Guild Wars 2

He’s joking, if anyone was having a panic attack.

Interesting idea, but a ton of work.

Dark Path will never become a ground-targeted teleport. It was like that in beta and its too strong without hammering the skill with other nerfs.

The difference is a zerk DS relies fairly heavily on DS, using it to stack might/vuln, and also for the 50% precision, whereas a non-DS zerker build is just going to play like a “normal” power build, whacking people in the face with your dagger.

Spectral builds can take a few different forms. Chill builds using Grasp, builds that get massive Protection via Wall/Armor, basically you use a ton of LF generation to stay in DS a lot, even potentially combining it with the 50% crit chance trait for higher damage along with your tankiness.

PoC = path of corruption.

Also, I forgot DS “dance” builds which flash in and out of DS, although I never see them played anymore since its frankly too much work for too little reward, but they have existed.

It kind of depends on what you consider easy/difficult. None of them are really “easy” in the sense that most of them are subpar except for DS zerker + wells in WvW zergs, which means you have to play better than someone else for the same effect. Mechanically though, none of them are necessarily hard, you might need good timing and positioning, but you don’t have to perform any complex fast combos.

It depends on how “general” you want the builds to be, because there are so many potential different builds if you don’t only consider the top tier ones, but I’d say the archetypes are:
Zerk DS (6/2/0/0/6)
Zerk power (6/6/0/0/2)
MM
Wells
Healing
Spectral
Dhuum-condi
PoC-condi
Other-condi

That’s really all I can think of ATM. I’d consider most other builds to be some combination or variation of those, for example tanky power builds are usually spectral, well support, and/or healing builds.

Ragnar.1546:

Combine Ritual Mastery & Focused Rituals. Move (new) Ritual Mastery to Mastery Rank in Spite Tree. Move Training of the Master to Blood Magic tree in place of Ritual Mastery.
‘New’ Ritual Mastery: Wells use ground targeting (900), Reduces recharge of Wells (20%), Wells improve critical damage for you and nearby allies. (150 Ferocity 900 Radius)

The new Ritual Mastery is an interesting idea, imo. It does potentially nerf some builds that want Chill of Death + wells, or didn’t want to go into spite, but overall an interesting idea (not sure if it is actually good or not). However, moving Training of the Master is an awful idea that ends up nerfing MM builds. Get rid of Spiteful Marks (or make it baseline), instead.

Ragnar.1546:

Warhorn:
Wail of Doom: Grant Vigor to yourself and Allies (10 sec 100% vigor).
Locust Swarm: (Blast Finisher) Applies 5 Stacks of Might for 15 sec to yourself and nearby allies.

Vigor won’t happen, and I’d put the blast on Wail instead. Also I’m not sure Swarm needs that big of a buff, its already a decent skill that puts in a lot of work (damage, tons of cripple, swiftness, life force).

Ragnar.1546:

Close to Death: All critical hits apply Might to you and allies (7.5 sec 600 radius).

Close to Death is strong as is, this would fit much better as a Curses trait.

Ragnar.1546:

Greatsword/Sword

You say GS is a power weapon, but then put torment on auto and give it a bunch of burning, and then say Sword is hybrid but give it vuln and no directly damaging condis, both of which make little sense.

Besides that, giving Necros a lot of burning probably isn’t a good idea (despite the lore issues with giving us burning), especially when the set also applies torment, poison, and indirectly can apply bleeds.

Also, Soiled Earth just sounds insane. Remove all conditions from everyone and give your enemy one big tick of conditions?

Thanks for the suggestions, but I just don’t think many of them are realistic or good to implement.

Login.5102:

8/5/14 hotfix: Spectral walk is canceled after 3 seconds of free fall.

Leave it to ANet to hotfix a “bug” with a hotfix that doesn’t actually fix anything :P

The trait wouldn’t suddenly become amazing if they increased the threshold. It might become okay in very, very specific builds that have a lot of might stacking, but it won’t suddenly become a good trait with use to everyone,. It’ll just be decent for DS-based might stacking power builds.

Its a fairly weak source of conditional might stacking on a profession that doesn’t particularly stack might well either.

Its been this way since launch, if ANet doesn’t know by now well… lol.

Zefrost.3425:

I use Shrouded Removal in many of my builds and it always removes Fear before any other conditions, even before bleed. (That’s why I like it – it’s like a pseudo stunbreaker)

It definitely does not, I’ve used it against Legendary Sand Giant in Dry Top specifically for that reason and it never removed the fear for me.

