteal on boon remove; dark armor poison aura stability?! hur hur).
Also some of the trait choices, especially in the grand master range, are not really hard. For example the spite gm axe3 trait, while interesting in concept is totally overshadowed by CtD.

flow.6043:

Or, you know… they could just do the most obvious and logical thing: healing in DS.

I am pretty sure they said it won’t heal the necro anymore with this change. Also they revealed pretty heavy changes for other classes (engi stuff, illusonary persona base) so why wouldn’t they reveal something so drastic? Also keeping that crap healing DM trait in the game makes it pretty certain that healing in DS won’t come.

They buffed leech on wells to about 100, i think? Also dunno about crit trait but want to see actual numbers. Blood seems still really weak in comparison to every other “sustain” line but have to try it. Also pretty likely that it will stay useless for power builds, since SR and spite stay pretty mandatory i guess and new trait line probably won’t suck as hard as everything else.

Also rampage might just simply outclass lich now. lol

Overall i am pretty disappointed but that is what i expected to be anyways.

Rampage has a CC on every move, so expecting the same damage as lich plus CC is kinda wrong. That said rampage still does good damage.

Lich is kinda melee. The projectiles are really unreliable above ~700 range. That is why most necros run in your face when popping it(to reduce projectile travel time).

If you want a high damage build on warrior then play killshot. To hit high numbers you have to actually give up something. Like defense.

Get gud.

Give it a read. Don’t disregard it because you might feel insulted by the header.
There is wisdom in these words.

If you want PvE examples: green hound thingies in silverwastes (pacman) can 1 shot necro through full life force. So tank, much health. Wow.

@Argument about effective health with DS: dodge+invul = ~3-4 seconds of effective health beeing
9^999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999
plus cc immunity(for the most part).

Also PvP CC that works on “invul”: I am pretty sure shocking aura punches you out of blurred frenzy/pistol whip. But been a while since i played that/encountered that.
In addition you can argue about blocks and unblockeable CC.

Tao.5096:

Healing primary HP while in DS?
Use Unholy Sanctuary.
Problem solved.

Nobody uses it because the healing is too small without healing power and with healing power dmg drops to zero. Also traiting for it heavily sacrifices offensive potential.
So it is either offenisve build with Unholy Sanc and sacrificing either dmg from spite or Soul Reaping -> useless necro or defensive build with no pressure, abyssmal support and utility -> useless necro.

There were lots of discussion about this on the necromancer forum. The general consensus seemed to be: allow siphons and maybe regen. See how it goes from there.

Another thing that should be kept in mind: current somewhat working sustain builds for necro (spectral builds like 26006 soldier with SW and SA) are hard to kill but have no worthwhile contribution to fights, atleast not in the sense that other bruserish builds are. So if you push defensive capabilities by allowing some healing in DS and necro becoming harder to kill, will it actually be used in a competetive environment? Or will it simply be a nuisance that is hard to kill but can’t stand on point(lack of stab or CC negating effects like block, invul, vigor) and doesn’t contribute in any meaningful way, like a PU mes does.

Fiery greatsword then? Also fresh air burst is pretty high, but rabid necro in an instant?

You should remember to consult your combat log in such cases, that would help a great deal.

Most requests to buffing necro survivability i have seen were linked to buffs at blood magic, which is a trait line most of you probably never heard of.

So no, buffs to survivability are not targeted at existing and working builds but are requests to make other playstyles atleast an option.

In a zerker comparison, i don’t think mesmer is superior to necro. The class has it’s issues (esp thief but also condi vulnerability) but also some things going for it (mobility in the form of portal and easier access to positional advantages, boon removal, somewhat low cd burst combo that is harder to land though, access to safe stomps ).
My only point is about things you can do with different classes against focus fire and, to be honest, mesmer has more active play there than necro which is important because active play and options makes it so you feel less limited by your class and more limited by your own skill.

