Guild Wars 2

rapthorne.7345:

Blood fiend is bad?

I only really use him, because well of blood sucks kitten and he heals me for insane amounts as well as tanks for me. I don’t use any other minions at the moment, as they don’t seem to do very much in terms of damage.

really struggling with finding a decent pve damage build though. dagger dagger seems to give the most damage, but I’m way too squishy to make use of it properly

He doesn’t actually heal for that much. Its 926 per attack, which is about 3 seconds apart (assuming level 80, its a comparable scaled-down amount for other levels). He also doesn’t tank amazingly well, mainly because he has light armor. Just get friendly with Consume Conditions, honestly, its a much better heal skill in general, unless you have full minions to draw aggro from Blood Fiend.

Shaogin.2679:

If you want a minion to tank for you though, that is what Shadow Fiend is for.

Bone Fiend is actually the best non-elite at tanking. Has basically the same HP as shadow fiend, but higher armor. That + him usually attacking first is why he draws aggro in PvE so much.

Hey guys, Bhawb here. If you follow the But of Corpse podcast, you’ll probably have noticed that we’ve been pretty sporadic recently. This is mainly due to the fact that nothing has really changed since the first Feature Patch, and even that wasn’t a “massive” change, only a slight shift in builds in PvP. This basically means… we don’t have a ton to talk about, at least that I can think of.

So if you have topics, I’d love to know what you’d like us to do. But otherwise podcasts will probably be more like once every 2 weeks, or maybe longer. Its just kind of what we have to do, because of the three game modes, things essentially haven’t changed for nearly a year, if not longer.

Thanks for your time guys, and thanks for any ideas!

1) Don’t use Blood Fiend, he’s bad.
2) The best ways to heal minions for PvE is to not heal them. Its simply not worth it.
3) The best way to heal minions in PvP is using a Cleric build with water/dwayna runes, renewal sigil on each set, and Transfusion traited. This build also happens to be the best MM build.

Actually Lich form was a buff to fights that last less than or similar to 20s, afaik, especially since before Lich was really not that great except to ranged.

But the reality is for pug groups Necro isn’t bad, we have about low-middle DPS. The issue is more that any other profession using a good build you’d do more for your group.

Ovid.7135:

^Laaw doesn’t play Necro. I repeat, do not allow the Laaw. He will come on MM and claim he’s the best MM multiverse.

Second best maybe. Title of best MM multiverse has been taken since I made mine during PBE weekends.

There are over 200 employees at ANet. Its very obvious some of them would play Necromancer.

However there are only about 4 that make the decisions for balance (and of those four, Sharp does less day-to-day balance afaik, and Peters does a lot). Reality is that as far as Necromancer goes, we aren’t that bad off on devs. Karl and Sharp, two of the four devs, both definitely like the class. I had the opportunity to talk to Sharp in person and he’s a cool dude, and he knew what he was talking about. People too often mistake lack of changes for bad devs, there is a lot more going on then you’d imagine, and even a simple tooltip change takes ages to go through because they are a company, not one person.

Because underwater combat wasn’t designed to be balanced at all, and Plague Blast is one of the most ridiculously broken auto attacks in the entire game, easy.

Ranged weapons don’t cleave. They either splash or do guardian staff-AoE

Burst is exactly what power necro needs, and is exactly what Axe 2 should fill.

Anyone who says support doesn’t exist in PvE is a moron with no idea what they are talking about.

Support exists and is extremely popular in every single game mode. All good PvE groups will have every single member bringing some form of support, every WvW group will have support roles, and every good sPvP team has some support builds or builds with support built in.

Consuming vuln would decrease the weapon’s strength, especially considering 3 doesn’t hit all that hard anyway.

Debuffs and boon removal don’t mean much when the trash mob group should die in a few seconds. Same with being a tanky build to grab aggro. DPS and offensive support to increase that DPS rule PvE.

I’d assume you have Flesh of the Master (the Death Magic trait) equipped. The issue is the trait had a change so that whenever you equip the trait, it desummons any minions that are currently alive, presumably so that you can re-summon them with the added HP in a bit. Unfortunately, however they coded, it, it now means that whenever certain changes happen to the minions, they are desummoned.

Basically, in your case, chances are when you cross the bridge the minions change level. When they change level, it changes their HP, which triggers the Flesh of the Master’s new “feature”, and desummons them. Same occurs when you are downed (I’d imagine that downed state is programmed to set you at a certain level, and it changes the minion level, or something of that nature).

