(edited by Bhawb.7408)
The last tournament had no Necromancers. Obv this means no teams anywhere run necros (yeahno).
To do anything other than conditions as a Necro is hard without a team to support you, so many Necros try it once and give it up once they realize they could do the same task, more easily, on another profession.
I agree. Putting a Necro on your team is basically acknowledging that in some fashion you are building your team with whatever role they have in mind. They don’t just fit on a team, a team is fit around them.
Flesh Wurm does have 5,000 range.
Lol.
I will do unspeakable things to make this happen. This would greatly fix some of our issues, and open up a lot of viable builds that have otherwise been left alone because we are so slow to get back.
Some of the sluggishness is programmed into their AI. There are thoughts as to why (allowing pulls), but it was a design choice. However, they also just plain don’t always respond like they should, which is also part of it.
+1 To Flesh Golem, 100%. It is incredibly annoying.
“Classes that can’t prevent a stomp” I’d argue Necros have very high access to stopping stomps, since boon corruption/removal will negate stability stomps (same as thief stealing stability then interrupting), and every single Necro carries an uninterruptable, near instant cast interrupt; Doom.
Edit, saw that you changed it (or I misread it). You can ignore this part as it isn’t relevant.
Also, you say “viable” builds. Are you meaning the condition build that everyone and their mama knows about, or are you actually looking at all necro builds (I’ll answer for you, its the first). The problem with Necromancers right now, is that our well known role of Condi pressure has been taken by Engis. We don’t have the ability to roam either. But by far our biggest weakness is just that people aren’t creative. People don’t take time to theory craft on a team level except with the Meta in mind.
Necromancers will continue to be low-tier as long as people refuse to look past Condi pressure as their sole niche. When there are enough people and teams that are finally comfortable enough to really start trying to try non-Meta builds, they will find Necromancers have a variety of Niches to fill in team comps.
Edit: Also I think this problem applies to a number of builds that are in other classes as well (although not to the same degree, since Necromancers are fairly balanced, albeit with a few lackings). Engis and Rangers both come to mind as having viable builds that just are rarely seen or wanted because they don’t fit the generic meta comp people want to run so they don’t need to think.
(edited by Bhawb.7408)
Mesmer is very different in GW2 compared to GW1.
You will never, ever have the burst of an actual burst class as the Necromancer, unless you are full glass spec and use Lich form+WoS (and anything else you can use that will get a bonus from Lich). We have amazing sustained damage, and you can still have “bursts” using our abundant CC to do huge damage over a few seconds, but it isn’t like Mesmers where they can just say “I’m dropping burst” over mumble, and half a second later the enemy target is on his butt.
I have no idea what a bunker necro spec would look like because I’ve never seen one in high level tPvP, but the point I was making was that SA + SM + SW is AFAIK the only way for a Necro to maintain high uptime of Protection due to the combination of long duration and relatively low cooldown (e.g. you use SWall for 15+s of prot, chain other prot abilities like SArmor during the cooldown, then use SWall again).
Problem being, it doesn’t matter how much protection they have, they are very likely giving up way too much to get it. Guardians give up a lot of damage when they bunker, but they still bring a ton of CC/support, and they are immovable from point. Necromancers, on the other hand, are very movable from point.
I’ve run many different types of Necro bunkers, in our current state we will never be able to fill the role of main bunker, although with proper team composition/help Necromancers do make for great bunkers on the side.
For example last night I ran a support/damage/bunker build I have thats a variation of my minion/power hybrid build. It allowed our teams guardian to not only roam points, but also use his stability/CC to secure the buffs (on temple). I sat mid, and whenever no one was there, I would go back and forth and stack up Ferocity, so for a lot of matches our stomps were giving almost double value. That is a great niche for us, because I’m able to stay alive fairly well until backup comes, it allows the guardian to secure things that he otherwise wouldn’t be able to.