Actually survivability is decent. A core problem of the class is simply not being able to get breathing room.

Blocks(gear shield, shelter), invulns(distortion, stances kinda, renewed focus), dodges due to vigor, invis and ports are defensive and allow you to escape focus fire or disengage.
All of these are tools that allow a player to actively defend himself. On the other hand DS is simply a button press that helps with enduring. It is not really active and your survivability comes from beeing able to face tank stuff. This leads to necro players feeling powerless when confronted with focus fire. And to be honest you are pretty powerless. You press one button and hope things clear up when your life force is empty/ or stunbreaker/putrid/heal ready. Meanwhile you are also easily disabled from applying counterpressure when in deathshroud since your mechanic makes it so that you have to eat CC and can’t retaliate back.

As something anecdotal: even though i have worse mobility on hamguard i feel i can more easily disengage due to the class giving me block and invuln and thus avoiding CC till i can line of sight most things that get thrown at me.

Although, especially power necro feels like a wrecking ball – come late to the party and set the house on fire – you are doing that from inside the house. Once committed to the fight you are most likely staying until it ends.

^Option would probably be the best solution.

They gutted an already lackluster trait and nerfed the effects of boon strip on elites.
Lich got easier to CC. So now you can CC or burst it or corrupt or disengage or right/left strafe it. So many possibilities to outdo one elite.

Classes that already had positional advantages through teleports now have even easier access to positional advantages.

He is right. Be grateful to the balancing overlords….

Nec is not gutted but why should we be grateful for this?

Rising Dusk.2408:

Those look like tower defenders, not player minions.

Yes i guess that is a possibility. Or maybe blood fiend gets some kind of projectile finisher? But there is no poison field nearby.

Also if you watch the trailer a bit earlier you can see the fiends on the wall.
Here is the youtube trailer which probably loads faster than twitch video:
link

The video is timed at 1:34. At 1:37 forwards you can actually see that they look a looot like blood fiends. Including auto attack animation.

@Pelopidas: Thank you.
Don’t know about the summoner but you can see that the green stuff will probably be a special attack because most of the time these blood fiends perform their regular auto attack.

Also, as some form of speculation, maybe it is linked to Death Nova and triggering on your target? Don’t know though, simply guessing.

Hello,

the wvw trailer is upon us and in the last part they showed off some combat on the map.
So i wanted to find something new.

At some point in the video a blood fiend shoots some kind of green blob from the keep walls at the attackers below. After the projectile landed it created a poisonish area.

Thoughts?

Video

Video will direct you to 57m30s the projectile is shot at around 57m38s.

zone.1073:

Each life blast has a lengthy 1 second cast time, so there is plenty of counter gameplay to this through interrupts, blinds, blocks, evades, and LoS around buildings and terrain. Applying weakness will shut down all of the Necro’s crits and severely reduce their DPS in death shroud.

This and in addition: (depending on build) you got a 10 second burst window after a necro leaves DS, so use that. Also get accustomed to the healing animation.
Pretty much everyone runs consume conditions which has a rather lengthy 1.25 sec cast time and a unique animation (atleast for necro). Interrupt that to apply additional pressure.
Also keep in mind that defense outside of DS is rather limited and lich can be “side stepped” easily at around 500?! range. So if he lichs → gs leap away and simply run away while spamming strafe left/right.

To be fair: the current game mode is more of a “shooter rip-off” than a moba rip-off. Capture point game modes are essentially in all shooter games and only found their way into MMO’s recently.

Also you are right with 5v5 beeing a clusterkitten and this is exactly why Anet decided to implement objective based game modes. By having multiple things on a map that need player attention you guarantee to split up the teams. This in turn creates pvp encounter with less players making the experience less zergy and more about small scale battles (1-3 versus 1-3). So this is pretty much what you want anyways.