So, until its fixed, don’t use Flesh of the Master in minion builds in PvE, except in situations where you will never change level.

Its actually not that rare (although maybe in MMORPGs) that NPCs and players have different movement abilities. The issue with minions isn’t their ability to traverse terrain, its more so that ANet has (somehow) coded it such that they get stuck not on the terrain itself but on internal workings.

As for how the AI should work, it should be very simple. They do absolutely nothing except attack the target you are currently attacking, starting from the beginning of your cast (if targeted skill) or the first target you damage if nothing is targeted (untargeted damage would only affect aggro if no aggro target is currently selected). This means If you sit around doing nothing, so do your minions, even if you or they are attacked. If you target someone and cast a 1s cast time skill, the second you start casting they move to attack. And they continue attacking the target until the target is dead, or targeting is lost, in both cases returning to their standby positions around you.

Which is nearly what they do now, although they have a few extra ways to aggro right now that I think are redundant and also serve really only to give them the possibility for mixups.

And the issue is that even a “simple” AI system isn’t necessarily easy to do. Which is why they hired a consultant who works solely with AI to help them out.

Yep. I am not entirely sure how the AI navigates things, but you can screw it up very predictably in certain areas.

I’m not defending it. But if you want to make big posts about how AI has progressed, you can’t avoid the fact that the AI has gotten “better” since launch, its had numerous fixes and is in a better state. Nothing about that means its perfect, it just means it isn’t the same or worse than at launch.

NeXeD.3042:

I don’t think chill is a viable spec in tpvp.

On its own no, but it fits into a spectral build w/ Ice runes and some sigils. Its one of the builds we used when we first did this thing ages ago :P

What do minions have to do with this? An MM build can’t afford any fears except Doom, and maybe staff (although staff is garbage in 90% of situations for an MM build people still insist on running it). So if you are fighting someone with minions, they most likely will only have those two fears at max.

Also worth noting:
Spectral Wall – fear, blockable, 40s
Path of Corruption – corruption of stability, unblockable, 15s

I’m down to play. It has to be M/W/Sat and later on Sunday (after the podcasts).

Also yes, But of Corpse is a guild, I’ve still got it and invite privs, so if anyone wants in feel free to post here or message me. We’ve got like 100 people, but the guild is basically just there for show most of the time :P

If you did 100 fights with siphoned power, at best you would have one fight you won where siphoned power actually made the difference.

Mechanics are not limited to face-smashes per second.

You sound like you’re complaining about stupid zergs in EotM not paying attention to where they are going and (surprise) when they run right over a wall that is very easy to predict and don’t do anything about it they die. Which also isn’t about spam, they’re just stupid.

Other than that, there is no situation where you can actually spam fear (with your whole 1 AoE fear you can proc without enemy input) a group off a cliff.

NeXeD.3042:

Bhawb did something like this before I think, don’t remember how it worked though

I’d be willing to try on NA

Now what do you guys think the best comp would be

2 terror 1 well 2 power zerk spectrals would be my first thought

SOAC (with me) did this quite a few times. You 100% need half condi half power, you need a 1v1 build for home node, you need one of the builds to be able to rotate (as well as we can), and you need a tanky build.

In my experience, your best bet is going to be having a tanky build, either MM or tanky power, to go between far/home, design the build to focus 100% on 1v1s, so you should never 5v5. The other 4 man group should be either 2 power 2 condi, or 3 condi (one of them should be a support) and zerker power, with a focus on trying to wipe fights with epidemic.

Example setup: MM/spectral power, PoC terror necro (terror/RP/nightmare runes), Dhuumfire, zerker power, well/spectral tanky condi necros.

Important thing is to remember to work out synergy. The only reason to do this (even for fun) is to have super synergy like double-epidemics or 8000 second fear chains, so focus on that while still playing to the game modes.

Transfusion should not, that’s an insane heal, it’d be far too strong if it healed you.

Even Necromancer which has one of the easiest general DPS rotations for PvE can’t just auto.

But for the OP, it depends on what you consider mechanically intensive. Is pressing a lot of buttons in a pre-memorized rotation intensive? Or is it more intensive to watch your positioning and waiting for that instant burst combo? Do you need it to always be intensive, where buttons must be pressed constantly or is a small quick rotation good enough? Also are you going to include things like using stow weapon?

