Because being the condition class =/= needing to deal damage with conditions. There are plenty of conditions in the game that don’t deal damage.
Main hand focus?
Have the focus summon temporary pets for one-shot damage?
Summon a fire elemental that looks like a dragon from another MMO for fire damage!
Summon an Ascelonian prince for poser damage!
Summon an electric chipmunk for shocking damage!
Summon a Sylvari vegetarian for kudzu damage!
Summon an Orrian wino for the ultimate grapes of wrath damage!
You do realize we don’t have a single weapon that we actually hit stuff with right? My necro doesn’t beat people over the head with the staff, cut people with the axe, or even stab people with a dagger. The closest thing is Warhorn 4, that appears as though I might blow a bit of air on someone. Blowing air is the closest thing we get to directly hurting our enemies with an equipped weapon.
I think focus would fit just fine, albeit weirdly.
We do not reanimate the creatures themselves. They blurred the hell out of it in GW1 due to the corpse system, but we’ve always formed entirely new creatures, just using dead crap we find as the basis for it.
I would assume our shade is, more accurately, like the stuff we cloak ourselves in when we use Death Shroud. It was originally tied to it (it would even die if we left DS, if I remember correctly), so while this is a complete assumption I think it is of the same essence.
Also, Verata definitely stretched rules, but Khilbron outright broke them. I’m not trying to say Necromancers can’t do it, the issue is more is it acceptable enough to be considered an ability that every single necromancer has access to use? I don’t think so, it is highly controversial, and would be even less acceptable than our current practices are.
1 – I think that is something the casters should be doing. For example LoL only has one perspective, and its up to the cameraguy to show you the action. I just think custom arenas lack certain tools to make viewing as good as possible, and also I just think a lot of the current casters do a bad job of making the game watchable.
2 – I agree fully. The biggest currently successful eSports games are exciting to watch even if you have no idea whats going on. I love watching SC2 even though I’ve literally never touched the game myself, and I can follow whats going on. A lot of this is visuals. When I see something huge and flashy on screen, it makes me thing it has a big effect. GW2 hasn’t done well in this respect, a lot of visuals don’t match their effects well at all.
1. This is basically what happens now, you are perfectly capable of viewing from the player’s perspective, while also getting other views when you want to watch the flow of combat instead of the individual play.
2. I think they actually need an overall toning down of animations. While this would include making some things look more flashy to match their effect, an overabundance is one of the biggest things that makes GW2 really hard to watch compared to LoL (where a single pro player can get bigger numbers than GW2 has ever seen). So yes I agree bump up certain big skills, but also bump down the less meaningful ones.
3. 1000000000% agree. Conquest is really easy to understand and follow; the points go up, when it hits 500 you win. However it also feels really slow, there aren’t many clutch moments that make viewers have amazing reactions. There need to be more of those big mechanics.
4. An interesting idea overall. I’m not sure I agree or disagree but I think it could work.
I think they could do two things with it. One would be to just make it a ton of small stats, say 5 trinkets with upgrade components, so 10 individual stat-givers instead of 2. It wouldn’t be difficult for anyone to understand, as it is exactly the same as PvE, and would give people more customization and fine tuning of builds, without actually complicating anything.
The other possible change would be to make there be more stat choices, and make the stat choices better. I know I have heard complaints about Rampager gear for a long time, because not only is it a hybrid stat combo, but its terribly done. Not saying they need to go crazy with it, but certain smart additions could make things a bit better.
There weren’t many viewers because no one really cared about the ESL tournament (players or viewers) because the prize was, to my knowledge, less desirable than a single popsicle.
How many combinations are meaningful to each class though? You can have 1 million “options” in a game, but if only 2 of them are actually competitive and meaningful options, you really only have two options.
<3 the templates, it would make things so much nicer.
