Guild Wars 2

It doesn’t, I’ve checked.

And I’m not playing good enough people for the blast to matter. I’ve respawned and seen poison ticks from across the map due to death nova.

Yeah, the first thing that everyone thinks of when they think of ways to make sPvP better is to add more special effects vomitting themselves over the screen, more mindless AoE spam, and less personal skill.

The only way I see it working is if they tried to do it like the few FPS games that have tried massive-scale combat, and that is by breaking people into smaller groups so that even if it is two teams of 30v30 you still generally only see a few people at a time, but there really isn’t a point to that in MMOs, whereas FPSs can somewhat support it.

If you want 30v30 do WvW.

manveruppd.7601:

Seriously man, how about a little wager? If you run bone minions without Flesh of the Master and win 2 out of 5 games (screenshot proof accepted), I’ll run bone minions instead of Spectral Walk for two weeks thereafter ON MY CONDITIONMANCER!

I bet I could come up with some cheese build that used WoS and Bone Minions to do some funny stuff, especially since Bone Minions are unscaling.

In fact I’d probably argue Death Nova is actually so good that if I was already 4 into DM that its worth dumping 2 more traits in just for Death Nova’d Bone Minions. I might try that sometime with a tankier build setup.

Shiki.7148:

You sure?

Yes. Defiance still won’t be a good enough reason to bring Necromancer (we have 0 confirmation so far that chill will work with defiance as well), because there are other professions with incredible CC.

We still have no unique utility, we still have mediocre DPS, our traits are bad, and we don’t have particularly good utility/weapon skills. They don’t need to fix every single one of those to make us better, but I highly doubt they will even address more than one or two.

tfcgeneralkmk.9508:

it seems weird to me that removing aegis is so low on the order considering the nature of that boon you’d think it would be what should be gone after first

All of our boon removals except the two weapon ones are unblockable. In some cases it will be removed on top of the boons that would normally be removed, in many cases it simply doesn’t matter since you can just remove it with an auto attack afterwards, and in the case of Axe it just flat out blocks the skill which is the weirdest thing ever.

manveruppd.7601:

Get this though: power builds and condi builds don’t use the same weapons! When was the last time you saw a bunker guardian holding a scepter? Or a carrion necro with a mainhand dagger? They’ll be using different weapons, therefore different skills with different scalings! The power scaling of Dragon’s Tooth (ele scepter 2 in fire) is 2.25 – but of Grasping Dead (necro scepter 2) is 0.7! Guardian’s scepter 2 has a whopping 4.9 scaling!

This heavily depends on build. A bunker Warrior will do the same damage as a glass one, a bunker ele will be the same, and this is relatively true in many other cases as well, because they equip similar weapons. Obviously condition builds will deal less direct damage to the minions, and that’s fine because they are going to have better kiting potential. In general a condition build wouldn’t want to waste the time to kill one anyway, that is a lot of wasted condition pressure just to kill a single minion.

manveruppd.7601:

But tbh my main problem with your suggestion isn’t how tough you’re making the minions: it’s that, without the trait, they’re just as vulnerable as they are now! This would make your revised trait just as compulsory as Flesh of the Master is now.

Flesh of the Master isn’t compulsory to run a minion. Flesh Golem, Flesh Wurm, and Bone Minions in general can be used without HP traiting in a normal build without issue. If they die they die, its not such a big deal to a normal build, and they are used for their utility. Shadow Fiend and Bone Fiend with the proposed changes would also be worth using in normal builds. Also we are proposing a 20% HP boost without traiting.

manveruppd.7601:

That was a bug: halting strike would proc repeatedly off durational skills. Wasn’t just guardians, I did it on an ele too.

The exact bug doesn’t matter, hitting 5 targets with heavy amounts of retaliation will absolutely hammer you with damage, and many builds rely on AoE attacks, even to hit a single target. If it was tied to something the MM had to intelligently activate and time (like, watch the DPS guard come in, activate AoE retal, laugh while guard spams AoE like an idiot) I’d be fine with it. My issue is more them just getting a bunch of random buffs from dying. Death Nova already covers the punishing of killing well on its own, and it has a lot of play with the rest of the kit.

manveruppd.7601:

Well, I’m not saying zero cooldown obviously, but lowered to something that doesn’t make the MM completely useless. And actually, you KNOW that the best tactic against a MM is to focus the master rather than the minions – I’ve seen you giving that advice to people on the pvp forum. And you’ve repeatedly said in this thread that the problem with minions dying isn’t so much that they get focussed down, it’s that they die incidentally from aoe while the enemy is targetting the necro. So you can’t really call it counterplay if it happens by accident!
I do agree to an extent though, but I believe the need for this counterplay would decrease if the autoattack damage of the minions was nerfed, as you and Sikari already suggested in the OP.

