Guild Wars 2

Saiyan.1704:

That’s with every mmorpg. Most rpg’s can be quite complex compared to a 4-5 skill set moba game. This game really isn’t bad as far as rpgs go.

And MMORPGs have never been eSports successes. WoW only managed to do it for a very short time because Blizzard shoved so much money at it that they artificially created a scene which died the second they came to their senses and stopped wasting the money. MMORPGs are designed with PvE as first priority, the exact opposite of what eSports do.

Let’s be honest, I’ve played with the community enough to agree with the devs, your average player is dumb.

Also Water Fields are different, more healing from a healing skill is exactly what you want. More blind duration on top of a blind though does absolutely nothing, making blasting WoD literally worthless unless you are against someone clearing their blinds faster than WoD applies them. CPC and other poison fields have similar issues in that they very quickly apply too much poison in a single application, and all that extra duration just gets wasted. Death Nova is particularly bad for this, it is pretty common for me to respawn and still see someone ticking from a poison I applied when we were fighting.

I wouldn’t really bother with whether or not ANet would be able to do it as far as a completely theoretical discussion goes.

As far as this, I could see it being a specialization for sure. It is an interesting idea, I don’t think it is intrinsically any better or worse than what we have now, just different with different balancing points.

Rewards aren’t the issue, the games that now offer massive prize pools started off with the comparatively small rewards we see in GW2. They got to those massive pools because the scene grew over time naturally, due to people enjoying both sides of the game.

The problem with GW2 is that it isn’t viewer friendly. Everyone will give different reasons why, but it just isn’t nearly as easy to watch and comprehend as CS:GO, LoL, Dota2, SC2, HS, or any of the many fighting games that are popular. They all have pretty clear graphics, you can tell what is going on all the time, even if you don’t play the game at all. This frees up the casters to do general hype play by play, and then analyze the game.

I just don’t see GW2 becoming very “eSports”. That isn’t to say it can’t get to the point where we have 10k+ viewers, but we’re never going to reach the 6-8 figure viewer counts that the bigger games get.

Power Necro is in the meta, so obviously they wouldn’t give it another buff (directly after buffing it to its current spot), whereas Condi Necro is falling out so it gets a buff. Seems completely logical to me. Also the FitG change couldn’t have been made before stability was made significantly weaker.

Dark Pact is fine effect wise as is, it just needs its cast time reduced to 3/4s. If I really wanted to stretch for buffs I’d reduce CD to 20s, but it doesn’t need more effects added to it.

Locust Swarm is fine as is, it gives massive swiftness/cripple uptime, plus a large amount of LF regen and potential procing of on-crit/hit traits.

For Well of Blood, I would just up its healing power scaling to the point that it equals what it was pre-nerf. Or, if they want to make it a Water Field, up it to where it is almost as good as it was pre-nerf, but needs 1 blast finisher to equal out. That way without finishers it is slightly worse than pre-nerf but happens faster, but also scales into teamfighting nicely.

I would also note that while I don’t disagree with a number of these on their own, I don’t think throwing tons of combo finishers on all of our weapon skills is appropriate. Although I tend to agree with the ones you mention, and think those would probably be fine, since they only add to a few distinct skills and in an actual build wouldn’t add too much. Overall a decent set of QoL changes.

I will always support any request to get skins, I think it is the most genius idea to easy money ANet could ever get.

How does it apply the ticks now? Like, does it still use the global timer system, so a 1.5s bleed will tick once for its full damage at the next global tick and then for 50% of damage at the next? Haven’t had enough time to play with it.

The Gates Assassin.9827:

How do you guys feel about necromancers after this change?

It was a good change. It didn’t fix every issue in the world obviously, but ANet addressed a long-existing and recently exacerbated issue in a timely manner with a really good change. Overall I’m happy with it.

The Gates Assassin.9827:

Anyone try this with a power necro?

It doesn’t work well. Loss of 50% crit chance is just way too much, power necro already can run into issues dealing the same damage as other power builds (barring Lich Form) you can’t just give up such a massive damage multiplier.