I think the complains have more to do with the fact that your best case scenario is often to just spam 1….. like HS spamming thieves who get ripped on for spamming 2. I think it certainly should be noted as something from the outside looking in as a “L2P” issue, becuase all you have to do is autocast 1, and run around, and you are now hitting for massive damage at 100% crit rate constantly with no facing requirement.
I would much prefer the active skills on the lich form were better and worth using, and the number 1 skill was less spam friendly. It is very easy to look at lich and call it a skill-less ult, because well…. it is to a large degree.
Buff the active skills so we have a reason to use them and I think people would complain less. Also change the freaking model, that is punishment enough in WvW no matter how strong 1 is.
Problem being in a full power build Lich is hitting 6k per attack, and with that being around 6k DPS (a bit off from cast times) cleave, you’re practically throwing out 100b auto attacks (DPS wise). It would be very difficult for them to buff things to reach that. The 2 abilities (jagged horror/vulnerability mark) need to be made more utility based. 5 is still a huge asset to blow boons/condis off people, 3 is still a great CC tool, its just 2&4 that aren’t good to use in most cases.
Our podcasting team will view your video and if we like it we will put it in a playlist for it’s respective categories so that everyone who plays a guardian (lolwut) and follows us can find your guide.
Typo
Necromancers suffer because of the weakness to CC and low mobility.
The weakness to CC means Necromancers can never be the team’s main bunker, and even tanky builds can have trouble with taking too much focus (especially with low LF) without the team there to peel a little. It also means you can’t usually get stomps or resses off in team fights, so often you will see a few people down, and the only thing you can do is DPS the crap out of the people ressing and hope thats enough.
Low mobility means Necros on back point is sub-par, despite having multiple builds that would make the class great back there otherwise. It also means a Necro (in general) can’t roam well, and so either has to sit with the team, or on/near a point.
Unfortunately a lot of people don’t try to make any builds that aren’t just plain conditions, which means a lot of people never realize our potential in other situations (and this happens in every class).
I haven’t tested it, but I’m fairly sure that it won’t. Minion damage is only affected by the specific minion damage trait, any stacks of might they have, and vulnerability on the target.
I actually just used a variation of what I used in the all-necro tournament with the SOAC team, and it was working very well (despite my badness). The key is, like you say, treat most of them as expendable. Don’t rely entirely on them, don’t try to stack your entire build with them, but in the right builds they can be very strong.
Not really. There are plenty of builds that Necromancers can bring that can work very well in team comps. You just need to find a niche.
Lich is like giving warriors a 100b that they can use while moving, with no CD, and a guardian there to peel for them.
KITTEN NOOO…. if you used LoL as your base for this discussion. Yes it helped them take off and riot from there supported the “Pro” players more then the ppl that got them there. Then the community just puked all over itself with kittenS that will blab META all day long. And if your not part of the current meta you suck and need to quit. If you have played LoL you know what im talking about. so if you want GW2 to turn into this then i say go jump off a bridge now so we can save everyone the hassle of “competitive” play. im not here to pay some kids that have no life to play a game for there own gains…
Sounds like you tried to play Maokai adc and got mad when someone told you its terrible.
Because they don’t want to. We had less control in GW1, they would attack everything in a certain area that was red, and there wasn’t a thing you could do to make them change their mind except kill every, single thing that you came across. The only difference was that they were at least guaranteed to be bloodthirsty, they really never had issues with sitting around.
Community has a large say in whether a game will become anything remotely “esports” or not. LoL would be nothing like it is today if it were not for TSM, CLG, and similar organizations/players.
WvW has some atrocious LoS issues. You could have literally had a pebble between you and it would have missed because it was “obstructed”.
Saturday tournament they lost to the Necromancers in the Semi Finals, I think they lost in the Semi Finals on Thursday as well.
They didn’t change very much anywhere except for the living world event, some new WvW content, and a few bug fixes here and there.
