Well let’s ask this question: If there was no greater marks trait and staff marks were the ‘standard’ size, do you think many people would consider it a viable weapon and actually use it? Probably not. If there were no greater marks trait, people would have been demanding a significant buff to the mark size from the very start, and I am sure we would have received one.
I used staff for months, perfectly fine (in PvP, PvE, and WvW), without Greater Marks. I couldn’t do it now without retraining myself because I am used to being lazy with the mark size. Perception means nothing, the game cannot be balanced around what people feel, it needs to be balanced around what is actually best for balance. People might feel marks need to be larger, but if that is not the best balance option, then too bad.
The reality is staff can be used as a single target weapon untraited. Is it easy when you are used to greater marks? No, but that is a skill shot (l2p) issue. If you want more AoE strength, you should have to give something up, that tradeoff right now is 10 trait points.
You get AoE by increasing the size period. It isn’t a nerf in any way, you can now put those same 10 points to having unblockable and 20% CD reduction, the same build is now stronger; or you can put them into another trait line completely. That is a buff, and not the kind of buff we need.
Isn’t the whole “we’re going to address aoe skills” thing pretty ‘old’, while we still haven’t seen actual nerfs in this department. Hell Meteor Shower, imo the epitome of aoe skills, recently seems to have received some buffs (lowered cast time and INCREASED aoe of the individual hits).
What I’m trying to get at is this: are they even still trying to bring down aoe? Maybe they tested it and concluded that it’s actually good as it is now?
This was a PvP developer, as in sPvP (to my knowledge). So WvW comments are invalid, as that is not their area of focus. With that in mind, Meteor Storm is complete crap in PvP, as you have to complete a HUGE cast time, then pray to the RNG gods that the meteors actually hit people. Staff eles are used in the first 10 seconds of a match to get buffs, then basically never seen.
And no, AoE in PvP is still an issue, its just not an immediate one they can take care of. There needs to be a meaningful choice between doing single target damage and AoE damage, but why would I bring a burst thief, for example, when a Shatter Mesmer can do the same damage, but AoE, and bring utility like Illusion of Life and Portal?
Soldier. It is giving you much higher survivability (toughness), a bit higher power, and condition damage isn’t going to do much in your build.
If that is the case, then they very recently changed it, because previously dodge rolling through marks triggered them all without you taking a single effect of it.
We’re live! 15 characters
And it is increasing my Dagger 2 healing, as well as my Vampiric healing. So I’m not sure what you mean. It went up from 212 to 314 just changing that trait (HP remained the same).
For clarity, they are looking at giving us back healing in DS now, so that could possibly come back into the game.
I like how he walked into the marks, instead of dodge rolling through them rendering them 4 absolutely wasted CDs (I love doing that to Necros).
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Some of this is fine feedback, others is just terrible or at best opinions. You’re telling him why he built his build, and giving purely opinion-based suggestions and treating them as law.
Spiteful removal is just fine when things are dying all around you.
Carrion has been mathematically proven to work just fine on Necros.
Signet mastery and every signet is useful now at least situationally.
Why are you telling him why he made a condi build? Maybe he just likes condis.
Necromancer runes are not mandatory for terror builds, in fact many people far prefer Nightmare (although he should run 6).
If he is against a zerg, no one is dodging staff, and you will hit people; same with PvE mobs are too dumb to dodge.
Your entire argument against running conditions, as they are useless, is that other people run conditions? Just ask your group when you get in: is anyone else running conditions? He is a 30/30/10 build, which can easily swap to doing high hybrid damage, making him fine so long as he checks and swaps.
No, he’s talking about the fact that Melandru is double-scaling against fear, it reduces fear’s duration for it being a condition, and also reduces it for being a stun. I really hope its unintended.
Look at what it gives you: high attack speed and damage, healing, an immobilize, condi transfer/blind, and AoE weakness/bleeding. So it works well with healing builds, especially ones that use 20 into blood magic, power builds, builds that need to lock people down, builds that use lots of blinding/chilling darkness, ones with lots of weakness; there might be a few more but those are the general things I can think of.
Yes. However, do not expect them to play like GW1, the entire playstyle has changed vastly. They used to be all about numbers, microing their HP and enchants on them, and spamming them out as often as possible to be flesh walls. Now they can’t body block nearly as well, nor are they about numbers/death nova (/jagged horror) spam, but they deal pretty good sustained damage, and have different actives. Think of them more as a utility type like Corruption, where the theme is AI controlled summons that deal damage and have a secondary utility associated with them, and possible added utility from traits.