I think at this point ANet needs to focus on QoL, bug fixes, and Blood Magic. Minion AI is still god-awful and MM overall has some bad design decisions (too focused on passive when there could be some great active changes), we still have a lot of abilities that have far too long of cast times paired with after-cast animations or travel times, we still have bad interactions like Death Shroud invalidating an entire tree, vampiric traits need changing, and there are some other things we need here and there (for the love of god can we please get some decent finishers).

However, I think the BIG thing keeping builds down is our lack of weapons and lack of unique support. Our weapon selection is very narrow, we don’t have proper support or tanky weapons, and this limits us from being able to play builds that otherwise would work like wells support or tanky spectral. And in PvE the lack of unique support is the only unique thing we have. Hopefully HoT will address some of this (and I think it will), and hopefully they will follow up with new specializations relatively quickly. But overall I think Necro is just a few specializations, some QoL/bug fixes, and change to Blood Magic away from being perfection.

Sublimatio.6981:

1) technically, Shade is a Nightmare

Potato Potato.

Sublimatio.6981:

3) Actually if you’re talking about the lore, Killeen in the first novel, Ghosts of Ascalon, animated dead warriors of Ebonhawke iirc, and for sure she animated a skeleton under Divinity’s Reach – an animation (undead), not a creation like our flesh golems.

Note that I didn’t say we can’t raise undead, but that we don’t raise them. It is generally considered a taboo afaik, and I believe it also has some differences such as we can’t use them forever like minions. I don’t see it being something that would be looked at very well when you consider it is the exact same thing Zhaitan just did to ravage very large portions of the world, and Palawa Joko is also using.

So could we? Yes. There is more to it than if we have the ability to though.

Sublimatio.6981:

I highly suspect our bone fiend, minions and fiend are undeads too, undead devourer, wind rider and ummm undead pikachus? XD

They aren’t undeads, they are golems made of flesh and bone. They take those forms most likely because it is really easy to copy biology (which is already shown to do things right) rather than take the time to try to perfect a new musculoskeletal system. Why fix something that nature already does best?

Boysenberry.1869:

The thing with minions is…they used to kinda sorta work. Long ago you used to be able to use them and they’d actually do stuff. Then one day their AI was completely shattered, and it was never fixed. All they have to do is revert back to the kinda-working AI.

The problem is that their AI has always had issues. It has had two specific times where it could be considered reliable.

Once was at launch when minions were so insanely aggressive that they were basically unusable in PvE not because they wouldn’t attack, but because they would never STOP attacking.

Then was a short time afterwards where the minion AI was “fixed” to be not aggressive, and also could be made to attack. However people complained incessantly back then that it didn’t work (although it did) because the steps that you had to go through to make them aggro was absolutely insane. In addition, it was heavily reliant on hitting your enemy, meaning you could not aggro from very far away, in addition heavily stealth characters would make your minions much worse.

If they “revert” it, we’re just trading one problem (not reliably keeping aggro over terrain changes) for others (over aggression, over complicated aggro, etc.). I’d say wait for HoT, where it is much more likely that they can do something. They’ve already shown that they are addressing AI, let’s hope it also applies to minions.

I really don’t like celestial on Necromancer. It isn’t that we can’t scale with all the stats (in fact we have really nice healing power scaling, and our vitality/toughness scaling is uniquely the best in the game), its more that I don’t think we make good use of celestial.

We just don’t have the same things that allow other professions to really make good use of celestial. We can use it for fun, and I believe it was djooce that often used a might stacking build which probably could have used celestial (I don’t remember if it did or not), but generally speaking I just don’t think we use it well enough to warrant using celestial over a more specifically purposed build.

Because it isn’t that easy or they’d already have done it. I know it might be hard to believe but these are actually professionals.

If you don’t like the mix of blind and chill then changing the chill doesn’t fix the issue regardless of what you do to it.

I don’t think a conversion rate is needed, I think this trait is reasonably powerful already, even if it is niche in requiring you to take pulsing blinds.