No, THIS is:
IGN: Maestra De Muerte
Main Profession: Necromancer
Alternate Professions: Learning Ranger, open to learning other classes
Account name: Bhawb.7408
Practice Availablity: Pending, I need to see what my summer schedule ends up being
Current PvP rank (Not Leaderboard): 17
Level of Desire: Active tournament participation (not necessarily big tournaments), but I have no expectation of being competitive as a player for a while
NA
Side note: this isn’t “valid” until after next week. I’ve still got finals that I’m studying for and wrapping up this semester in school, but once summer starts I’ll have quite a few hours a day that I’ll be available for practice.
They changed relatively little with this patch, its mainly here to introduce the new living event; its only been 2 weeks since the last major patch.
It kind of seems like the guild will be a pool of fodder for real teams to practice against from the description you gave. Regardless, seems fun, why not.
A great way to get experience fighting is to get punched in the face repeatedly until you figure out how to block.
Obviously random groups thrown together wouldn’t have a competitive chance against actual real teams, but getting a group together should be a good opportunity for people. Plus it will give you a guild-full of teams that you can scrim against that aren’t going to totally kick your butt :P
Incinerator
Special Changes for Necromancers:
Necrotic Bite loses the Bite animation.
Life Blast throws Incinerator instead of the regular model
Deathly Swarm throws Incinerator instead of an insect swarm that bounces between foes
WAIT A MINUTE. We throw FIRE? Crap, now I have to start farming.
i honestly doubt half these jon peters talks are real :P
You mean people would lie on the internet to get a point across? I’m shocked.
Take things you hear in real life with a grain of salt. Take things you hear on the internet with the average yearly salt consumption of an American.
I WOULD vote for Symbolic, but he’s not a necro anymore (coughtraitorcough).
On a serious note, I honestly don’t know many EU PvPers specifically (although I’m sure I’ve seen them on the forums and just not noticed).
I really like my Ranger, it has similar playstyles to Necros in certain aspects.
@ bas/bhawb, why no stream?
I’m not sure what you mean? SOAC has a stream (they were on last night). Unless you mean us personally streaming, which I’ve been looking into, but it might be a bit sad since I am far from a great player :P
We can’t bunker like a bunker guardian/engi does, and unless something is changed there is no point for a necro to try (guardians fill pure-tank roles better).
If you look at the SOAC tournament (there are videos), I managed to bunker up on point against multiple opponents very well using a siphon/minion bunker build, even when eating CC like crazy, and still applying decent pressure. I would never suggest using a Necromancer (in our current form) as a generic bunker in the same role guardian fills, but they fill the “bruiser” role fairly well.
ANet wants to buff minion mancers so DS 5 will summon a Jagged Horror on a 180s CD.
Does this Jagged Horror lift?
I’d be surprised if ANet isn’t doing fairly well with micro transactions right now. A lot of people shell out money for gem store stuff (QUAGGAN BACKPACKS!!).
I’m looking forward to expansions though, IMO the expansions really made gw1 a fun game.
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Condi-minion hybrids actually work very nicely because of how conditions scale (you don’t lose a lot of condi damage). Its great to see people being smarter with minions and working them into builds in ways that I think are more viable at a higher level of play.
Will definitely need to look at this (I saw minions).
Alright.
I think that- with your and SOAC’s permission- we could combine what teams we have already set up (I know that Mighty already has some people down for him) with whatever you guys may have pulled as of now.
I’m just loving this idea more and more.
EDIT: also, Mighty and I discussed that these teams could function as a sort of Minor League, with the top-tier, high-level teams being the Major League of a sorts. I think that using this as a transition between casual play and professional play would be a really neat idea.
I say this with no bearing on anything that SOAC decides to do but just my personal opinion: I don’t see a reason why SOAC would want to pair up with Troll. He very obviously dislikes Gibbly, and so that would be incompatible, and from my standpoint is merely putting this together because he doesn’t like that Necromancers didn’t win.
In addition, pairing up with this doesn’t improve the SOAC tournament at all.
We lost badly to the Mesmers using every spec, so I don’t see where that point is trying to go, especially when minions was our least terrible showing.