Also I’m really only going to test necromancer removals, couldn’t care less what everyone else has.

Unfortunately I’m on NA (only managed to test with Blackmoa since he has an NA account).

Blair.3796:

*AFK players resulting in 4v5 or worse
*disparaging comments among teammates
*insults and arguments between opposing team players
*players who give up and stop playing as soon as they’re losing by a decent amount, 50-100 points
*a loss is always everyone else’s fault

Sure, some of these aspects can be annoying, and when multiple games in succession contain these elements then it can certainly hurt the experience. But these seem to me to be minor flaws that will be inherent in the system no matter how PvP is actually structured.

So, aside from the possibly inherent toxic elements and bad eggs of the PvP community as a whole, why do some people think the actual system is “poorly designed?”

Thanks in advance for any input!

Basically, those are expected in any game. But well designed games actually fight them, GW2 seemingly does not.

Let’s go over to League of Legends, which I believe is the most popular game to ever exist depending on how you look at the numbers, and how they deal with these issues:
*4v5: the game will not start without a 5v5. This is done when a match is found, by making all players re-accept their involvement in the upcoming game, then by having another check during champion select. Players who simply do not accept a game have no punishment, but players who “dodge” games they have accepted get increasingly worse punishments to prevent consistent queue dodging.

*toxic chat: simple, the game records every single word that is said between teammates, and then at the end of the game you report them. If a player receives enough reports they get some kind of a ban, a system that they have shown to actually be incredibly effective, with something like 75% of players never getting a repeat ban, and those who do receive more significant punishment until it is obvious they will not reform, and are permanently banned

*giving up: again, a report system that will track negative behaviors like this and eventually punish you for it

*difficulty in communication: League has instituted a smart-ping system, a step above their normal ping system, which allows you to communicate extremely well what needs to happen. In fact it isn’t unreasonable to go entire games in League at a high level without saying another word to your allies because it is unnecessary, everything can be communicated quickly.

*leaderboards: lets face it, GW2’s leaderboards are awful. League has a great ranked system, you get placed based on your first 10 games and your past rating, up to a maximum of Platinum 1, at which point you then have to climb the rankings. There are checks in place to make sure you don’t jump very far per game played, but also systems so that if you are obviously better than your ranking you can jump a little. And the highest, most prestigious ranks on the leaderboard are simply unattainable without at least 100+ games played.

GW2 on the other hand doesn’t seem to respond to reports very well, as high level players who are known to be toxic simply go on being toxic. The queue system in GW2 is also sub par, with no real punishment for leaving/afking, and also no way to avoid a match before it starts when it is obvious you cannot complete it or the team environment isn’t good. And finally GW2 not only has an awful ping system, it also refuses to allow you to use simple chat macros to make the communication that is necessary to play the game possible. This is why you end up having people like “Guardian Cruuk” as Blu’s stream was affectionately called them, who literally just do one thing all game every game (in this case rush far every single time they were alive) because doing anything that requires coordination is impossible.

TL;DR all games have the same innate problems or similar ones to GW2. Great games however actively make changes to alleviate these issues, whereas GW2 doesn’t appear to have done this.

TheDevice.2751:

IDK if anyone else has pointed this out…

but its not a terrible GM trait, its just in the wrong trait line; not only because the Dm trait line doesn’t add healing power but its also not the necro’s main lifeforce trait line either.

So as a GM trait that relies more on two separate trait lines (not its own) is very difficult to make effective. To get the best results you would need to trait in both blood magic and soul reaping to support US. I just think its a very strange set-up but what do i know

No its an awful trait, regardless. It is equivalent to getting conditional regen for a 6 point trait, which is awful.

Grandmaster Lee.9568:

Has Anet said anything about giving classes new weapons?

yes, its planned/in the works with no promise that it will happen anytime soon.

Engineer isn’t bad in PvE, they just aren’t amazing atm due to conjures making boss fights insanely fast; no need to stack vuln when the boss dies in 20 seconds. They aren’t awful though, Necromancer is the only PvE profession that is completely worthless as far as optimizing goes.

So Engi will be your best bet, its highly unlikely they will fix Necro in PvE anytime soon.

Ramethzero.3785:

Except that doesn’t actually explain where minions actually come from when there are NO corpses or dead things around you. If you’re going to use the example of bad gameplay, then I’d starting thinking a bit more universal about the applications of bad gameplay.

None that you can see, because if they had every single mob that’s died since the game launched sitting on the ground your computer’s performance would be murdered. Things die all over the game, constantly, its not hard to believe there is nearby dead material to use.