Haunt is garbage regardless of this trait. It has an activation time on par with Meteor Storm, only like 10x weaker. Making the chill scale with blind duration doesn’t really change the trait to being good, especially since they would almost guaranteed make the chill portion not scale with condition duration (otherwise the trait would double-dip scale with condition duration), it would just change it to being worse with pulsing blinds but good with other blinds.

We just need better blind application, or more realistically it will just stay a niche trait to use with Plague and to a less degree WoD.

It isn’t at all a bad trait, we just need a few better sources of blind to make it worthwhile when you aren’t running Plague.

There are quite a few stun breaks that have cast times. They are basically all of the ones that weren’t stun breaks when the game released but were made it later (I would note then that WoP breaking a stun at all is a buff to Necromancer, albeit an old one) so instead of removing the cast time they were given a stun break and a stability to cover the cast animation.

Its the new thing, put stab on everything. Every so often the forums latch onto one idea and then throw it at everything.

Ah, yeah I forgot about Mark of Horror.

The only way you have a stun break up every 7 or 10 seconds is if you completely remove all your defensive CDs, since DS is all we’ve got. No power build can give up 50% crit chance in DS, so this is only available to the 06X0X version of condi builds, which have to give up Greater Marks or Reaper’s Protection to get this trait.

Is it strong? Yes, you know, like GM traits should be. But it isn’t remotely OP.

Some Vamp stuff was buffed ages ago. Its still not good enough though in almost all cases.

Blocking is not that big of a deal. Aegis can be removed pretty easily, Guardians are the only people who have a block that is super important to remove. Now, that isn’t to say the trait is bad, because the ability to continue to pressure people through their defensive CDs can be really important. However that doesn’t mean it is absolutely necessary over a stun break on as low as a 10s CD that can counter two CCs in one use.

Really the only time FitG is not a very serious consideration is if your build doesn’t have points in SR and it would be a massive change to your build that you can’t afford.

1. No
2. Yes (note that they don’t directly deal condition damage, but if they do apply a condition through a field it uses your damage)
3. No
4. No, though you can give them fury and it will work
5. No
6. No
7. Their base damage is determined by their level, which is determined by your level. Beyond that the only way to increase their damage is stuff like giving them fury.

You pretty much only use Soldier or Cleric for MM builds in PvP. In WvW I’d really only go Soldier and maybe mix in a little bit of damage. In PvE you go zerker like every other build.

BobiPacyfista.3974:

Wiki says that is limit of 8 minions but one time i had 10 so wiki is not 100% correct

You can only have 8 jagged horrors at any one time, not 8 minions.

Master of Terror actually is fine now that they added partial ticks. It can still lose its damage/CC because it was removed, but it will always add damage and CC doesn’t rely on ticks. Still not worth it over FitG though.

Downed damage applies to Chill of Death now, so once you hit 50% he hit you with a Chill of Death proc that had a 50% and 20% damage boost, plus a long AA channel, and possibly air/fire sigil procs as well since it ticks 3 times per second.

I’ll be honest, as someone who only plays at the very pinnacle of casualness I love engi dailies. I can log onto my turret engi and pretty much guarantee that my first match is enough to get the daily finished. I don’t even have to do much, I can be on my minimum settings 10 FPS laptop with my 10kbps sCamcast internet and still do well.

It isn’t a 6pt stun break, it is a 2 pt stun break on a 10s CD that also provides stability to cover a second CC. You are already at least 4 deep in SR in basically every single condi build commonly run, so picking up FitG is only a “cost” of a death magic Major trait or SR trait.

We can’t honestly complain inncessantly about how Necromancers are ping pong balls that are awful because we get chain CCed, and then say that 2 points or some fear duration isn’t worth giving up to be able to nullify up to 2 CCs per 10 seconds.

There isn’t a ton of repping, and probably won’t be. It was the same thing in But of Corpse, until actual events are organized most people will be repping their main guild.

I really never got into Soul Marks honestly. It pretty much only exists to allow you to generate 10% LF at the start of a fight, which I often just sac wurm for the second I spawn if I need the LF badly.

Sure, we could use more stability. But that is a problem completely unrelated to the power of Foot in the Grave, or the fact that both of these traits are perfectly balanced where they are right now. If we need more stability, we need more stability.