He is referring to Transfusion, the blood magic trait.
Actually, that sounds like they finally fixed it. It used to heal you if it expired, not give LF.
I don’t see a problem with making it apply the damage and not the control effect, but it would require them to rework stability/fear a little bit.
Most builds don’t use them, you’ll do fine without them.
I do have to agree that it is probably a tossup between Warrior and Necromancer. I personally feel we are easier because it is easier (in my opinion) to use our abundant AoE to cleave things down at range, and the plenty of control we have to stay alive; whereas when I play my warrior I feel like I need to actually pay attention to what I am doing because of the melee range.
But anyway, it is certainly debatable that we aren’t the easiest levellers, but we are pretty close.
You’re right, I don’t have a Necro, I’m secretly a warrior.
I would say we take the least amount of real effort yes. You can’t just walk around pressing 211111121111111211111 like a warrior, but you don’t have to worry about dying at all or anything, you just get mobs, drop AoE, they all die, repeat, and you take pretty much no damage. Its even easier now with DS 5.
Plague Signet is awesome. Conditions have been and always will be huge in PvP meta because of how strong they are. Plague signet not only is a stun breaker, but has the potential to destroy someone with a large burst of conditions, and lets face it your standard condi build has Putrid Mark, Consume Conditions, Deathly Swarm and now Plague Signet you’ll have essentially 4 full condition wipes/transfers in team fights, as well as pulling them from teammates, who I guarantee will not be so lucky as you.
Also with the new Signet trait, you can spend a measly 10 points in Spite and pull that recharge down to 48.
In GW1 Minion builds had one of the highest skill caps in the game, realistically only reachable by AI heroes. While they are very easy to start off on, if you are only using minions to auto attack then you are no different than a well build that starts every fight by dropping all his wells and hoping for the best.
You are either:
Asking that CC gets weaker, moving that lost strength into other heals
OR
Asking that CC stays essentially the same, and buffing other heals
Changing it to LF is irrelevant, you could make it so that it heals the exact same eHP per condition, but via LF not HP, but that is the same. Either it heals for less eHP and you have nerfed it, or you haven’t changed its strength at all, and this entire thread’s premise was pointless. You might as well have just said “buff our other heals”. Pick whichever you want, but both make you look equally wrong.
100% on crit. With a normal, say, 50% crit chance, it has the effect of a 1s ICD already.
If an ICD were forced into the skill, I think it should be lower than the duration of the torment caused by the trait. Otherwise it is an absolute damage drop off without much to compensate for it. Ten seconds of torment do not equal four seconds of burning.
Not accurate. DS 4, for example, can hit 5x per second, meaning you average 2-3 torments applied per second.
Nerfing is any removal of strength without equal strength being given back. That is what a nerf is; making something weaker. If they made axe do 50% less damage and made dagger do 50% more damage, that is a nerf to axe, it has nothing to do with the fact that they made it up to the class overall power by buffing dagger. However, if they took damage off of Axe 2 and gave it to Axe 1, such that your overall damage was the same, that is not a nerf, because we are looking at the Axe as a single thing, skills 1-3.
Nerf is relative, you pick an entity, defined either singularly (like a skill or trait) or a collective (such as a class) and then compare the relative strength of that entity before and after a change. If the entity itself is weaker, it is a nerf, regardless of any other changes, if it is stronger, it is a buff, and if strength is moved then it is merely a redistribution. What you are talking about is the class overall, saying that CC needs its healing redistributed to other heals. That is fine, but that is, by definition a NERF to CC.
Taking away strength from one skill is the definition of nerfing it, regardless of whether you spread that strength to other skills or not. Why would I want to need 2 traits, and use 3 abilities to do the healing I can do right now with a single skill?
Im loving the posion from minions personally
Death Nova + Putrid Explosion alone is over 100% uptime, btw.
Actually good teams will get rezzes off nearly instantly unless you get some poison and massive cleave on the downed body. They really can’t speed that time up or you would need to down at least 2-3 people before ever being able to get someone killed.
I can help with Minions if no one else volunteers, but you will likely want someone else. I am just volunteering because I’m honestly not sure how many top players play minions seriously enough to really know them (although I think Sikari plays higher than I do, so maybe he can help).
