Guild Wars 2

Rennoko.5731:

Personally…. I oddly find it bad. One of the ways I could tell when to epidemic was the rate at which numbers were exploding out of someone… now I have to pay close attention to what that number on the bleed floater reads or their debuff bar. I expect to go back to the old floater system.

I’d say if you like it (without that case) just keep it and you’ll get used to it.

It wasn’t added, its always been that way, they were just really bad at it.

Flesh Golem/Blood Fiend: 33,000 HP traited
Bone Minions: 13,000 HP traited
Rest: 28,000 HP traited.

Even the most pathetic of our minions have comparable HP to players.

It should be very noticeable. To give you something to work with:
Flesh Golem/Blood Fiend HP should be 33,000 each in WvW if you trait it. If it hasn’t been changed, it’ll be 19,000. So it should be really easy to test.

We do try to fix audio qualities, if anyone actually has tips on how to do that please help us. None of us are professionals, or even remotely experienced in what we’re doing.

Case in point: the background I made for the other podcast I do was made in Paint because I couldn’t figure out a free-online photo editor.

As far as every necro is concerned, this trait still doesn’t exist.

Arianna.7642:

You’re a player that does not have thousands of players looking to them for the correct information. I would take most of what they say with a grain of, if not more, salt at this point.

I too forget that all devs are infallible, and couldn’t possibly make a small mistake doing an unscripted short show.

I mean it wasn’t even like they called it something ridiculous, its Blood thirst to Blood lust, even the parts that are different are similar.

Transfusion is healing for over 4.5k to each person, invigoration for 886. Looking like really strong healing support.

That graph is off, my minion heal on hit is 94 without BT and with 1215 healing power in sPvP.

Mordar.4286:

minions are still garbage, so there’s no change at all

With new HP values and the trait a full bar of minions summons meat-shields worth 150,000HP.

Thanks for the feedback.

For anyone confused, many many Necros ran tests of our own, and the general consensus was that Death Shroud was approximately 100-120% of our real HP. However we’ve been told by devs that it was 60%, and the preview showed that.

So there is a bit of confusion as to what exactly is happening, people aren’t quite sure if its a nerf, or if somehow our numbers are off by a pretty massive amount and there is some kind of bug happening to mess up our testing.

We aren’t fully sure of all the circumstances though, all we know is that we feel like our test results show higher than 60%, yet a dev told us specifically that the number coded was 60%, and now we saw it in game.

At least now that we see it we have a way to gauge if its working properly or not for sure.

It isn’t a nerf, its simply some weird interaction. A dev posted here fairly quickly after DS was finally bug-fixed to be the proper amount of eHP to direct damage.

I imagine Andele is right and there is just a really weird armor interaction here; they wouldn’t nerf DS by about half.

It was a preview, they said they weren’t going to show everything, just some of the bigger things and their thoughts from there. More of a way for them to say “hey this change was because of this reason” and use that to be able to talk from their side as to where they are moving some things.

I’m totally agreeing they need to support support-builds more, just warning and adding in that it should be done properly.

The problem with healing as a support mechanic is this: how do you make healing (in GW2) interesting, and engaging? The only way you can heal “wrongly” is by healing someone who can’t be healed (full HP, in Deathshroud, w/e), or healing in a situation where your healing is reduced (healing “overfills” HP bar, poison cuts healing, AoE heal doesn’t hit 5 targets for its full amount). But that doesn’t exactly leave much left, in fact the only big moment for a healer in this situation would be when your spike healing saves someone from an otherwise “death” blow.

Its why healing needs to be looked at as a side-mechanic for supporting, especially sustained healing, and other kinds of support need to be more pronounced. Burst healing, ways to mitigate damage to others (via reflect, AoE protection, weakness on enemies, etc), offensive support (like venom-shares).