Reality is that even within only mechanically intensive there are a lot of different mechanics. Its hard for someone people to manage ele/engi because of the amount of buttons and need for fairly consistent rotations of some skills while others need to be saved for certain situations. Other people don’t have issues with that.

It did so pre-launch, I don’t believe it actually made it to launch. I think the 4 skill just needs a more relevant boon.

Mad Queen Malafide.7512:

The state of minion ai

On release:

-Minions occasionally get stuck on terrain, sometimes slow to attack.
-Minions don’t attack static objects.
-Various/all minion traits don’t work as intended, including Flesh of the Master.

You missed the biggest issue which people tend to forget, and that was that minions were super aggressive, to the point where Flesh Golem would sometimes follow people all the way to mid from a side point. This was a major thing they fixed.

Mad Queen Malafide.7512:

One year ago:

-All the previous problems from the game’s release,
except for the minion trait issues, most of which are now fixed.
-Minions now stand around not attacking 50% of the time.
-Minions spawned from Lich Form tend to run back and forth between their transformed master and their target.

Again, not strictly true. In addition to fixing their hyper aggression, they also made it so that they had a leash range (around 1900, forgot the exact range) and so minions themselves would not be the target of mob aggro. Also around 1.5 years ago, minions worked 100% of the time if you understood their fairly strange aggro mechanics. In attempting to fix this by making them work in a much simpler manner, they ended up removing the guaranteed but difficult methods of forcing them to attack.

Mad Queen Malafide.7512:

September patch:

-All the previous problems, except for the trait issues, however…..
-….Flesh of the master now kills all minions if you are downed.
-Flesh Golem is slower, charges less fast, and can no longer do a wall-charge for additional damage.

Great track record Anet, we’re moving backward!

We aren’t at all moving backwards. If you want to do overviews by this you can’t miss the major strides they’ve made. A lot of the issues of “backwards” movement were due to fixing other issues that had side effects.

Focus is pretty strong as is, the only changes I’d make would be to make the boon on focus 4 more relevant (regen is very mediocre imo, especially on a profession with easy access to 100% uptime on single sources), and making focus 5 a 1s cast time.

For example, focus 4 giving might instead of regen would be awesome.

Boon flipping is quite literally the only thing that keeps condi necro in the meta right now, imo. If not for corrupt boon, there really isn’t a reason to run condi Necro.

Brujeria.7536:

Well what i was thinking is this signet does not fill the role of a group support skill all that great, well of blood makes for a much better group support skill. I would suggest a redesign of this skill more into this direction:

Signet of Vampirism:
Cooldown 30
Passive: Siphon health from foes attacking you (1s ICD per attacker)
Passive: Your siphons heal you while in DS
Active: Mark an enemy. You siphon life everytime you hit the target. This active effect benefits this signets passive effect. (No ICD, X stacks of “Vampirism”)

This would open up some more build options while increasing sustain over time.

I agree with everything except I think all self-traited heals should affect you through DS as a base. Otherwise though 10/10 on both the idea and why its needed.

Depends on build and game mode. Sometimes ele is really intensive, other times I play staff ele in PvE which has a DPS rotation consisting of 6 abilities plus an auto, all of which are very easy to manage.

Muchacho.2390:

I dont know if it is only the picture but doesnt the track reward one more metalic than this one?

This is the special version. The reward track one has somewhat metallic looking pieces instead of all the glowy parts, but the total thing isn’t metallic looking imo. If you’re able to look at it with dyes that really sparkle on metal sets you can tell the difference.

nope

Plexxing.2978:

You wouldn’t want a well with stability pulses? I don’t run wells often, but even I think that would be ok. I mean, when was the last time you died to a wellomancer when you were playing halfway smart?

That’s a completely separate issue. 6 seconds of stability is a lot of power to give a skill. The Guardian skill that gives 5s of retal/stability plus a stun break has a full 30s CD on its own. That is a big buff to give a skill, especially one that removes up to 30 conditions and grants up to 30 boons.

Well of Power isn’t at all weak, the builds that would take it over something else are, for reasons completely unrelated to WoP.

Removing it to make it instant cast. Currently you cannot cast the skill if you are unable to cast a skill, which means a number of situations make the skill useless as a stun break.

First thing I would do is just flat out remove the stability and make it instant cast.