I think one complaint though is the way stats are so different in PvP vs PvE. This isn’t just the actual number of stats you get, which I think is fine as is, because PvE/WvW damage is stupidly high, but also the way you get stats. In PvE if you want to run full berzerker but want just a wee bit of defenses, you can swap out a single accessory from berzerker to soldier. In PvP you get two choices; amulet and jewel. You can do a bit of tweaking with runes and traits, but often times your build is too dependent on specific runes/traits that you can’t just change things around to get a bit more precision.
Actually you can quite easily build Necro as a 100% support type. The problem being that generally speaking our “aggressive” support and massive over time healing isn’t nearly as valued as “passive” support. This is because offensive support is done by hitting a bunch of enemies with conditions, which are fairly easily removed, and require landing skills constantly (as well as only hitting 5 targets), whereas boons require no skill to land, are harder to remove, and will affect your entire party.
How about a scaling siphon that increases with each consecutive hit within say 2 seconds, scaling up 10 times. Stun the necro, and you break the siphon chain. Let the chain go up to 10, and he is really stealing a lot of HP.
Of course I doubt we will ever see anything like that.
I’ve been thinking about something like that, and I think it could work, if they implemented it more like Vlad (from LoL)’s E. You have a self-buff that you stack up over time, and by keeping it up, it makes your siphons stronger.
I know that not taking Bone Minions is a preference, but I’d argue that 90% of the time its a bad preference. Without Bone Minions you have almost no meaningful burst to finish fights off, which is pretty important if you ever want to win a 1v1. Unless you are using this build with a coordinated team and you are constantly teamfighting, I very rarely see a reason to not bring Bone Minions.
If you’re using Blood Fiend, there isn’t much reason to bring Clerics. His siphon doesn’t scale at all, only his on-active heal does, and it just isn’t worth the loss of a 923 stat. In your case, I’d suggest dropping it for Soldier. If you want to keep Clerics, then I’d suggest WoB with this build, or CC (WoB will give more minion healing though). Otherwise your using all that healing power for fairly little.
Also, I’d drop the 3 and 4 set of runes, and put in 2 Rune of the Sanctuary for another 20% chill.
So now that I’m done laughing hysterically at that battle log, I’ll explain the fun little thing that Flesh Golem can do in fairly niche situations.
Charge applies a crapload of individual instances of damage, fairly small individually. Normally what would happen in an open field is he’d fly by, you’d take a few of those damage ticks in the time it takes from him sending you flying with the knockback and you actually getting out of his damage area. In certain situations, generally when you’re pinned against a wall, although it can happen when he gets “stuck” or if you happen to get carried with him due to his CC, you end up taking a ton of those damage ticks, due to you being stuck in his damage-area for a prolonged period of time.
Essentially, you got stuck in the charge for a longer time than usual, and instead of taking moderate damage you take closer to 100b worth of damage. This is why Golems can destroy siege equipment insanely fast, and why MM zergs can make walls melt like butter with 40+ charges.
No, you’re trying to oversimplify an entirely complex system, which people have already said is complex. It isn’t as easy as just throwing a bunch of crap into the middle of the coding and praying it works. Everything you do can screw up some random junk that it seems entirely unrelated to. If programming was as easy as having some really neat and pretty lines of coding to run the entire game off of, there wouldn’t be bugs, but the reality is kitten happens and its a lot harder than it looks like to implement even “simple” changes sometimes.
This is just another case of you feeling like this one thing you don’t like is more important than everything else, and so all of ANet should drop everything they are working on to fix your problem. So you rationalize it by trying to make it out to be something they could while eating lunch. That isn’t how programming works, that isn’t how game design works, so listen to the people who have already told you it isn’t easy and is likely going to come along with a systematic overhaul of rewards in general.
Programming an entire game isn’t like your C++ homework that only had a few dozen lines of coding.
If he’s using Bone Minions he could just as easily pick up Flesh Golem and/or Bone Fiend, both of which have strong lock-downs.
You can also 1 shot an entire group of golems with zerker warriors (I think, its been ages since I played my warr), it doesn’t make the build good or bad. Play it in actual PvP and see how it does.