Its a 6 point trait that gives you conditional regen which doesn’t stack with any other healing, and demands very high healing power along with high DS uptime, both of which directly conflict with each other.

Its a mediocre trait at best that has no remote synergy with any viable build type. If it stacked with other types of healing, if DS and healing didn’t have such binary interaction, and if bunker builds weren’t so all around useless, it might be okay. As it is now, it just doesn’t pull its own weight, let alone the extra weight of only being useful in a useless subset of builds.

It is conceptually sound, in trying to give Necros a way to bunker, but once again it just heavily falls short because devs are too scared of us becoming too good.

A lot of people run staff but its subpar on MM imo. Its an incredibly weak auto attack, very weak direct damage from the skills, and everything it gives can be had somewhere else: regen from runes/MoE/focus 4, poison field from Death Nova, condition removal from focus OH or consume, CC from WH. It just… isn’t that good, Axe MH gives you much more and the OHs cover for what little utility you use, and you need two sets you can constantly swap between because of the need for on-swap sigils.

It depends. I almost always play side point bunkers so I’ll use that:

How consistently did I keep my point capped?
Was I able to successfully pressure far/mid/objectives?
Did I win my 1v1s? If no, was it a build vs build issue, or did I simply get outplayed? And if it was because of my build is there something I can do to change that?
How often could I draw 2 or more enemy players to me, and did I win/survive a satisfying amount of time?
Was I communicating to my team on how they could help me (like calling out when 3 people come to 3v1 me so I can get a rotation)?
Were my deaths actually #Worth or was I dying because of stupid decisions?

Stuff like that. Basically, was I playing well in fights and was I at least pulling my weight on the map.

GWEN = 4 professions + veilbot = 5. Unless the definition of trinity has been changed that’s not 3 professions.

Ya, consume conditions is pretty mandatory. I recommend dagger/WH, and axe/whatever (focus normally, dagger if you need more condi cleanse), if you are using soldier (or any non-cleric power) amulet use a power rune (pack is great), leeching/energy sigils, if you are using clerics run dwayna/water, leeching/renewal sigils.

Warriors getting adrenaline means relatively little. Yes they’d be weaker without it, but it doesn’t give them a lot without traiting (and we can trait for spammy LF if we want, see Reaper’s Precision, Soul Marks), whereas our LF gives us a massive amount of HP.

That isn’t at all true but if you want to believe it feel free. 7/8 professions have a place in PvE groups, and you have GWEN + thieves for roaming and mesmers for veilbots in WvW. Its not a perfect 8/8 for every mode for sure, but its much more than 3.

Minions don’t have many issues underwater last I knew, although I can’t say I bring them often anymore. Less pebbles to get stuck on, less flowers to pick.

Unless you count MMs as power builds (since they technically are), I can’t think of any good ones. My suggestion (besides an MM type build, even a zerker MM hybrid) would be aiming for a healing/siphon build, probably using power/prec/toughness gear, but I can’t say it’d be at all viable.

The issue with using a power build not based on DS is that frankly we rely pretty heavily on it. Support healing builds rely on it for Transfusion/Deathly Invigoration, tanky builds rely on it for their tankiness and sometimes damage (perception is a great way to deal high damage even as a “tank”), zerker builds rely on it for defense and ranged pressure, and frankly while MM doesn’t “rely” on it, it still needs DS to chain CC and for Transfusion.

There’s just no getting around it, the mechanic is so deeply ingrained in the profession’s playstyle that really the only way to not rely on it is to rely on siphon-based heals, which at the moment just don’t pull their weight. By all means, you can try siphon builds for fun, and I encourage you to do that if you’re bored, but I don’t think it will be “viable”.

spoj.9672:

Not strictly true guang. The greatsword buffs are beneficial to pve especially against trash or bosses where you are forced to use gs. GS will be slightly less bad. Also the signet change is huge and the new grandmaster is a strong dps boost. Or did you not watch the preview?

At this point every time I see him post I just kind of assume its wrong and wait for someone to correct it.

Btw, transfers do not get affected by any duration increase.

Could we not Necro a 5 month old thread about something that gets asked multiple times a week? All they’ve said is that fixing it might cause big issues because it could break PvE AI, and so far that’s all we know.

I agree we need support, and I don’t think its the “best” thing to just up our damage, I am only using it as a comparison between two professions with “low” support (although even full DPS staff ele brings quite a lot of support through conjures, fury, might, and constant fire fields). Also, Warriors bring far more damage than we do in DPS builds, only really losing out if they go PS.