No, the matchup is two teams against each other. One running Altroll on whatever build he desires (this is due to the fact that he seems to believe only he can execute them well enough, and frankly I can almost guarantee that no top player would allow him to “teach” them how to use his builds), and a team to back him up, I would assume the entire team will run what he asks but I am not sure.
So basically he gets the opportunity to run his builds in a team (the only important thing in tPvP is how it works with a team) vs other high level teams. Obviously people will expect him to lose if he goes against Paradigm for example, but he should still be able to show how the builds do even if his team isn’t perfectly coordinated. It isn’t a matter of winning the games, but showing what his builds can do.
Edit: at least that is my interpretation of what is happening. Someone who knows for sure feel free to correct me.
I’d prefer something that has an RNG to summon a Jagged Horror when a minion dies, no ICD.
From a developer
From a developer and a player who talks a lot with the developers and (I believe) helps with “beta” testing changes like this. They felt like the damage was too much when Putrid Explosion and Death Nova’s damage (over 3k per explosion, so 6k+ damage per go) were combined.
(edited by Bhawb.7408)
Working as intended. I’m not sure I agree with it not working with the heal/tele (frankly, more power to you if you can actually get someone close enough to your wurm to make it work), but the Putrid Explosion makes sense, at least from their side.
@Bhwab: Please stop claiming Minions are ok, they totally lack design and if you give this kind of feedback, then Anet won’t never fix them as they should be.
Bunker builds working great? What about the advantage of Flesh Wurm?
You’re saying some correct things and exagerating others in a wrong manner.
They are okay. I’m using that to say they aren’t bad, you can use them, but they aren’t ideal. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t think a single minion (or many traits relating to them) are perfectly balanced yet, they have a bit of tweaking to do, and they need to resolve certain problems. But saying they are terrible and complaining in every minion thread that they need full reworking isn’t helping at all.
Also, something that I thought about recently. The ability for minions to take off conditions seems very weirdly done. If you are using minions as disposable utilities, they aren’t really alive enough for you to notice the effect. If they are there to survive, then often they are a major source of damage, and you have traited for them to live; so why load them up with conditions that will kill them and lower DPS? The only time I’d really want to run this seems to be if I have survivable minions, yet don’t care if they live, and don’t rely on them for damage, or I have some way to keep them cleared of their conditions and alive through them (such as Putrid Mark + regen/healing). Not that it is a bad trait in some situations, but I always find myself vastly preferring to just use the tons of available cleanses instead of using 10 trait points and losing out on something like Death Nova.
Basically, Necro bunkers can work, if you have a team to support the deficiencies. It isn’t as copypasta as other bunkers are, where you can just plop them in any team and they are filling the bunker role regardless of the team comp.
The axe itself doesn’t even need to be important. Look at the weapons we use right now, warhorn is the only one that is properly “used” as a weapon, and even then that is just blowing into it to cast the effect, which has little to nothing to do with the warhorn itself (you could just as easily use a cardboard tube). Every other weapon is used more as a ritual tool as an aid to cast the ability itself (no idea if lore supports this, but the animations show it). There is no reason that if they added a greataxe it would be actually used as an axe, and not as the same kind of tool, like everything else.
Minions are okay right now. Any time you are in PvP with over 5 people in the fight, they start hitting issues and you are going to probably prefer other builds. In small-scale WvW they work very nicely, because they bring the ability to handle NPCs for you, have a lot of control/survivability built in (Rigor Mortis is really strong). In PvE they work until you get to bosses, and then you have to be smarter about using them (and also realize that many boss fights have little to do with your utilities and more about playing the mechanic).
PvP, where people tend to put the most focus on them, depends. 1v1 home bunker builds they work great; you should be able to hold that point all game unless they devote a number of resources to it, and Flesh Wurm can allow you to push objectives instead of being limited to sitting there like most non-Mesmer back points are. For team fights you need to consider what they have:
Blood Fiend – lots of passive healing, and a decent heal on a short CD, some ranged damage/attacks (for on-hit effects)
Bone Minions – mini bursts of 4k+, plus perma poison and high weakness with death nova, plus 16-20s 2x blast finisher
Bone Fiend – 2x projectile finisher, some ranged DPS, and strong control (cripples and a long immobilize) and LF
Shadow Fiend – DPS, and highest non-elite attack speed for on-hit effects, plus a spammable blind (with dagger 4, you are annoying) and LF
Flesh Wurm – 1x projectile finisher, stun break, decent DPS (high per-hit damage but slow attack speed), and LF
Flesh Golem – DPS, near perma cripple, Charge is hilarious for both damage and control
Also, remember that they get AoE buffs. If you have a spirit ranger, venom share thief, aura share ele, any kind of support guardian/ele, basically any support build that has AoE buffing will turn your minions from annoyances to huge threats (and while they die over time to AoE, they actually have higher base-eHP than most players, they just won’t avoid damage).