33% of scepter’s abilities don’t deal any condition damage at all, does that make scepter not a condition weapon?

Staff has 5 abilities, only 1 of which cannot deal condition damage. Just because it has one ability that scales well with power doesn’t mean its a hybrid weapon.

I’ve never had an issue staying alive on my Necromancer. You can face tank a lot of attacks that would kill other people, and if that fails you have DS, which fills up really quickly in PvE even against bosses.

The few times I have had issue is usually skipping certain content like in AC, and the only reason I had issues was because I was mistiming my dodges and didn’t take any stun break.

It only has stability because its a stun break with a cast time.

I honestly don’t think Axe is all that bad anymore. With just the sigil on hit (I believe) you can stack like 20+ stacks of vuln by autoing. It is a ranged weapon with lower than normal counterplay due to its complete lack of projectiles, it generates good LF (especially if paired with focus/wh), Axe 3 is an incredible skill, and its now much more responsive.

I still think its 1 could use a little more damage, although I’d have to see someone’s DPS reports on that to see (ratios per second and DPS, plus the fact that it self ramps to a ton of extra damage via vuln), and I think 3 should be unblockable by aegis, like all other boon removals. Other than that, I think Axe is actually a really solid weapon now with the clunkiness reductions.

Infect.2738:

edit- I’d trade this for the full hellfire armor set if i could lol. someone teach me to be a pve hero.

Log in, do the dailies, log off, PvE hero accomplished.

Zoso.8279:

I can 100% understand your POV makes a lot of sense. Now I ask this question; shouldn’t the emphasis in GW2 tournaments/Tpvp be on team tactics and not on individual builds? The football (Futbol) team won’t reveal their strategy because its how the team plays each game but the individual player will reveal the technique to do a successful free kick for example. (Gareth Bale made a video showing he’s technique for free kicks)(Im a madridista lol so thats the first person that came to mind) But I can definitely understand a player who only runs solo pvp why he’d want to keep it a secret. I only ask this to have a discussion not to argue or “one up” anyone.

Because there is a completely different level of execution vs theory. I could spend years watching and practicing a professional’s tricks on how to free kick, but I will never be even a mediocre free kicker compared to the world stage level of performance (and I played a lot of the sport when I was younger). Another thing is that knowing another person’s technique, and being able to do it yourself, doesn’t give you the same level of advantage. Even if someone could mimic Bale’s technique, the technique itself doesn’t really become weaker, goalies don’t suddenly know exactly how to block every kick he does.

But for eSports, theory allows you much more control. If I know my opponent’s deck in Hearthstone, I know how to play out the matchup. In fact I saw a game very recently where someone obviously didn’t realize that their opponent ran a certain card that was rare in the type of deck (it was a Mind Control, which isn’t super common anymore), and it lost him the game. In SC2, knowing your opponent’s build is a massive part of being able to beat them. And this applies to GW2 as well, knowing the build that the other person is running tells you what to look for, what to dodge, if you have an advantageous matchup or not, etc. All of that is very big to know before you enter a game.

Now, in my opinion GW2 is one of the least important games to keep builds secret in because the execution ceiling for the vast majority of builds is so low that really what allows you to win the game is superior teamwork, better team strategy, rotations, and in game knowledge, things that are completely unrelated to builds. Plus most players who seem so secretive about their builds aren’t at all good enough to really validate worrying about it. But for competitive players, its just another thing that they can try to gain a small advantage in, and if that helps them win then its fair game imo.

Edit: just realized I missed part of your question. Team play is important, yes. But especially in a game like GW2 where so many fights are 1v1/2v2 and getting an advantageous matchup (is that Necro a condi build? better not send your condi engi there. if its MM though, thats an easy win) or knowing the opponent’s build makes the fight much easier. The game has a lot of individual play in it, you can literally lose a game just because your bunker can’t win a 1v1, unlike traditional team sports.

The special l33t360NOSCOPE version has the base reward track skin with added particle effects. If you look at his armor the glowing effects on the Glorious armors are only on the special version.

Staff isn’t at all hybrid, its a condi utility weapon. And for condi builds it is amazing.

So, to generalize group PvE content, especially dungeons/fractals, PvE is about two things: dealing lots of damage, and providing group support/buffs to increase said damage.