Stronghold has atleast 3 objectives at the moment: offense, defense, supply running. By having only one objective you either need to reduce team size like you suggested, or you end up in a zergfest. How big of an influence each of those objectives has and how much players you need for them can only be speculated about at this point in time.

Also in regards to “team sizes to big”: GW2 currently allows you to queue with 0-4 additional people. So no matter how big or small your circle of pvp interested friends is, you can queue up with them. While this is a point for controversy (pre made vs pug) it also lessens the barrier of entry and is a better option than in most games where you can either go full premade or queue with max 1 additional person.

@ Traited stunbreak on legend swap: What muchacho said.

Also Legend swap “in combat” is on 10sec cd (at ~0:55 min into the youtube video ).
Zero cd is out of Combat and while elite has a stunbreak component, it is only on Jalis, has 2.75 sec cast time and 50 energy cost.

So yeah, mallyx might be good condi offense or some kind of “condi retal” playstyle but it is succeptible to (hard-) cc and forcing someone out of mallyx disables the condi manipulation for atleast 10 sec. So you kind of have to play around it, like you want to condi bomb eles after they leave water.

I think necro will stay king of conditions simply because the class has access to transfer but i might underrate the effects of resistance here.

Mallyx is more like necro on crack. Slowly kills himself due to no condi removal. Can’t get out of CC due to no stunbreaks but it has everything i wanted in necro.
Apart from that elite has its limits (transfer every 3 sec, condi duration capped at 3 sec).
So while mallyx looks awesome on first glance, it has necros vulnerabilities x10.

Also is it confirmed/denied that revenant can’t choose utility skills? Arrows are there but they could be for changing skill location only.

Split playerbase.
There will be a lot of uninformed players (HoT? what’s this?) and they should play the mode too (more people interested == better). So if you bring in yet another queue you will not see them that much in Stronghold because they will continue to press that matchmaking button they pressed for the last months.
In order to let them participate you need to rub it in their eyes so you want it in map selection of the most played game mode.
Also, taking some numbers from LoL league distribution : Around 90% of your playerbase are “filthy casuls” so you seriously need to guide them to the fun.
So following all of this i would like the option to let stronghold have a guaranteed map slot on selection (2 of 3 maps rng, 3rd is always stronghold). Especially when it is new, people will vote for it like crazy. So you and i will always get the map.
Also if someone trolls or wants something else and his 10% chance/veto works, then let him have his fun. His opinion is worth as much as yours and mine and 90% of the time you’ll get stronghold anyways.
Edit: As a direct result of having 90% of your playerbase in the same queue: reduced waiting times.

@Dranor: Good points. Even though the self traited healing is just a start it would bring some more possibilities and from that point we can see how things change.

manveruppd.7601:

OK, things to bear in mind, cause you guys seem to be talking at cross-purposes:

-snip-

1. Apart from “powercreep” i am still not convinced that these testing phases were more than a typical hotjoin match between people not having excess to ressource like meta battle and comparable build collections (dante’s posts).

2. Yes, change healing traits to what was suggested and leave DS alone. Also DS gives you an additional 60-78% of your current life, not 120%, and this assumes you got a full bar of life force at your disposal.

3,4,5 that’s more a thing for specialization and i don’t think they’ll ever significantly change this mechanic, eg in the way you suggested, for the necro class. This is too much work to do.

Also you personally would like more escapes but they said countless times that this is not what the necro is about.
Our stunbreakers are okay but i’ll address some of the perceived issues below.