So really, it depends on your team. If your team needs what minions bring, or has the right comp to buff your minions, an MM can put out really high CC and damage, while being very survivable. On the other hand if you can’t manage the minions you’ll find yourself as useful as an untraited Necro with all your utilities on CD.
It is 1-1.5k damage, and yes the same area.
Death Nova doesn’t activate on forced deaths (where you activated an ability that kills the minion). That said, it is possible to create Power/Minion hybrids that drop some serious damage on someone’s head.
http://intothemists.com/calc/?build=;04-8c;0kHkD0s33K-K0;9;4T-T9-189;129A5;9;0JF04JF045Bd
There is a sample build that I threw together. I wouldn’t say its good, because it probably isn’t, but the basic idea of a build that is going to use minions is using Putrid Explosion as a short CD mini burst, and then when the opportunity is there, use Dagger 3/Rigor Mortis to lock them down for huge durations, drop WoS, and go to town on them. You could come up with a rotation, but usually I started with Dagger 3 →Rigor Mortis →WoS →Focus 4 → Axe 2 and now with DS you could throw in Doom, Dark Path, and Tainted Shackles for added control and damage. You can choose whether to go for a minion build with wells on top, or if you want a power build that has minions for the control/damage (rigor mortis+dark pact+tainted shackles is dirty).
It isn’t “lazy” it is a purposeful exclusion. We used to be able to heal in DS, this, paired with a highly defensive setup, made us impossibly strong bunkers. This was back in beta, where you literally had trouble killing a Necromancer 3v1 if they were using this setup. They had a ton of healing and LF generation, and every time they got a bit low they’d just go into DS, heal back up to full while essentially being immune to damage (for the duration of the LF pool) then come back out, generate more LF and repeat ad nauseum. The more you know.
Right, that comment was directed to Bhawb.
Yes, I was responding to the comments to make it not broken by stun breakers. If it were not removable by stun breakers, you could easily find yourself in situations where you would get feared until you were dead, with absolutely no counterplay. You couldn’t stun break it, so your only option is passive removal (good luck getting it to remove it), or relying on teammates (1v1? nope).
Honestly I’m not sure it’s fair to say it isn’t his build just because you saw someone else with it. I run a minion build that I made myself, I consider it my build, but I would not be surprised if someone else came up with a very similar build long before me. Not saying he did or did not copy a build, but I wanted to point that out.
Patch didnt change a lot except add the possibility of stability-crazy builds with 30 in SR. We make decent bunkers, you can find builds that allow necros to bunker, the only thing is that there are a few big weaknesses (like CC) that kill our ability to be the main bunker for a team. With a secondary bunker (or a bulky team in general) we can bunker pretty well though.
@xom, I have 5g that at least one of the players he called bad was Gibbly, he has a huge hate-kitten for him, and it’s hilarious.
I for one am looking forward to this. Both as a chance for AlTroll to actually show off some off-meta builds (regardless of the gigantic butt he is, some of his builds would do well in teams), and for all the wonderful stream chat that I know is going to be comedy gold.
Fear needs to be broken by stun breakers or it will see nerfs; we can chain fear someone for quite a few seconds easily.
What they need to do is reduce the overwhelming offensive pressure from burning/terror combo, and then give us the survivability we need. Right now the only thing making us work better is that there is so much damage going out its a game of chicken as to who wants to stay in the fight longest; first one to stop attacking loses.
This is a good fix. But like others said, fix Melandru to not double scale against fear.
Has anyone tried reporting this as a bug to see if it is actually intended?
I’d love to see disease in the game. I don’t care so much how it is inflicted, but I think it was an awesome condition. The only problem with a spreading condition is WvW, where it could theoretically infect an entire zerg, and because of its spreading mechanic a zerg would potentially be a giant cloud of disease that immediately re-infects people even after cleansing (because 20 people nearby have it). If there was a way to remedy that, then I am all for it.