Glass cannon builds are going to be a bigger liability than a super-tanky bunker that brings support. The glass cannon build will get focused down over and over, even the smallest misstep by them is going to get them killed. Whereas bunkers aren’t going to die, and will still help the team through support; whether it be boon/healing support, condition application/removal, CC, or even just being tanky enough to sit around rezzing and stomping without a care.
Whereas Glass cannon builds will do one thing; damage. The problem is they will need to be able to do enough damage to take someone down, without getting downed themselves. Thieves and Mesmers are the only ones I can see doing this successfully, while bringing a wee bit of support.
Actually I think minions could help out in Subject Alpha in certain of his paths; specifically that BS one where he puts you in a crystal, assuming he targets minions with it.
I was asking simply because if they did have limits, it would make minions just a bit more viable. With the leaked percentage HP increase, Flesh Golem and Blood Fiend would be over 30k HP each, even Bone Minions, the most pathetic in HP numbers, would have over 13k HP (each). That is a fairly significant amount of AoE damage soaking they could do, and massive single target soaking, in addition to the field spam that they’d give. Also if I remember HP is part of the aggro
Again, still very situational choices, but I could see them being very helpful in certain dungeons with the added life the HP buff will bring.
Was gonna say this would be the perfect job for reanimator. Would make necro the single most kitten class in the game lol. I’m sure there wuld have to be restrictions of course, but just having it at all would be epic. I don’t think it would break lore really. Other classes have evolved and adapted over time (read: monk/ somewhat ritualists >>> guardians) so why can’t necros? Anyways, necros only use bodies and body parts, not living souls. Reanimating the empty husk of a fallen enemy is not the same thign zhaitan does. He captures the very souls from the mists as well as the bodies. Why do you think it is the risen can sustain some semblance of individual thinking rather than a mindless flesh-hive. Also, ever done the risen eye at the end of the personal story? If not go do it and you’ll see what I mean. A necro reanimating an enemy body is not the same thing at all compared to what zhaitan does to those long dead orrians. Don’t get me wrong though, i don’t think every minion should be done this way, but it certainly would make reanimator not only make more sense, but be more useful.
I agree that Zhaitan takes it further, but the core idea remains; Necros do not reanimate entire bodies, we form together minions from body parts. That is an integral rule of Necromancy that Grenth opened to us when he usurped Dhuum, and one that is not nearly as flexible as others. Not only is it an integral rule coming from the current god of death (whose opinion is obviously relevant), but it is integral to Necromancy being an accepted path of magic to the public.
Think of it this way, even if the Necromancer was “discerning” (and didn’t raise children or allies), how do you think people would stomach the bodies of fallen combatants being used in combat? It is a bit different to take their bones and flesh and reform it into something entirely different, compared to just giving life back to the person whose head you just bashed in. There is no way I see that being an acceptable form of magic (not even including it being outlawed by Grenth to my knowledge) when our current, much more abstract ways aren’t even fully acceptable.
I don’t see how they need to be balanced for AoE. If you are hitting 5 people, 5 people can hit you back, and with our current life siphon system, along with the way that our defenses don’t scale up nearly as well as damage/CC does on the other end, our actual healing/damage ratio goes considerably down in bigger fights compared to 1v1.
On the other side though, people seem to have this idea that life stealing should be big values, which just isn’t ever going to be the case.
I think it’d be cool in PvE, but a ton of work, so its unlikely.
We do not actually raise undead creatures. What I mean by that is we don’t reincarnate anything, we do not make “zombies”, we are not Necros in the classic sense that we actually take individual creatures and raise them back from death. What we do instead is take components of dead creatures, and mold them together.
This is actually really important lore-wise. Necromancers are not only not allowed to fully reincarnate creatures (only able to use dead matter to make minions), but Zhaitan does that very thing; he creates true undead. It is what separates Necromancer’s darker themes from being entirely evil. We’re already generally shunned by the general populace, but imagine if we started using the same magic as Zhaitan.