Basically any kind of support that force you to make important decisions (aka, can be used wrongly), and can make a meaningful and noticeable impact on the fight are what they need to push for. Some things do this (venom share, for example, can be screwed up, yet has a huge impact when used right), and others don’t (spirits, summon spirit when in fight and CD is up, job done).

Just look at how they are improving Transfusion, a trait that gives 0 benefit to the caster themselves, absolutely not a thing, all it can do is heal allies.

The problem is though, how do you make support meaningful without making more things like ::gags:: spirit rangers, who in essence were supposed to be their support mechanic?

Relentliss.2170:

I think when you boost your two strongest classes, Warrior and Necro, and don’t do much for the others, even apply nerfs, you haven’t helped the game at all.

1. No class is strong, builds are strong. I could make a god-awful Necro build that would make ele’s look like gods.
2. Its the 30/20/0/0/20 Dhuumfire build that is so strong, which received not a kitten thing. The necro buffs were to PvE/WvW minions, and then to Blood magic, and neither one of those are going to buff Necro meta builds.

Harbinger.8637:

Why not a simple roll back on the serious exploiters? You guys had a way of finding out about all the people exploiting Karma weapons in the past. Don’t see why you couldn’t do the same in this situation.

You do roll-backs once the problem is fixed. If I were them I’d be silently compiling a big “naughty list” and wait till the problem is completely fixed up, and then throw out the massive ban-hammer.

Full-siphon builds. Ones that push out high precision, along with wells-siphon and vampiric precision. Selfish builds that don’t care about team healing, but more about self-healing.

And I’ve been using Mark of Evasion for a while now. As long as you don’t have staff and focus its really nice to keep up permanent regen.

The pet HP boost will be present in PvE/WvW minions, and will make them have pretty massive HP pools for a summoned creature.

But I think the siphon change is good. Minions now deal their damage (as well as heal), which is a decent buff, and to my knowledge all of the siphons now have Vampiric-like scaling. Plus they have had minor buffs.

I think overall this will make everything much nicer. To respond to your points individually though
1. That is an option they can take. But now they also have the choice of dropping 20 from SR, and putting it into Blood Magic for sustain and/or team support. I’m sure most won’t take it simply because “omg need longer fears”, but that doesn’t mean its the best answer. I think it’ll open up condition-support builds more too, they can not only use a lot of condition spam, but now should have viable self-sustain and group-support. I could see Apothecary gear becoming quite nice (also the new deathly invigoration + 30 into SR and the Foot in the Grave + 7s DS could be very nice for support/bunkers).

3. The beauty of balance is that if they haven’t hit the sweet spot yet, we’ll just see another buff later on. I’d rather they take it slow rather than Dhuumfire us again.

I probably won’t take it anymore if the base values have been upped to compensate, I feel like the new Transfusion trait is so amazing I’m going to be hard-pressed to not want it instead.

That said, I still think it’ll be a valid option for full-siphon builds, ones that want to be a bit more selfish. I agree it might warrant some kind of buffing/consolidation with other traits though.

They just previewed the changes, it seems like a fairly decent buff overall, although I 100% guarantee necros are going to QQ tomorrow.

In 2 and a half hours, aka 12 noon PST.

Krayiss.4926:

You could drive your debate of the english language into the ground huh?

Don’t be irresponsible with the use of the English language then. If you want to carelessly use words, don’t do it where you’re going to screw over an entire game population. Otherwise, yeah I’m going to call you out when the way you speak is going to directly result in less dev posts, something we desperately don’t need right now.

Ellisande.5218:

Pets and minions denote the same concept and they are essentially used in the same fashion even though their UIs are different.

In Final Fantasy they are called: summons, Eidolons, Espers, Guardian Forces, Avatars, etc.

Just because you want them to be different and you want to be special doesn’t mean that they actually are different or that you are doing anything special.

Except we aren’t playing Final Fantasy, which had a completely different concept for summons than anything in GW.