I guess specific CDs could be argued in some cases, because this would only really affect Shadow Fiend/Bone Fiend/Flesh Golem, the other minions have actives that are tied to their death and couldn’t be lowered. But for those three, yeah I think you might have a point to lowering CDs.

manveruppd.7601:

Golem and Wurm are pretty tough by default, yeah, though the Wurm owes its survivability to being placed way outside trouble in the first place :p But come on, would you take bone minions untraited? They can literally be one-shot by some skills, even non-critting, and you don’t even need to be a zerker to do it!

Actually yes, I would, if we had any decent fields to combo them with. On non-MM builds it isn’t at all a big deal to leave them unsummoned when not needed and summon them specifically to combo with a field/deal burst damage.

manveruppd.7601:

Basically, we need to stop thinking of them as completely passive damage boosts, and start thinking of them as utility skills which you can only use while your pets are alive! So, really, THE PET ACTIVE is your REAL utility skill, not the minion itself! This predicates a complete rebalance:
1. the passive bonuses your pets give you has to be negligible-to-mediocre, hence lower autoattack damage, and
2. if being able to use the active is gated by the pet being alive, the death of the pets must not be as crippling a setback as it is now, hence lowered resummon cooldowns.

We basically agree here, so yeah.

I hate to break it to you but this expansion is very unlikely to fix our PvE.

manveruppd.7601:

How about this:
“Flesh of the Master: when one of your minions is killed by anything other than a sacrifice skill, you and your minions gain 5” Retaliation and 5" Resistance"
I honestly feel that Retaliation on minions is better than making them harder to kill. The delta in direct damage-dealing capabilities between zerker builds and bunker builds in this game means that if you make minions too durable some classes will just get hard-countered by minionmancers. But giving them retaliation instead of just making them tough as nails basically gives your opponent a choice: Sure, you can still 1-shot 4 minions with a Dragon’s Tooth, but they’ll take half your health with them. The fact that minions have varying degrees of health (and that some of them are ranged so they’re not all clustered together) should prevent against htem all dying simultaneously and thereby wasting the trait proc, and Resistance should prevent them from being burned to death and also wasting the trait proc (since condition damage doesn’t proc retaliation).

Zerker and bunker wouldn’t have any difference in damage in our setup. Even Carrion would be relatively close to Zerker, since they have fairly close power stats. That is actually the main point of the no-crit suggestion. Giving them a ton of retaliation makes it super punishing against professions that rely on AoE skills, remember the mesmer build that instantly kills a guardian if they use one ability?

manveruppd.7601:

Of course, the REAL solution would be to reduce recharge times. That way, even if they all die, you just need to survive 10" and summon them again. Except on Bone Minions obviously – if you reduce their recharge time you’ll have infinite Death Novas on tap! The point is to acknowledge that minions die easily to aoe, and to make it so that their death is a setback for the master, but not an automatic GG, rather than to force the master to invest in a bunch of traits to prevent them from dying. Lower recharge times to resummon them would accomplish that automatically. Once you’ve got that, then you can introduce traits by which the necromancer can (optionally) benefit from their deaths, such as Death Nova or the Flesh of the Master rework I suggested above. The keyword is optionally: the minions should still be usable without a trait tax! If I want to take Greater Marks or Reaper’s Protection in that master trait slot instead, I should be able to. My minions won’t hurt people as much, but I’ll have other advantages.

Lowered CDs lowers one major point of counterplay, and that is being able to kill them. Minions being dead is a big point of counterplay to the build.

manveruppd.7601:

a utility skill has to be at the very least VIABLE (not top-tier, just viable!) without any trait investment

Agreed. Although I would argue that everything but Blood Fiend is currently or could easily (with small changes to it or other skills) be made to be viable. Flesh Golem/Flesh Wurm are obvious. Shadow Fiend with an animation reduction would be an amazing way to secure stomps. Bone Minions are our best non-WoC burst, plus could be good sources of blast finisher if we got better fields going. And Bone Fiend with an AA reset would be great for CC and holding people inside stuff like wells.

manveruppd.7601:

traits snip

Interesting ideas, although I generally think having on-death minion traits isn’t great. The healing one is actually pretty cool though, for support.

The channel time doesn’t actually benefit you against them, since those sigils have an ICD that make them not proc twice. So 2.5 would just deal its damage faster and then allow you to use another ability that hits through stealth, since we actually have quite a few.