@WEXXES susatin questions: Depending on game mode necro has not really noticeable sustain issues or, in structured pvp for example, kinda sucks hard. This is really noticeable in comparison to other classes. Shoutbow (war), medi guard, cele enig, d/d ele and some ranger builds sustain way better in a fight because they have tools for recovery. And these recovery tools aren’t simply healing skill + dmg absorb like in necros case. While these classes wait for the recharge, they get effects like regen, shoutheal, mediheal, backpack regen, water att heal, heal on dodge, what-do-i-know-ranger-signet-or-trait-heals. So overall they get lots of additional healing.
Couple this with the extreme CC vulnerability of necros in DS, which leads to either going out of it to stunbreak CC or cleansing/transfering immobs, or sitting out the CC duration and lacking any dmg appliance for up to 3-4 seconds (knockdowns, immob, some stuns).
Since you can’t retaliate back while you are CC’ed all this passive and little heal accumulates to some decent health in a timeframe in which they hit you, but you can’t retaliate back.
Also DS is a finite ressource that is opponent dependent (people hitting you while spec armor is on, landing life force generating skills in general) while healing is either passive and every other second, or only cd dependent. So they can do the game longer if they simply outplay your sustain, which is possible vs a necro.

Edit: Just think about this: line of sight as one of the mentioned builds for 5 secs and you get a significant amount of health, independent from your healing skill, and defensive cd’s back (blocks, dodges, blind, invul). Line of sight as a necro for 5 sec and where is your additional health? Only in your healing skill. Where is additional life force? Depends on cd’s and hitting someone to aquire.

And yes, i am aware that exactly the last bit is how necro is designed to be. Needing to hit stuff and be aggressive to sustain yourself in a fight. The thing is, even if you do this it is not enough with the exception of completely ignoring a sustain based fighting approach and trying your luck in burst wonderland (zerker well).

Warlord of Chaos.7845:

So what would happen if entering DS had no/1 sec cd, but all “On enter DS” abilities were given a ICD. Would that help a bit?

Some of them already (or still) have ICD’s.
I don’t think this change would actually do some significant improvements to our sustain since this would be more of an offensive buff. If there would be no cd on DS we would be able to aquire on demand fury, weakening shroud and stability and while on demand stability would enable some combos like stabi-channels it would be only a small buff to our sustain and a medium-large buff to burst potential with less retaliation potential.

Another possible approach could be giving each on enter trait a 7 or 10 sec internal CD and letting them proc on DS entry AND exit. Since most of these traits get already balanced by our ability to “shrouddance” i think we should not get punished by staying in DS for an extended amount of time. Every second we stay in Shroud after activating the effect the real cooldown of these procs gets increased by 1 since DS cd begins when leaving shroud.

But this is mostly directed to get some more juice out of Foot in the grave and Deathly Invigoration. Both traits seem good on paper but crap in actual use.

*About “balanced by shroud dance”: Since the reasoning for those traits and weakening shroud beeing strong was the possible 50%+ uptime of stabi/weakness i assumed they factor that into numerical balance.

Blood is power could be useful for you, depending on the situation (open world: yes, dungeons with support: not so much,but depends on grp and if you are might capped a lot).
If you use DS extensively, which is likely, then don’t use signet of spite. The passive power bonus doesn’t apply in lich/DS.
Also well of suffering is a must have for most situations.
Apart from that the build is not optimal but certainly not useless. If you enjoy it then stick with it since the dmg is decent.

Spectral builds can certainly deal decent damage and have good refill but i think they lack something to make them wanted/ usefull.
Also and this is a big minus: Spectral armor relies on you actually getting hit. If your opponent does not attack you while the effect is on you won’t get your refill and you won’t get your sustain going, while every other class relies on either passive get x health per second or healing skills(heal and weapon) cooldowns. So they are only time gated in their sustain while necro is enemy gated.
So not only vampiric sustain gets kitten if we don’t hit a target (or get hit if choosing vamp sig, yay) but also spectral sustain gets kitten if we don’t get hit. Good opponents can abuse this in some scenarios.

@soft-cc: Necro has really good access to chill and cripple but like others have said these conditions are not really that strong(in terms of limiting mobility). They still have benefits and can hinder some classes more than others and if you play on a class with limited access to these conditions (eg guard) you realise how beneficial they can be, but they also have their limits.
Teleports ignore them completely. Some skills remove them passively without even using dedicated condi clears (eg withdraw, overcharged shot- rifle4 engi) and also they don’t affect the ground you cover via dodging. Though a change in cripple/chill interaction with dodge would be interesting to see. Hurhur.