Pets and minions in GW aren’t the same. They weren’t in GW1, they aren’t in GW2, stop trying to make them the same. Just because you don’t get the conceptual difference doesn’t mean I should have to get stuck with the crappy result. If I wanted pets I’d roll a Ranger, but I don’t, I want minions, so I play Necro.

Minions are like boss trash “adds”, Pets are like AI party members. Completely different concepts, completely different mechanics.

Words are important, there is a reason promise and plan are different words; they mean different things. If you use the wrong word, especially when you start using language that hurts the entire community by shutting down possible dev interaction, you can and will be called out for it. Look at legal processes if you want to understand why words carry so much weight (for example the difference between killing 20 people and murdering 20 people is the difference between being a free man or spending the rest of your life in jail; just a single word difference changes your entire life).

You’re saying they promised to fully overhaul the system, that they gave their word it would be entirely done. That isn’t accurate, because it isn’t the language they used. They said they would evaluate the rewards system, not completely finish the new system by 2013’s end, which, btw, 2013 isn’t over.

Every single other thing they said in that post towards PvP has already been done:
Watch other competitors (spectator mode)
See major ranked matches (shoutcaster program)
Host your own custom arenas, set up your own rules, host your own team practices (custom arenas)
Easier to play against similar skill opponents (ranked queues)
See your ranking (leaderboards)

Literally the only thing they said in there that they didn’t actually put out was a new rewards system, and the language they used “evaluating our PvP rewards system” does not say they need to deliver that system this year.

So, according to the English language and the definitions of the words they used, they are completely free and clear of any blame from that news statement.

These lists don’t really tell a full story. Why? Because they are based off meta builds, and not the class.

For example, Power Necros are definitely not rank 4, they’d be ranked just a bit above staff Eles. Same thing is true of most of these, they only speak true for the currently used meta builds, meaning this list only speaks of the top-ranking builds, and then have a long trail behind (and in front in maybe rare cases) of builds that aren’t meta.

Just saying, it should always be specified what build gives them that rank (like you did for Ranger), so people don’t start thinking that they can build celestial spirit weapon guardians and be one of the best soloQ builds.

The only thing I would change is dropping Earth sigil for something else. Doesn’t particularly matter too much, but something like Corruption could be good. Otherwise the build looks just fine to me.

Btw, Flesh Wurm isn’t second highest DPS, he’s third (though by a very marginal amount).

Except that it doesn’t work on a class by class basis, its build by build. Fight a warrior without Berzerker stance, its one of the easiest (and most pathetic) things you’ll ever do. Its builds that counter other builds, not classes. And its not as simple as “we’re weak against this therefore it counters us”.

For example, MM necros aren’t weak to CC. Or warriors that are destroyed by conditions, yet one specific warrior build counters condi-necros. Its never just a simple “I am on X class, you are on Y, therefore I win”, its down to builds, and even then there aren’t too many hard-counters when it comes to build v build.

GuildWarsPlayer.5608:

I just started a necro so I’m no expert but it seems they are really good at AOE damage.

Not really. Only their actives (Putrid Explosion, Charge, Haunt) deal AoE damage, and Death Nova, otherwise the majority of their damage is single target. They are just really nice for tanking mobs and grouping them for you to AoE with other skills, and the added damage isn’t bad.

But overall they have less AoE than a condition build, although yes more than non-DS (cleave) power builds.

WoW should not be the example for good “eSports” PvP, which is what ANet wants. WoW only got “eSports” level PvP by throwing tons and tons of their money into it, artificially boosting it for a while.

Krayiss.4926:

Bhawb tell me what Im still not seeing and you are?

You are taking things said by a dev to be promises, factual statements. Dev says X happens on date Y, therefore it happens. That isn’t how life works with any kind of big goal (ask anyone who’s had to deal with long-term projects as part of their job), that isn’t how game development works. The devs wanted it to happen, they tried to get everything they said done, but something in the process happened and it didn’t work out. Maybe the programming turned out significantly harder, maybe a patch along the way caused some major bugs that screwed things up. I don’t know.