Malchior.1928:

You have a valid point.
I don’t use minions very often, but I figured that the counterplay would just be bursting the minion down. If you don’t have blood fiend out, then you’ll have to summon him, and you can get interrupted there. If you already have it out, then your only heal is susceptible to being locked out before you even take damage. So maybe 1s summon and 1/2 second taste of death would allow more counterplay?

Well, Blood Fiend has 13k base HP, and will be traited so just shy of 20k HP, which isn’t particularly easy to burst down. That is a lot of damage to use to kill the minion. It basically ends up in a situation where builds who already struggle against MM (lots of single target) struggle even more, and the ones who don’t (kill minions on accident) don’t have any change.

flow.6043:

Honestly, if I were to encounter someone who not only has enough knowledge about CPC to pull that off at all, but who can also time its pulses in the heat of a battle to the point where they just avoid every hit, I would /salute and gladly concede the capture point to them.

If that is what it took sure. But there are plenty of times when they just do it on complete accident while they evade/dodge because it is so long in between pulses.

Or rework the daily system so that it doesn’t end up forcing a bunch of players onto random professions that they don’t want to play and are awful at when a large portion of the community prefers to only play a single (or very small number) of professions.

If Dark Path was like RtL and had a significantly higher CD for using it as “just” mobility without a target, then I would be down for it. Have it be normal CD when used with a target selected, and something significantly higher if targeted. I think that is a fair change, since it wouldn’t actually give us much mobility at all.

Malchior.1928:

Summon Blood fiend: Cast time reduced to 1 second.
-Taste of Death: Cast time reduced to instant cast (in line with other minions).

This won’t happen because it isn’t “just” another minion. The healing active of a skill should never be impossible to interrupt, Engineers already have an arguably OP healing skill because theirs is an extremely short cast.

Malchior.1928:

Signet of Undeath: Cooldown reduced to 120 seconds.
-Passive: 1% life force generated every second in combat.
-Active: Cast time 1 second, gain 50% Life force.

Is this a fully changed active or added on top?

Malchior.1928:

Signet of the Locust:
-Active: Additionally, gain 2% Life force per target struck.

SoL is pretty good right now. It is nearly an extra healing skill if you can hit a few people with it.

Malchior.1928:

Weakening Shroud: Weakness duration increased to 4 seconds.

They won’t do more than 3, but 3 is good.

Malchior.1928:

Death Shiver: Added 1 second of chill every 3 seconds.

Too much chill, most likely, but a good idea.

Malchior.1928:

Speed of Shadows: Dark Path becomes Ground Targeted.

Won’t happen, ground targeted Dark Path is insanely strong mobility.

We have an attack button, its called attacking. Putting in an extra attack button wouldn’t change any of their AI bugs, which are related to pathing problems.

BurrTheKing.8571:

So, after some thought I have an alternative suggestion:

Don’t allow for 2 sigils of the same type to be on one weapon. This means no Air/Fire, no Energy/Doom/Geo/Hydro/etc.

You could still have the same sigils, but they would have to be on two separate sets. It would avoid those crazy damage spikes or suddenly being hit with several damaging condis at once.

Some may dislike the loss of choice, but don’t forget that at launch it seemed that sigils were designed around certain combinations not being possible.

It wasn’t that long ago that this was basically the case and it was changed to be the way it currently is. The current setup is much better.

If the runes/sigils are too strong on their own then nerf those runes/sigils. If there are other issues that result, then address those issues separately. You shouldn’t be forced into using a sigil if sustain builds are OP, those builds should be nerfed.

My point is more that Shiro is a very memorable and “big” character in the franchise. He was a big boss and also a memorable encounter for a lot of people.

I see Resistance on Necro for sure. We’re the best profession for it, really, and ANet has a decent track history of doing small changes to old skills when all they need to do is add a single new boon/condition. Those kind of changes are very likely to happen to the older skills, its stuff that require a rework of the skill itself (like turning Axe 2 into a cascading skill, which is an idea I put on the forums months ago) that are less likely.

As for Resistance, I can see it on our transformations (at least Plague), I can see it making its way into our traiting since they said they will be redoing a lot of traits, and I could maybe see it being added onto skills that are currently a bit weak. It would be a really cool boost to CPC for it to pulse Resistance on allies.

It is determined by method of removal, just like boons are. But it is much harder to test than boon removal is.

I don’t think there is any secret widespread conspiracy against Necromancer (although maybe against MM…). This, like many other issues, is simply due to a lack of attention. If boon priorities aren’t something that cross their mind often (the last time it was an issue at all is when Thieves got the ability to steal boons), then it isn’t likely to be “fixed”.