@Dark path: Great skill, don’t get me wrong. Baseline 5 sec chill with bleeds makes it good and PoC makes this one of the most interesting and rewarding necro skills.
It is just not a chasing tool, since you can outrun it and also using one movement skill will bring you out of the skill range. But atleast the tracking is great and does some crazy 90 degree direction changes.

But all this stuff is not really directed at necro sustain.
Tbh apart from allowing siphons in DS i would like to see Transfusion working on the necro. Yes with hpow this heals for 5k (or even 6k?) but it also sits on a 40 sec recharge, can only be traited for -15%cd and requires a trait to do so and it can be interrupted since it is a pretty long and obvious animation.
I think with these changes there would certainly be some value in bloodmagic and some different builds could surface that might require some tuning but could allow the “sustain caster” to actually sustain.

Edit nr 300: Also thanks cogbyrn for providing some direction for the discussion. I appreciate it.

Cogbyrn.7283:

What quantitatively constitutes “enough” sustain for a Necro, in your opinions? Given the “typical” Power and Condition builds and what they bring offensively to the table, what do you feel you should survive that you do not currently live through, and why do you feel like you should survive it?

Not really into condi, as it stands for power: the standard build is pretty much where power ranger was before the changes to signets, gs skills, longbow skills and some traits were made. It has no real value (some boon remove? pick thief or mes; downed pressure? engi, thief and don’t even talk about generell utility like healing, boons, mobility. generell fields and finisher, stomping and rezzing -lol) and the survivability is ultra low because gimpshroud is not a good pressure tool and, also thanks to no healing, not a recovery tool.
For beeing a pressure tool cast times are too high and thanks to that cc-vulnerability is also really high.
So as a result you play power necro like a gs warri back in the pre- cleansing ire+HS-days: circle the edges of fights, trying to not get anyones attention and waiting for an opportunity to strike, but without the mobility of said warrior.

Also it is not about how much more survivability should an existing build get but about: how much should we get out of skilling more defensive and trading dmg/burst and the chance to 3-shot an opponent with zerker shroud for more survivability. And while there are those funky spectral builds, that actually have decent, not great, survivability they simply don’t do anything significant, except not dying fast (most of the time).

Allowing self healing in DS is probably all it needs to give necros some really great sustain if traiting for blood magic but that probably won’t happen, so i am hoping for necro specialization removing gimpshroud so necro can finally be balanced like a gw2 class and not some kind of old school mmo class…

No whirl finisher and also no proper projectile finisher(why are dagger4 and focus1 no projectiles :/ )
I would like to see them adding some weight to Necro gs. Most of necros (power-)weapons are fast and multi hits, so some slower weapon would be a good mix up.
Also some DarkSouls-like, weighted greatsword smashes would be more than welcome. Maybe a sexy overhead smash that sends a dark projectile forward. hmmm.

I am still kind of annoyed that necro is the ranged nuke-caster pretty much on every viable pvp build and elementalist holds the bruiser status like a boss.
I am hoping for pbaoe debuffing and control as a playstyle option coupled with enough survivability to stay in the center of attention.

So these “realistic speculations” sound really good, apart from guard gs-comparisons. It is a good weapon but not much fun for me.

shimmerless.4560:

I don’t even know where to begin with the part about condition Thieves and power Necro is much stronger than people give it credit for.

Condi is really strong atm. It had it’s ups and downs but was always playable since release.
Power is ok and can have really strong impact on fights.

The problem for me is: condi is boring and really old school in terms of gameplay, too much ground targeted stuff + sceptre feels like your playing wow and not gw2 where everyone else plays the “swing your sword in wide arcs”-game.