Engineers was a for-fun consolation game. No one was taking it seriously, and we didn’t lose because of our minion builds, we lost because Voz consistently face tanked multiple of our players.
Its called an AoE limit. If a Mesmer shatters, and there are 35 enemy targets in the area, he only has a 1/7 chance of hitting an actual person. It was a valid strategy to attempt, and players with a hell of a lot more experience in PvP than anyone on the team backed it.
Totally agree on casting times. They already have very short CDs, lowering them much more borders on removing the main counterplay of the build.
Gibbly didn’t force any build on us until the last game of the Mesmer game, when we were losing, terribly I might add. People were complaining incessantly that they couldn’t do anything to counter it, so he gave a very valid strategy to avoid the damage. And one person was adamant about not using a minion build and lo and behold he wasn’t forced into using one.
I like the mention of Treb btw, considering my minion build and Reedju’s great roaming were the sole reasons we didn’t lose every single game we played on Khylo. Or did you miss out the part where the enemy team realized treb was their only chance, and commit four members of their team to stop two of us from taking out treb (which, thanks to my minions, still failed).
We’ve had Symbolic on there back before he was a traitor (jk). From what I’ve heard from the top Necros is basically that EU has such a strong condi removal based meta that condi necros really have trouble. Condi necros are usually based around bleeding someone out over a comparatively prolonged fight, and also applying large team pressure with our AoE. Problem being, EU has so much cleansing that the pressure just isn’t there. To my knowledge very few of them play burst condi necros. And since EU is the only place with much of a competitive scene right now, EU makes the meta.
As for why the don’t every try anything but condi Necros, I have no idea. I think it goes back to few players = stale meta.
Good idea though, that is a good thing to go over in a podcast.
Necros make bad roamers, and even if ANet makes us perfect in our prescribed role we always will be at best niche counter-roamers (intercepting the enemy roamer or slowing the enemy team in between points).
I have to disagree, You have had top level players on your show disagreeing.
Personally i play power and i love it but to say any of the issues are not key issues is just wrong .Its just other classes have more to offer at this moment in time and necro’s need to catch up in certain area’s
I like minion builds as well but the pets are unreliable.
I’ve talked to those people on the show. They don’t feel like Minion builds are good in high level tournaments for two reasons:
1) Exploitable AI (a good MM can get around this, and I do all the time. Note that this isn’t about AI bugs where they don’t aggro, but purposely doing something to bug a minion out)
2) AoE spamming. This is why I don’t think full minion builds in their current state can work in higher level tournaments. Full minion builds work around having your own mobs that do consistent control, pressure, and added survivability. They die so quickly to AoE though that this kind of playstyle doesn’t work out well. Minion hybrids (what I run), work much better because they don’t rely on minions living very long, you use them for their control, then let them die if they happen to (ranged ones die rarely so thats not a big issue).
You also have to realize that at the end of any talk, they have all admitted that they have never used minions often, nor really tried to make them work. They might have messed around with them once or twice, but there are no high level players (to my knowledge) that play minions consistently. Gibbly is the only high level player that I know of that actually made a solid minion build to use.
Also, realize when I say minions I don’t mean a super generic 20/0/20/20/0 build with your 6-0 slots all being minions, I’m talking about any build that was made with the purpose to use minions as some main focal point of the build. I don’t run full minion slots in my builds unless I’m on specific maps, but minions in the right setup can be a really nasty build for certain purposes.
I’d like to stress something Myrmidian said: “if you are having fun with it, then play it.” +1 to that, +1 so hard.
This is my opinion of the meta in every single game I play: screw the meta. Don’t go out of your way to play something that is absolutely terrible, but if you have a build you enjoy to play, and are having fun with it, keep using it. Never forget that this is a game, and you play games to have fun.
I’d say play them both and see what you enjoy. Necromancer is going to be the easiest to transition from PvE to WvW to PvP with, without being put in a bad spot, but realize that haters gonna hate. Both are very fun classes, and I have a Ranger alt that I have been leveling up, its just a matter of playing one until you know what you like.