The issue is if we keep our current level of damage, they would need to make us bring at least as much utility as phantasm mesmers, rangers (who are getting buffed according to the balance preview already), non DPS guardians, etc, and they need to do that while not touching our DPS at all, which will be extremely difficult. They need to add utility, probably with a +150 ferocity like a few have suggested, plus at least one or two other unique mechanics, all while not touching DPS, or while buffing some DPS sources to make room. Its just a lot of work to get Necro up to par, doable, but a lot.

Its because it never got swimming animations. Both it and Flesh Wurm used to be aquatic iirc (during beta) but there were super kitten y looking because they just kinda… floated around. So instead of keeping in what was honestly a really unpolished visual they just disabled it.

Lily.1935:

I hate when people bring up zergs. You can face roll in a zergs, balancing on zergs is stupid.

Because trash mobs are so threatening that you need a trait to get rid of conditions that you can easily wipe in other ways? Because trash mobs in PvE are great balance points? Trash mobs are the definition of faceroll, you just spam DPS after you’ve pulled them and they melt.

The point is the trait doesn’t matter to your success. You aren’t going to suddenly lose fights if you don’t have this condi, it just makes things more convenient for you. If a trait has no impact on whether you win a fight or not its just not well designed. Necromancers have far more than enough condi removal for PvE’s uses, you really only need extra in small roaming and sPvP, both of which this trait is absolutely useless in.

Getting LF on every hit doesn’t make you better against CC or focus fire… at all. If you get focused and CCed you aren’t casting anything period.

What obvious reasons? If your build only brings DPS, it better actually bring good DPS; staff ele brings quite a bit more than just DPS, and yet even if you increase necro DPS by 50% it’d still be worse with less support. I’m talking non-FGS DPS, where Necros get beat by ele, thief, engi, guardian, and warrior, and don’t beat any profession (only a few 100% support builds) while bringing no support at all. Support isn’t going to just magically come out of nowhere, we have no mechanics currently in our profession to give support. Would it be a great thing to add? Sure, but I’m not getting my hopes up when we have nothing to build off of yet.

There is supposed to be counterplay to LF gain, that way the enemy actually has a way to avoid your sustain. That is why sustain tends to be tied to skills that have counterplay, or AAs that can be avoided in some way. But simply putting it on every single ability base is too much.

Edge of the Mists is a WvWvW area accessed by pressing B (its on the right). Its basically a 3 hour-long WvW session where all the various WvW servers come together to level their alts. Usually what happens is a commander will tag up, and run around the map capturing all the various locations, getting everybody in the zerg following them a ton of exp/karma/loot in the process. The enemy zergs do the same thing, so as you run to cap the enemy fort they are going to cap yours, and you all just kinda go in a big loop capping stuff and showering in obscene amounts of exp/karma. And then every so often someone’s commander decides to be a tryhard and attempts to wipe the other zerg, which tends to be about 50/50 as to whether it actually works or not, but tends to be hilarious and considered a bad idea by at least one person no matter what.

Anyway, basically if you want to level fast go to EotM with B, find the commander tag, and just stand directly on top of it doing whatever they do and follow them, and you’ll get a whole lot of levels.

Zerker Necromancer hits around 9k DPS according to DnT’s most recent calcs, compared to around 14k from a staff ele, who also will bring far better support and AoE. For a build that brings nothing but damage that is pretty sad, regardless of whether we had cleave or some mediocre support to go along with it.

They’d have to make pretty big sweeping changes to make Necromancer worth running in PvE. We haven’t seen the balance preview for anyone else, but Necromancer is unlikely to get enough to be good in PvE, we’re just flat out missing too many mechanics and too much damage.

spoj.9672:

Minions account for a very small percentage of your overall damage and theres no way to boost them.

Pretty much this. Even my cleric MM build is pretty close to 50/50, and that is only because I have one 6/7 of my major traits for minions.

You can ALREADY RES PEOPLE IN DS AND ITS NEVER USED BECAUSE ITS AWFUL. Whew. Seriously, you can already use a lag exploit to res/stomp in DS. How many times do you think its used? Almost never, because its awful and you have no business stomping/ressing as a Necro even with this trait (and why are you running this trait anyway).

Biohazard.7523:

They cant even balance current weapon skills and you want new weapons so you can complain on how op and garbage they are…

Yes, because waiting around for another 2 years just to balance the current weapons is worse than having a larger selection of still broken stuff.