Yeah, flashing is actually a relatively important thing. Just don’t press your keys more than once unless you are having packet loss, at which point this is the least of your worries.

@Ragion, that has nothing to do with what I said.

Spite offers a defensive option, Parasitic Contagion, or two offensive options, Dhuumfire/Close to Death. At the GM level, your options then are offense via conditions, offensive via direct damage, defense via conditions.

Curses offers an offensive option, Lingering Curses, a defense/utility option, Withering Precision, and an offensive/utility option, Path of Corruption. At the GM level, your options are one of those things.

And this is true of every profession and nearly every trait line, with the exceptions being badly designed trait lines. By taking one option at the GM level, you by design cannot have what the other options give you. By taking Deathly Perception, you have to give up the strength related to Foot in the Grave, or vice versa. This is true everywhere, that is why GM traits are allowed to be so powerful, because they innately bar you from other GMs.

You can’t argue that Necromancer can’t deal damage without Foot in the Grave when it has not been a core trait in over a year, and both condi and power are currently meta in the highest tiers of play without it. The very nature of Death Shroud is offense and defense at once.

I do think 0/6/2/0/6 is probably better just from the standpoint of having stronger defensive options. It seems to me like 6/6/0/0/2 is pretty based on cheesing someone quickly with heavy condi pressure and hoping they don’t have the ability to deal with the condis and can’t counter pressure you. 0/6/2/0/6 allows for more defensive options, so you can actually fight better imo. But really if you’re in smaller combat situations only 1-2 stun breaks should be fine.

I also think FitG can solve some of our “three slot” issues, since it makes taking only a single stun break a bit less painful. Could be possible to fit SoL into more builds now.

No, choosing between very strong defensive and offensive options absolutely makes sense. Soul Reaping is the only line not based heavily on offense, defense, or support, it is based on Death Shroud and Life Force and so it makes perfect sense that its GMs would be all kinds of different things but tied to DS.

Also, every GM slot has options of different types. They all have some combination of offensive, defensive, and more often utility that is somewhere in the middle.

Unlike a lot of the people here shopping at Hot Topic and painting their nails black, I was never under the impression that hope was lost. The real issue was that ANet was going in the right direction with Necro changes but far too slowly, and yes considering they’ve been giving us a lot of special attention in patches that otherwise don’t include anything big and also have responded to bad effects of their changes incredibly quickly I think it is a good sign of things to come.

4/4/0/0/6 power necro would lose out on an insane amount of damage. You not only gut the 50% crit chance in DS, but also 20% damage to enemies under 50%.

That’s it guys, we’re looking at the new and improved ANet response time. I was hoping the sub 24 hour bug fix wasn’t a one time thing, and it seems like they are much more prepared to actually address power issues quickly.

A buff and a fix can be the same thing. A buff is just anything that increases our power, which in many cases has been tied to bug fixes (which actually helps prove the point that Necromancer was never weak, just broken).

But yeah, Necromancers right now are actually at the best point we’ve ever been at, really. Power and Condi are both viable in top tier PvP without the use of a completely broken trait, we’ve got a strong zerg presence, and we can roam decently well. We’re just missing out on PvE and having more options available (but pretty much every profession only has 1-2 options in the top tier so this isn’t that specific to us).

Not that we are fixed, but we are much closer to the situation other professions are at.

It is almost guaranteed a bug considering they made the change to have it count as an interrupt on purpose. If anyone has PTSD from Putrid Mark though, I completely understand, and we’re here to help.

Daze is not a condition

Its really not that good, they are giving up all of their CC just to pressure out a stun break and cleanse. Use fears to interrupt more key abilities, or use a fear chain as a finisher so that they can’t do anything while you burst down that last couple thousand HP when they’ve already burned their ways to stop you.

It doesn’t make sense because slapping stability on every skill (which seems to be what we ask for fairly often) isn’t a good fix.

SoL needs to be a stun break, and if they keep the cast time then it’ll get stability to cover.