Mark of Evasion is silly to have an internal CD. I guess they might be able to make the case that if you made some weird build using endurance sigils, that you could use MoE and some other bleed stacks to get some pretty hilarious results (you could get 4 dodges + staff for 5 consecutive MoBs, which would be funny but I don’t see it being OP).
Weakening shroud having an internal CD makes sense though, permanent weakness + a few stacks of bleeds would be a bit ridiculous (not OP on its own by any means, but I think too strong).
I disagree with people saying that you “need” this or that to win (per specific builds/classes). It is a result of a tiny player pool, and thus incredibly stale meta. People at the high level are, honestly, not very inventive right now. Why take the time and effort to make something besides Guardian work as a bunker when you can just roll a guardian and copypasta one of the builds. Why try to make Necromancers work when you can copypasta a build from someone else and know it will work well.
I’ll agree that certain classes have a lot of difficulty being useful (like Warriors and Necromancers), but outside of Warriors, a lot of it is just people at the top being happy moving from FOTM to FOTM and not having to do any actual work at theorycrafting.
Not every LoL game is a split second decision either. The recent LCS games in the promotion series have had plenty of stomps where one team just absolutely pooped on the other team, and the majority of ranked/normal games are surrendered at 20 minutes or soon after. We can’t really expect a lot of exciting games right now because let’s face it, the team competition isn’t really there. You need teams with similar skill to really push each other to close games, and with so few players and questionable queueing systems, that isn’t common right now.
Some maps have systems in place for really good comebacks (Lord rush, stealing forest buffs, orb, and the one thing on the frozen map I always forget), the key is having them develop these maps so that they are really as competitive and playable at a high level.
Its had an internal CD for a while, its at 15 seconds and separate from it’s weapon skill counterpart.
First, if you are getting suspended, its probably because you are going about asking for changes in a toxic way. I’ve seen a lot of the posts made by people who complain of being suspended, and they are widely abusive and vulgar. Cut out the needless aggression and you could get your point across without being punished.
Obviously I don’t want anyone to get suspended. But maybe we should try and draw their attention to this rather big problem. I can’t see any reason why anyone would want to play a minion master at this point, since the minions don’t attack when you need them to. What we have now, is a nice skillbar full of mini pets.
I’ve mained MM since BWEs, and I’ve had a lot of success. Not to say their AI is perfect because it isn’t, I’ve had Flesh Golem sit around plenty of times which makes me lose out on DPS, and they need to fix it. But honestly I can work with their AI if they are fixing other things to make Necros more viable in PvP. I think the first change they need to make is to increase Flesh Wurm’s teleport to a much higher range (5000? bring it in line with portal), and make it able to port to that location regardless of where you are, but then make it placed at your feet to avoid abuse (unless they can manage to avoid abuse without it).
MMs aren’t used at a high level in large part due to the need to be mobile to off-point defend (which is where they are best), and their huge weakness in team fights to AoE.
I am upset about alot of things i think you can see by the last tournament where not one team ran a Necro just where things are with the class at the moment.
They need to fix the lack of
-Stability
-Mobility
-Minion AiThis is not even taking into consideration traits and the like, They make a big deal about Necromancer has a lot of different specs that can be played and yet you only really see one viable build in tournament play(conditionmancer) and you don even see that because teams would rather take something else.
Its pretty kitten really.
The real problem at high level play is that there are so few people the meta is incredibly stale. There aren’t hundreds of Necros, there are like 10 at most, and almost all of them play Condi. That means people aren’t looking at MM builds, power builds, hybrid builds, etc. they are just seeing a bunch of condi necros. In EU condi necros are in trouble because all the necros there (to my knowledge) have essentially the same playstyle, and right now that playstyle is hard-countered by the condi removal meta.
It has nothing to do with how necros could actually perform, but how they are seen as performing, and the complete lack of people playing to change that opinion.