This means the main meta builds are generally good DPS. Based on the old DPS chart, which is a bit off now, Necromancers had about 9k DPS in a fully buffed group sans vuln. At this same level of buffing (which, realize that Necromancers contribute exactly nothing to) Rangers were basically the same, and just around 9k, Thieves were over 13k, Ele generally ranged from 10-13k (depending on S – LH or Staff), Warriors from 9-11k, etc. Basically, the only things that were not at least as good or better than Necro DPS were PS warriors, reflect mesmers, and fractal guardians (hammer).

However, DPS isn’t the only thing that is important, and in fact on the DPS front while we aren’t totally awful. So then you look to group support, and you realize we have literally nothing someone else can’t do.

Rangers – bring nearly identical DPS, however they bring Spotter (a party-wide precision buff) and Frost Spirit (I believe 7% average DPS increase?)
Warriors – bring banners regardless of build, boosting group DPS. in PS they also bring 25 stacks of group might, and in builds that bring similar to higher DPS than Necro, they still bring banners
Elementalists – have two main builds for dungeons, one brings tons of might plus permafury, the other gives near perma fury and perma fire field (for might stacking), and both of them have higher DPS
Engineers – higher DPS, helpful fields, blast finishers, lots of vuln

And others are similar situations. Basically every other profession brings some kind of support. Reflects, blast finishers, useful fields, AoE fury/might, lots of vuln stacking, unique buffs like spotter or banners, all while dealing the same damage as Necromancer, yet bringing these things that Necro doesn’t.

At the moment, Necromancer is objectively the worst profession for PvE because of their complete lack of group buffs. Basically the only time they are worth bringing is if your other option is bringing a second of a profession whose group buffing doesn’t stack and has worse DPS.

Time to create the dream team then. PETS – People for the Ethical Treatment of Summons, consisting of the most AIDSy AI builds that can be imagined. We’ll get at least 255th place in the next tournament.

I already forgot the names, is this the special MLG sponsored-by-Redbull eSports version, or just the regular kind the rest of us lowly peasants have to live with?

Conditions are bad because the DPS is bad, not just those other issues. Unless they solve the fact that direct damage is very significantly higher DPS, it won’t matter what else they do.

So we all know WoB was nerfed fairly heavily, I did the math and it is approximately 79% base AoE and 54% ratio AoE compared to before. Now that it has firmly gone from niche to nearly useless, I’d like to propose two changes, one that was asked for for a long time, but at the time was arguably too good, and another to remedy their bad change.

1) Increase the ratio on the pulse healing by 50%, to raise it to the same standard as the base, which would have the AoE of the skill be 79% of its original
2) Change it to a water field

The first is obvious, it should have been done when the change happened. However, the skill has never been OP, or even all that good. Compared to consume conditions (the standard for Necro healing), it loses a lot of potential healing due to its non-removal of conditions, plus the fact that you have to stand relatively still to get its healing. So realistically, it still would have been super niche. Which is why I propose another buff, that would remove a major issue for WvW/PvE, and also give us some kind of group support.

And that is of course making it a water field. With the duration nerf, this means it is only 5 seconds, which is by no means that crazy, and the AoE healing was already nerfed, which was always my reasoning as to why it couldn’t get this buff before. So the two main arguments against why it couldn’t receive this before (too long + too much healing) have been removed.

Feedback is appreciated as always, thanks.

There is a big difference between something like soccer (or football for you sensitive types) and GW2 (or any eSport for that matter). Soccer doesn’t have personal builds, because its a physical game. Yet, even in soccer, and any sport like it, you don’t see teams coming out and revealing their team strategy publicly. In American Football you don’t have teams who will come out and explain their plays. Because these are all competitive things, that means you want to win.

Look at other eSports. TCG/CCG (card games) players will rarely openly reveal their deck lists before competitions because it gives them a massive edge over someone who does. SC2 players don’t usually talk about their timings/builds until people have already figured it out. League is a bit unique in that certain things like runes/masteries are all public, so no one really keeps those secret, but other parts of the team “build” are definitely kept secret.

So long as the game is competitive, people will do what it takes to give themselves an edge. If I can win because my build is better, even though I’m a worse player, then I’m not going to go around giving out my build.

Lachanche.6859:

elementalists have diamond skin though, that kinda hard counters condition necros

But unlike those other things, eles get DS at the cost of a god-awful build that will be trashed by anything not condi. Whereas Warrior just slaps zerker stance into his build.