Shadelang.3012:

Do you think making it so that necromantic corruption cuased each pet attack to remove .5 seconds from the boon duration on all active boons?

My problem with this is that it is counter to the “more play” thing we’re going for. It also directly conflicts with Death Nova, which is such a major trait.

CodeHavoc.7926:

I agree with suggestion, thought I would like minion to actually teleport to the enemy prior to dying and applying the poison field instead of dying on the spot and leaving an unused field where you have to kite the enemy to that particular spot.

This isn’t good. There is supposed to be counterplay against Death Nova, which is over 100% poison uptime and pretty big direct damage.

Narkodx.1472:

Back in the day I ran dungeons with a full rabid necro LOL

I remember back at launch where I did all dungeons with rare MF (power/condition damage) gear. Those were good times.

Dirame.8521:

Err… actually Vizu is the most Legendary Thief. She backstabbed Shiro.

I have literally no recollection of who she is.

Exedore.6320:

This gets into a fundamental question: Should sigils and runes have that big of an effect on a build?

I would argue “no” – traits and utilities should.

The problem is that the builds that rely on those sigils can’t get that from traits/utilities. Necros take energy sigil because they have absolutely no other way to get energy regen or any other similar mechanic from traits. I’d be fine if they were compensated for that.

The problem is generally that profession that already have a lot of something can then get more of it from runes/sigils, making it annoying and arguably OP. But then there are profession that are practically forced to take the same runes/sigils not because they make the build OP, but because they lack some really basic and necessary mechanic to survive.

Removing Energy sigils is a really big hit to Necromancers, for example, who have nothing to actually avoid skills with beyond the basic dodges everyone gets. We’re about to have a similar situation to what happened with Lyssa runes, where some profession practically needed that condi removal, and yet others abused it and so it got nerfed.

MM can also bring a good bit of boon removal as well, via Axe/Focus. However that is also very likely to be dropped in favor of GS if we like the specialization, and we can’t afford to take the traited sources of boon removal either.

Because we’ve already seen a set of thief-looking skills on one of the videos, and Shiro is the most “legendary” thief in GW.

spoj.9672:

The legends are more about utility than what type of gear you will use. So for PvE you might not even use the power legend but you would still use berserkers. And this is simply because the other legends have better utility.

This. It is pretty sure that the last two legends are Shiro (so mobility/thief stuff) and Glint (no clue, but it’ll be dragon-y).

Plague wouldn’t need to pulse it, necessarily. Maybe add Taunt on cast.

Do we know how much slow slows you by? For example, quickness is a 50% speed up, does this mean that slow will be a 50% slow down? So a 1s heal is now 1.5s? Or, more annoyingly, skills like Signet of Undeath/Battle Standard are now 4.5s/3s cast times (why the hell is SoU a 3s cast time when BS is 2? wtf)?

The new mechanics are only guaranteed to be available on new content. They have not made a single promise or even mention of reworking old skills with the exception of the stability change. Traits are a separate deal, they have said they were going to go over them.

But realistically if they don’t rework old skills to have not only the new boon/condition/taunt but also the new targeting mechanics, old skills are going to feel incredibly boring compared to the new ones.

I’d actually really prefer people not being forced to attack me while in Lich.

Papish.5806:

Just like there is no mention of well of corruption giving you life force for every target hit per pulse?

Got to love all the hidden presents ANET gives us.

This is a bug, as far as I know. But they haven’t removed it, which is nice.

Revenant will use power in PvE just like everyone else.

I’m not sure about resistance, simply because as far as I know it fully turns off the effects of all conditions during its duration. Meaning it would also remove movement slowing effects, making minions harder to kite.

It could be a good example of what Lily was talking about with active defense though.

Because you called taunt a condition, it isn’t. Daze and fear (and daze and knockdown) “both” occur because fear is a strictly “higher” CC, it has all the components of daze with more on top. You can also be immobilized and feared at the same time, which makes you run in place. Those can happen at the same time because the effects don’t conflict with each other.

Taunt and fear though directly conflict. You can’t run away from someone and be unable to use any skills while also running towards someone and auto attacking. They are exclusive of each otehr, and so one of them has to overwrite the other.

Taunt is not a condition, neither is daze.

Bran.7425:

So what happens if a taunted target is feared or a feared target taunted?

The most recent applies, most likely. That is how it currently works, as far as I know, since there are PvE mobs that will knock you down then fear you, and the fear overrides the knockdown.

Large HP doesn’t make us not good at attrition either. We also have a lot of what is effectively healing on a lot of our skills (life force generation). The problem is some of our builds don’t have the conditions to also help with sustain.