SA is already strong enough, it really doesn’t need any buffs unless they are really minor, or involve changing the ICD to be per person hitting you rather than a flat ICD.

SWalk see above with changing ICD, also stability doesn’t really seem to suit the skill. I’d much rather play up other parts of it than slap stability on just because.

Realistically, traits are the best way to give us stability without adding new skills. The rest of our (utility) skills are either strong enough on their own, or don’t fit with stability.

The mixup comes from the difference between the highest tier of play (of each game mode) and basically everything else. At the highest tiers of play it is 100% about the absolute best in the current meta since basically everything will be played at max or near max efficiency; in lower tiers of play where gameplay errors are common being ideal is less important than actual play.

In general, Necromancer doesn’t really exist at the top tier of play except in WvW and a very specific few players in PvP (generally NA where team play is arguably worse than EU). This isn’t because Necromancer can never be good, but because when every build will be played nearly perfectly Necromancer doesn’t perform as well. At lower tiers of play, a well played Necromancer will obviously outperform a badly played anything. It is also true that a lot of Necromancer (and any profession) weaknesses won’t be taken advantage of by lower tier players, especially when that counterplay is more on a map-scale (out rotating, focus fire, good team play, etc.).

As a side note, we are currently seeing Necromancer in high tier PvP be more successful than it ever has been excluding Dhuumfire. That should show how easily we can be swung into favor, and why huge changes aren’t necessary to the profession overall.

nekretaal.6485:

Chinese Necromancers are golemancers. All of the death stuff like skull icons have been removed. If anything, I believe we will see less death stuff in the future as our client becomes more like china’s.

To be fair, the Chinese client just removes overt skull symbols because they are much more taboo there. It isn’t that they are actually changing the lore, but removing certain game symbols that wouldn’t fly. At most the Chinese client means we won’t see skills that involve skulls very much.

adozu.6398:

b) be visible to everyone: confusing and very bad in terms of pvp, why should other players have to learn how cash shop minions look like in order to fight against them?

This is already solveable with their system of making all players look the same in PvP, just add in that minions look normal in PvP for people who have that option enabled.

If a second HP bar was so relevant why has Necromancer never been a bunker in competitive play, and why is Necromancer almost always the first focus in teamfights? More HP means nothing when you take proportionally more damage because of a lack of proper mitigation.

1. No, we don’t summon “demons”, we form golems of dead flesh or summon Spectral beings from the Underworld. This is also a relatively small part of the class compared to controlling life energies, dealing with disease and infliction, and the Underworld.

2. Corpses and on-death mechanics really don’t work for GW2. It was okay in many spots for GW1, but it would make any corpse-reliant mechanic completely useless for sPvP, which is what we already see.

3. We don’t summon undead, nor would we from a lore point of view considering basically everybody (including ourselves) has lost friends and loved ones to them. It is similar to why we don’t do a number of things that are technically within our power.

This is the case with a number of condition transfers and boon removals, they will transfer blind/remove aegis without it counting as part of the conditions transfered/boons removed. Not sure about Putrid Mark in specific though.

It isn’t a deliberate nerf from the devs, that idea is absolutely ridiculous and you should take off your tin foil hat.

The reason minions seem to bug more often is because:
1. Minions are mobile, and AI issues are due to pathing. Turrets don’t bug out because all they have to do is find something in range to shoot at.
2. Minions are right on the edge of viable. Other summons are either bad, and so it is easy to not notice them having issues because you didn’t expect much anyway, or they are really effective without you paying any attention to them so you wouldn’t notice issues. Because honestly how many people who play say turret engi pay close attention to every single time Rocket Turret misfires and LoS’s itself?
3. They live longer than almost any other summon type. Ranger Pets, Necromancer Minions, and Engineer Turrets are the only pets in the game that can technically live forever. What ends up happening is the pathing issues that all AI will face are much more noticeable when a minion is summoned before combat and runs around a bit before combat starts rather than being summoned right at the location of the fight.
4. They have had a number of AI fixes throughout the past which have caused the current issues. They have had all kinds of problems, and it turns out fixing those problems caused other ones.