But the fact is that nothing the devs say about what they plan to get accomplished is law. kitten happens, and they can’t get it out on time, even bigger companies like Riot have this problem. But by making these big threads blaming the devs for not reaching it, the ONLY thing that happens, is you send the message to the devs “tell us anything, and you kitten better make it so”, which in dev talk translates to “never tell them anything until its 100% guaranteed to happen exactly how and when we want it to”.

They didn’t promise you kitten. They said that they were aiming for X, Y, and Z. And as anyone who has ever set a goal, or done anything that involved long-term work, kitten happens. You said you wanted to get As in all your classes, but then were hospitalized for a month and ended up with a C. Did you break a promise? No, something you couldn’t have anticipated happened.

These kinds of threads where you insinuate (whether you had good intentions or not) that everything the developers say has to happen exactly when and how they say it or they have failed us in some way slowly but surely torches any lines of communication that devs have with us. Want to know what is going on in the future? Then you have to realize that everything they say is just what they want, not what they promise, and put the torches and pitchforks away when it doesn’t quite happen how it was planned.

That’s how life works. I realize it sucks. I wanted them to get through a lot more as well, but you have to realize it just doesn’t work that way, and everything they say is just what they want, not what they guarantee.

Hey everyone! But of Corpse will be doing a special patch-edition of the Podcast Tuesday at 6pm PST. We’ll go over all the patch notes that impact Necros, and talk about how the changes affect us in various ways. Come and join us live on twitch .

If you have anything you’d like covered, as we talk about the patch and the future, let us know by replying here, mailing myself or tenderly in game at Bhawb.7408 or Tenderly.7019, or on my twitter @Bhawb.

This should be a big patch, according to what I’ve heard, and even just off the official changes we should see quite a bit.

Honestly, even using the guy a fair amount, I have no idea what he sounds like. I have in-game sound pretty low.

I agree this skill is underrated, I just think we don’t see it often because most Necros don’t run builds where it would really be used. Its a decent skill, but it still needs a wee bit of buffing on its area denial strengths (nothing major) to put it as a competitive choice. Right now many builds can spam out the weakness and poison with other means, leaving it for very few builds.

Lightsbane.9012:

try to do anything as a necromancer when there’s more than one person cc’ing. plague form is not worth it for the stability. 180 second cooldown? funny joke.

Bring a stun break, use your two dodges, you also have up to three fears, chills, cripples, possibly a swiftness, and I’m assuming your team isn’t braindead and knows how to help peel for you. Worst case scenario you only down one person and take everyone else’s HP down 20% before you get downed yourself.

Oh, and if multiple people are CCing you, then they have 2 or more people doing no damage to the team, while your team is completely free to do whatever they want. Does it mean you get to do a lot besides try to survive? No, which is the point of focusing someone, you shouldn’t be able to ignore CC and also have the damage output to kill entire teams on your own.

Phadde.7362:

Of course, but it doesn’t really seems to be all that time-consuming or difficult relative to other features in the game, and relative to what the sPvP community would gain.

They are looking into it, mind you. They’ve looked at deathmatch (as well as other things) and they’ve looked at non-conquest gamemodes, as they’ve said. They just don’t want to implement it badly. And I imagine that is the only reason they haven’t just done something really simple like modifying Graveyard and Foefire to just spawn both sides on opposites sides of a walled-in Graveyard, disable respawns, and whoever scores 10 points wins.

I will say Symbolic brought up one good point, and that was if you’re dueling simply for the sake of trying to get better (and not just to win) then I see a valid argument for starting with 0% LF as a kind of “handicap”, and also to learn how to make LF quickly.

However, I’d say if you’re taking it seriously and your goal is to win, there is no reason you shouldn’t be at 100%.