Also you got those necs who dislike condi and the ~only option that remains is power.
This option has the downside of:
1. beeing AA-heavy (see lich, DS, dagger1)
2. Playing like war from over a year ago.
You might remember that time where people compared warrior to thieves without teleports(somewhat untrue for nec), crazy amount of dodges and stealth because they circled around the fights and try to find the right opportunity to strike.
This was due to not enough survivability to stay in the fight for a prolonged amount of time coupled with the low survivability of a bursty specc, which was at that point in time the only thing warrior was worth for, like power nec to this day and age.

Also while other classes got their shiny new celestial speccs with the last feature pack, necro didn’t change a thing. The same old boring builds that rely on bursting stuff, either with fear or power auto attack nuckage, while other classes options opened up lead to disappointement with the class.

So in total necro is not in a bad spot. Condi is strong so the class is viable in pvp, i’d say, but it is boring and one dimensional and not really changing and evolving like other classes.

Why didn’t you mention DS interact? It actually is better then simply abusing latency/ old timing trick because you can start to interact AFTER you’ve already entered DS.

Sure the interrupt when activating DS is meh.

You could probably also mention staff mark size adjustments and Death magic minor changes – even if they aren’t that great/except for the 25 / 5 pt one, which wasn’t changed.

And if the downed state health bug fix made it on your list, why not mention the awesome addition of scaling on our vamp traits. /s

Xae.7204:

dancingmonkey.4902:

Yup. It supports the general active combat of the game by requiring less time in which we are restricted to a small area. It literally does the exact same thing, but it does it faster.

Yup sure, lets make a complaint thread about.

You are completely correct.

Just a quick correction: losing 2 times your healing power as healing from a skill is not “doing the same thing but quicker”. It is in fact a nerf that isn’t adressed by the increase in healing per tick.
In addition this skill is still not a good option without healing power and in case you got healing power (for whatever reason) it is just worse than the pre patch version.

Goodbye fellow necro. May you find greater enjoyment in some other game that does it’s balancing a bit more frequently.

So i’ve tested the unintended lich changes and it seems like the precision loss is simply a tooltip error.
I’ve gone with soldier + zero traits for 4% base crit and tested by auto attacking the invincible golems in hotm.
Doing 2 test runs, each 20 seconds lich auto attacking, i’ve done 6 and 7 crits out of the 17 hits i was able to do in the shortened lich form.
That is roughly equal to 35% / 41% crit. If you convert it to precision at a rate of 21 prec per crit% and subtract the 4% base value you get 651 / 777 precision, which is on average 714 precision.
gw2skills.net listed old prec-gain as 916 so i’d say this could have to do with low sample size but lich still seems to buff precision, even so the stat page doesn’t reflect it.

I am enjoying the gloriously small numbers that my hybrid, procc-centered, SoV build produces.
Atleast i have some fun with it (thief, war changes and mes condi buffs play in favour) except when someone of the ranger master race notices me…
Also axe tweaks are pretty decent.

Merlin Dyfed Avalon.5046:

Wait, people are specing spectral duration now?

Just wondering because .. .. why?

PS: what’s with all the other professions showing up stating necro is fine?

Because spec duration combined with soldiers amulett, 30 in SR, warhorn, spec walk and spec armor actually gives a build that is on par with what other professions can achieve in terms of attrition.
The build itself is still pretty useless because you lack any significant contribution to (team) fights except not dying that easily.

Also that salt comes from beeing fearbombed or well/lich bombed by our “good” builds, which center around bursting because, you know, lack of recovery or disengage.

Um, I may not have expressed myself very well.

The trait works and stops a fatal blow but this fatal blow doesn’t reduce your lifeforce. It simply is negated and the dmg doesn’t apply. Neither to your hp or to your life force.
So it works not quite as intended, i guess?

Seems about right.

I tested it by fighting against svanir in hotm with 100% life force and it doesn’t seem to reduce life force for taking a deadly hit.

^Then they also have to nerf blood fiend.