- Conquest mode is PUG-unfriendly:
To be honest, all game modes that really enforce the idea of team play aren’t pug friendly because they require teamwork and coordination, something pugs aren’t known to be good at.
However, I think they could do well making it friendly by introducing a decent ping system, a la LoL, which has shown to make necessary communication very fast. Also, I’d like to see more thing put into the game that encourage individual awesomeness, but that can be addressed below.
- Conquest mode feels unrewarding:
I completely agree. The problem here is that its so hard to feel like your individual play really made a difference. The only time I really feel like I’ve done something vital to the team’s success is:
1) When I stole a forest buff (which is so rare nowadays because teams are so careful about doing them because they aren’t worth the risk)
2) When I walk up to a treb and Charge it
3) When I’ve done a good play in a fight. Specifically when I’ve done a great job in a 1v1 or when I won (or stayed alive a long time) in a really inbalanced fight. But even then, often times you win a 1v1 and get a point, and at the same time your teammates lose one. Or you are fighting a 2-3v1 for a long time, but then your team is doing the exact same thing.
I think they need to make side objectives more pronounced for this. Spirit Watch has a lot of room for great individual play, but that is one map.
- Conquest mode is harder to understand:
I actually disagree here a lot. Most other eSports are a lot harder to understand because even though they have a simple objective (kill the Nexus, kill off the enemy), the way you do that can be really difficult. GW2 its easy, you capture points and you see your points go up. You kill someone and the points go up. In fact with how meh the side objectives are right now in the game, it is too easy imo, they don’t have enough intricacy.
- Conquest mode only makes the game harder to balance:
I don’t see how this follows at all. They have this one game mode, so they balance classes based on it. If their one game mode was TDM or King of the Hill, they’d use those as balance. It is easy to balance one game, what will make it hard to balance is if they have 5 types of PvP all at once that they are trying to balance.
I think the real value of bringing minions in will be x/x/30/20/x with Death Nova spamming poison fields for tons of poison and weakness, and then the solid healing from 20 blood magic, along with how much damage they’re going to soak up.
Btw, do bosses have 5 AoE limits?
Death match with no dedicated healer = 1st team to run out of AoE stealth loses a member to burst and stability stomp, game lost.
Perhaps a slight exageration, but I think not by much.
It’d come down to first person downed gets mist form (or any other of the complete invulnerability stomps) stomped, while the team AoEs the hell out of his body so he doesn’t get raised and boom, game over.
I think they could make it work only if there were side objectives, similar to the way games are working now but making kills more pronounced as a main objective and not a side thought to accomplish main objective control.
^You could make PvP only characters that had very similar setup to just going into the mists right now. They started level 20, although access to limited skills (whatever you unlocked in PvE, some basic skills, and then you could unlock more with points), and you could take armor/weapons along with runes and inscriptions and make builds there; you could even save the armor setup just like skills.
I do recall though that PvE characters had an edge stat-wise when they were fully built.
I bought GW1 solely because I saw my cousin playing in a group with a Necro that had a minion out, and I thought the ability to raise minions was the coolest thing I’d ever seen. So all GW1 I played MM, a few debuff builds, and vamp builds (Touch Rangers for lulzy AB 4 touch ranger groups).
GW2 was the same. I mainly play MM, or various builds with minions in them, and glass cannon hybrid in PvE atm (probably swapping to MM once they get HP buffed). I love the minion gameplay style in this game, and its why I love necro over all other classes, along with the aggressive gameplay.
Are you talking PvE, PvP, or WvW? MMs, both Cleric and Soldier, have been viable in all three for a long time. PvE it has been limited to open world and certain dungeons, WvW its been limited to small scale fighting (and MM zergs), and PvP its been fairly viable all around, but never meta.