It depends on how you are leveling. If you are just going around doing story and random open world stuff minions are super easy because they’ll always be at “max stats” for your level even if you still have gear thats 10 levels below the content you are in.

However, nowadays most people level through Edge of the Mists, in which case you should just bring a lot of ranged AoE and maybe a stunbreak or two.

Its a bug. They accidentally broke it and said “well whatever we kind of like it anyway lol sucks4u”, or at least that was their official statement. It is just annoying because DS is strictly better with certain weapons, and it limits your ability to use weapon-swap sigils, it doesn’t really help anything, there’s no reason to keep it in (its not like its gamebreaking if we can weapon swap), and it lowers the skill cap slightly.

I’d like to see it brought back, although I realize it might be hard to do from a code standpoint.

Oh, indeed my bad

Nothing is truly instant cast unless it can be used while stunned, which I’m fairly sure Plague can’t. DS isn’t technically a skill afaik, although yes it is instant cast.

Empower is a weapon skill, Transfusion is an adept trait. Also Transfusion is base 2628 heal with 1.8 scaling, while Empower is 1500 with 1.0 scaling (according to wiki), so the difference is 192 HP per 40s with 100 healing power, wih empower losing out pretty quickly, having less healing once you have at least 340 healing power (again according to the wiki scaling).

Putrid Explosion, Rigor Mortis, Haunt, Necrotic Traversal, Spectral Armor, Spectral Walk/Recall, Plague Signet, and Doom. So 8 true instant cast skills afaik.

In my opinion 20% is the “best” middle ground. Otherwise its like asking a Guardian to activate all their virtues before fighting you, or a Mesmer to put all their Shatter skills on CD, its absolutely ridiculous. The Necromancer profession is supposed to have to build up LF, so I don’t think starting at 100% is “fair” either; 20-50% is pretty reasonable.

Note that I’m only talking about “organized” duels, if I’m roaming in WvW or if I’m in sPvP I can guarantee you I’m building as much LF as possible before fights (I’ll often dagger 1 a downed non-warrior in sPvP just to fill up).

Very interesting, not what I had assumed it was going to be.

So, the answer is kinda. The difference I’m seeing is that you don’t actually have to interact too much with the phantasms. I could be wrong here and please correct me if I am, but you essentially have two play mechanics that your build works around (besides just staying alive obv), you stack might using various sources, and you summon phantasms, which are mostly fire and forget. The active play comes around you staying alive in what appears to be full glass gear/build, making sure you are using your phantasm skills appropriately, and also stacking might.

Comparatively, a minion build has similar but different ideas. You won’t really be stacking might in a minion build, nor will you be using glass gear (unless you are really manly and don’t plan to encounter other players), because minions have fixed stats no matter what you use. Instead, you trait the minions such that they have the best stats they can, and then your job is keeping them alive and on their target while you are essentially a bunker. Imagine them as your melee DPS teammates and you are their support/bunker, they do the DPS, and you set up their kills and keep them alive. So the play revolves around using a lot of control and debuffing skills to maximize the minions’ damage and survivability, and also using various sources of healing.

So if he plays MM he’s going to be playing more like a support build that summons its own party to support, instead of quite like your build which plays more like a DPS build. There are similarities in that you are both using AI and abilities to support that AI, but he’ll be using a tanky/support build to do that whereas you have a DPS build.

Generally speaking he’ll probably want to run Clerics gear with leeching/renewal sigils, Axe/Focus Dagger/Warhorn, water or dwayna runes, and a 4/0/6/4/0 build, unless he is planning to always play solo in which case he could probably go more selfish damage wise.

Tl;DR it is an overall somewhat similar playstyle in that the AI half is comparable, and some of the mechanics of the rest of the build are similar (using CC to support the AI), but he is going to be using a tanky/support base to his build instead of DPS like you.

I used to think it’d be too much AoE damage, but then I saw the calcs showing that staff ele DPS, while bringing more and better utility, completely destroys ours while being fully AoE. We barely hit 60% of their DPS, so I highly doubt adding cleave to dagger is going to break anything.

I’m waiting for the balance preview, honestly, before I make any judgments about where the class is heading. IF they can make good changes, regardless of whether I think its enough to make us great in every game mode, especially if they are “large” enough changes to change how things work and make it feel new, I’m totally in.

But I think we really need to wait before saying anything definitive. The ranger/engineer changes were amazing imo, so if that holds its good news, but who knows. Atm I’m kept in the game by DPS staff ele in PvE, and leveling my various alts and farming.