Like Drarnor said, it is up to how many they can cleanse. Necros can apply, in the dumbfire build, burning, bleeding, chill, poison, cripple, weakness, and fear in one bleed rotation. A rotation that is up every 20 seconds, and can deal massive damage if you don’t get those conditions off you. Plus if you do it right, the bleeds (the real damage) are the furthest condition in, meaning you have to cleanse 6 conditions before you remove the important damage.

Oh btw, cute healing skills. Now try to use them while fear-locked.

Heartlust.6140:

I wonder how far we’re off when it comes to new skills. Devs said that they might take take year unfortunately.

Check out the patch notes on Tuesday, it is possible there will be new skills, although I am not sure (I hear things).

In PvE minions are the most common build for levelling and walking around, which is why you seem them that way. But (at least until this new patch) they are far from the most popular for dungeoning.

It would need a lot more work than just throwing two builds into a closed area.
What’s the time limit?
What is the tie breaker?
What would stop people from taking thieves and perma-stealthing?
How big does the arena have to be?
What stops people from just taking no-damage bunkers?
Should this be an official ranked mode or a special option in CA?
Should they actually make it an “official” mode, or just give us maps without conquest points that we turn into deathmatches?
Do you actually feel this will be balanced enough as is?
Should it even be balanced?
Blahblahblah.

Anyway, I’m not saying it shouldn’t be done at all. In fact I think it could be a really cool side-option to playing the standard game modes. But still there is a lot to consider, and also I think those are good questions to have answered. I don’t think it should be a ranked game mode, and I don’t think it should be considered when they balance, it should just be an option for custom arenas (they could just wall off Graveyard and do a bit of tweaking to that map and release it as the 2v2 place) and then let people do it themselves for fun.

Fortus.6175:

All ele pros abandoned the game or rerolled the class but Im still hoping [I know in vain] that maybe one day, on the next 2-3 years, eles might get to be decent. A man can only hope.

How long ago were Warriors moaning about how bad their class was and that ANet should just delete the class because it will never be good (insert more QQ moaning BS here)? Now where are they?

Eles had their time being completely broken, now they aren’t. Move along and quit QQing, either reroll or suck it up until you’re back in the limelight again.

SrebX.6498:

Since I don’t know this 30/20/0/0/20 build, and honestly I don’t really see how it comes together so well, may I ask what are you talking about? Build link or something?

http://intothemists.com/calc/?build=;0_-34;0kHFI0;9;9;0TJ;0J;0A38;8V;07a;9-VF

That is the most generic form of the build. Terror+dhuumfire+the right sigil setup gives you the ability to stack up bleeds very easily and essentially overwhelm 90% of build’s condition cleansing. There is still quite a bit of variation as to what you take, but that build is almost universally agreed upon as being overwhelmingly strong in PvP and WvW, and is likely to see nerfs (either directly, or indirectly through condition removal buffs to other classes).

A few reasons.

1. I’m having fun.
2. Build is still being worked on.
3. Trying something new.

Reason 1 is simple. I’m playing a game, I want to have fun. If that means playing glass cannon staff ele, then I’m going to play glass cannon staff ele. SoloQ, especially right now when ranks are entirely meaningless, should be about having fun.

Reason 2 just means my build might be okay in theory, but it still needs tuning before it doesn’t suck. Therefore I’m playing soloQ to work out the kinks in the build.

Reason 3 is simply I don’t feel like playing the meta, so I’ll try something new. Its the only way things progress. If people only ever played what was strong we wouldn’t have discoveries. It also means that for every new great build, there are tens (or more) of builds that completely suck. Its a trade off.

Warriors don’t get base 30k HP, they have the same base HP but without the 60% extra HP scaling we get (if not more).

VOLTCIEAGE.3029:

we really need some mobility or heavy armor to survive tons of damage ,on pvp you can lose 15k of your hp flying around when warrior uses his hammer or even engineer can stun you for 7 sec in a row . iam running as condi/tank and we really need more survi .

Our base HP is at least 28k once you figure in LF. You can lose 15k HP and still have about as much as any non-warrior.