The changes will increase DPS slightly in PvP, and in PvE/WvW they are going to be crazy tanky if the HP increases work out how I think they will. Flesh Golem right now is around 13k HP, with a 71% increase, that should be 22k HP, with the trait increase of 50% HP he’s looking at 33k HP.
I think TDM sounds like a good idea when you think about it loosely. The problem is that every TDM type game would come down to first team to get someone stomped wins 90% of the time. People just want a fun gamemode that doesn’t involve conquest, and TDM is the first to come to mind because it works well in other games like CoD.
From the sound of it, the point is its always meant to have had that. Its only a DPS boost of about 40, 40 DPS per minion isn’t much to speak of, it’ll add up but I think its a fine way for minions to get a fairly small buff.
Just curious because with the improved Vampiric Master, I was going to laugh if I could kill Trebs even faster with Charge.
The leaked notes have happened before and been very accurate, we went over this last time; the leaked notes are unfinished in-house notes. That means they are in-progress, not necessarily accurate, incomplete notes. Its just something that they use in-house as they go about balancing, then they make it finalized and pretty before they release it to us.
On the note of vampiric, since I’m too lazy to test, does siphon proc off structures?
The OP Necro build is OP because of its unmanageable Condi spam for a few classes. There are a few classes that are frankly unable to handle us while retaining a viable build.
So, instead of nerfing necros conditions (its what we entirely rely on) they are instead going to give others the ability to counterplay our conditions with more removal. Its a great idea and I’m glad its the route they chose.
I think the best part of this is that the previous leak was just confirmed to be accurate, when we had all the threads closed for being speculation.
More on topic, I love that the Vampiric changes have been confirmed.
I believe the minor adept Reannimator trait should be “Glow in the Dark” where minions light up dark areas for their masters and group members.
Are you suggesting we make Reanimator somewhat useful? Blasphemy!
They’ve been situationally dungeon worthy forever. And it will always remain situational because of dungeon mechanics.
My suggestion, if you’re bringing minions into a dungeon, research the dungeon first to be sure they aren’t going to hamper you, otherwise yeah they can be really nice, especially after this pretty massive HP boost.
If we’re going to get every weapon in the game over time we’re going to have multiple melee and ranged weapons for every setup. Its not like they’re going to give us the 15 or so weapons we’re missing and every single one of them is going to be power…
Its a fairly slow moving projectile, with the same animation as a staff. Big hint though he has to be in deathshroud to use it. So if you see the staff animation and he has the big swirly black cloud around him, its Dark path.
I think they could buff Reanimator (and other such on-death traits) by expanding what it summons off of, and reducing the ICD.
What?
That isn’t something they want to do. They are either going to improve/redesign it (which I think they should try first) or make an entirely new trait.
Putrid Mark used to remove all conditions from you and up to 5 allies in the mark’s area when triggered (it might have done less from allies, I don’t recall). Now it removes 3-5 from you and nothing else.
Since then I’ve dropped staff from a number of my PvP non-condi builds, especially my defensive ones, which are the ones that would be going 20 deep into DM.
Sarrs:
These two traits could really use a look into. IMO, they should roll Protection of the Horde into Flesh of the Master, Reanimator into Minion Master, make Greater Marks the Master minor trait (let’s face it, everyone wants marks) and add a new Adept Minor trait.
No I don’t want marks, not until they fix Putrid mark at least.
Technically speaking every (that I can think of) class has their own controlled stuff.
Warriors and necromancers are getting buffed.
It’s such weird balance… i believe these notes are real.
No significant buffs to necros, and none to our condition specs that I see. Unless you want to argue that minions are OP right now.
OMFGYES:
Vampiric Master: This trait will now cause minions to properly deal damage when siphoning life. The damage portion of the life siphon from this trait now scales slightly based on power.
That is an 80something or 114 damage boost to each minion auto. That is a pretty decent buff, and now means I love this already awesome trait even more.
A dev (Sharp?) said yesterday that he’d put out some balance stuff early, to show people what they are working on/get ideas.