The role of a Necromancer is to control the flow of buffs and debuffs in a fight by removing buffs from enemies, removing debuffs from themselves and allies, and debuffing the enemy; sometimes all at once. In doing so, Necromancers stay in the thick of the fight, sustaining themselves with a large HP pool and abnormally large amounts of health gain, supplemented by life force which can temporarily substitute for their health.

Not going to address how well we fill that role, but regardless our role is controlling debuffs (conditions), and removing buffs (boons) from enemies, all the while using sustain tools to keep ourselves alive.

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

Isn’t this what But of Corpse [BoC] was supposed to be?

It is exactly what BoC was supposed to be, only it won’t have an inactive guild leader who randomly quits the game for months at a time (cough).

Most people think Shiro will be their other Legend, along with Glint.

Falcon.8713:

Everyone is on the hype train to leave necromancer and choo choo away on the newly reborn revenant. But don’t forget.. necromancer is love (terror) , necromancer is life (death) , it will have its uses and stuff, but I think everyone is just overexited because it’s a new professions and so. But I think against the condi-revenant a necromancer will be superior (atleast once we know skills-animations and so)

For me it is less about Mallyx being cool or that Revenant will be better, but it is how well done the profession is. Necromancer is nearly the opposite, there is a very noticeable lack of polish on our profession. We have traits and mechanics that actively cancel each other, or in concept cancel each other (like on-entry traits vs traits that require you to stay in DS). We have extremely boring weapons and a massive lack of interesting play between skills. Throw in overly long cast times, bugs, and “features” that have been added, and Necromancer feels like a profession they forgot to finish as opposed to Revenant which looks incredibly well polished.

Main character name : Maestra De Muerte
Account name : Bhawb.7408
Favorite game mode (eg. WvW/PvP/PvE) : PvP
Server : Ilse of Janthir
Number of Necromancers (if you have more than 1) : 4

They can’t really show all its weaknesses when we know about 50% of its total skills and traits (at most).

Mallyx looks super weak to return condi pressure, which means you would hit them with a lot of condi pressure to force them into Jalis (where they have a condi removal heal), where they won’t have nearly the same offensive pressure. But its hard to say when we don’t know their full traiting.

It also means that Terror Necros might be able to just CC spike through the stability, especially in teamfights.

Its too bad they “fixed” Flesh Golem’s charge though. How hilarious would it have been to charge through an entire stack of stability with one ability.

Muchacho.2390:

Yepp it is frustrating that they get all those toys that should have been the necros but as mallyx revenant, i wouldnt want to fight a condition necro (or any boonhate build). Apart from resistence they have no way to deal with conditions. A good corrupt boon/dark path will destroy them.

Well, as long as they are in Mallyx yes. But a Mallyx/Jalis build can just swap to Jalis to cleanse condis with their heal.

Mallyx is basically the epitome of what corruption necro should have been.

You can’t excuse ANet just because there are fewer professions. All that happens if they make Elementalists weak for a few patches is they move some profession up to take their place.

A feature patch every 6 months doesn’t even mean that balance meaningfully changes every 6 months. Look at Necromancer, when was the last time it was meaningfully changed? Deathly Perception allowed power builds to float around highish tier, and condi has existed nearly unchanged since Dhuumfire was nerfed (ironically one of the only times ANet has ever quickly responded to balance, and only because they had a big tournament coming up).

No one (reasonable) is asking for ANet to simply nerf everything good and buff everything bad every 2 weeks. But making small, incremental changes every month would be nice. Especially because due to our build system you could make a dozen changes to a profession without affecting their “OP” build at all. We’ve seen this a bit (though too rarely) with Necromancer, where they’ve mostly left condi Necro alone while making small changes to power builds and unused utilities.

Lucentfir.7430:

Just remember people, If regen and vamprisim traits were to heal through DS, it would be stackable with Unholy Sanctuary. So its practically double the regen, mixed with life steal procs, it can get ridiculous amounts of healing in DS.

Then they can adjust or rethink unholy sanctuary. Maybe have it apply regen for 3 seconds every 3 seconds while in DS (or something similar) so that it doesn’t stack with regen. There are other professions though that can get around 1k HPS and aren’t remotely “OP”, though, and kitten build can’t get too much damage.

I would believe that if games like League of Legends didn’t come out with updates 10 times faster, which results in a much healthier meta for everyone involved.

The thing is, even if they make a mistake by patching too fast, they also fix that mistake much faster. We don’t end up with situations where some builds are obviously dominant for 5-6 months in a row without a single meaningful change.