Guild Wars 2

1) Yes, 100% agreed.

2) Kinda. Axe needs a full rework of everything except 3, LF generation isn’t so much an issue as the entire set is bad. Scepter AA is great already, sustain on top would be insane. Just make feast have a base LF generation with the scaling on top, maybe have 2 do a little as well.

Passive LF generation will never happen and I’m happy it won’t.

3) AI fix yes, also have them not attack unless I do (remove the aggro response to me/them being attacked).

General bug fixes would be nice, and there are a number of basic things:
Reduce aftercast of Haunt from 2s to 1/2 or 3/4s
Make Rigor Mortis an AA reset
Remove cast of Charge but give it a noticeable aftercast animation just before he charges for 1/2s (so he roars or does a noticeable windup like a bull would in a cartoon)
Putrid Explosion causes the minions to glow and jump towards the target

There are other things, but I have a reputation to uphold.

The argument against Necros is that we have non-existent unique utility. Any relevant conditions we can apply, someone else can do just as well, if not better. We have no finishers to stack buffs, all that our fields do is apply more conditions (which are fairly easily mainted anyway), our healing is great, but to do it requires lots of giving up on damage, whereas others can heal very well without investment.

Basically, we don’t contribute to the team in any meaningful way. The few contributions we can make (vuln stacking, weakness, poison) can all be done by someone else that will also provide all the group support we are lacking. Even our damage, while not bad against a single target, is outclassed by others, there just isn’t a single thing that is needed in groups that we can do best.

If you look at boss blitz, the reasons that Necromancers were decent was because of mechanics that are totally worthless in PvE.

Then play an ele. Even nearly mindlessly rolling my face over the keyboard on a build I copypasta’d from the forums gave me better AoE on a lower CD, decent buff stacking, better damage, better team support/utility.

The only issue is that I don’t understand the profession and not having DS meant I had to learn how to play without the crutch of a massive HP pool that would allow me to tank things that will kill me now. But even then, if I’m just paying attention I can drop healing/dodge and its all easy. And this is with far less than 100 hours on a profession, vs all the time I have on Necro.

Note: Engi was about the worst comparison you could have picked, next to like Ranger. Afaik while they are great in coordinated groups, they aren’t particularly good in pugs unless you understand the profession really well.

Pelopidas.2140:

So no, I dont think we are the weakest (as dps)

Weak in PvE has little to do with DPS. Would you rather bring a Necro that brings nothing special to your group, or another profession who not only matches the Necro’s DPS, but through group buffs makes all the other players’ DPS higher.

There is a very good reason Necro is considered the worst PvE profession.

Pelopidas.2140:

Bhawb we aren’t weak in pve…lack of party buffs is one thing, dps is another

And we don’t have strictly amazing DPS either.

TL;DR make all PvE bosses more like Boss Blitz ones (only more difficult), that all support different mechanics and professions so everyone can feel happy and loved.

You can play Necromancer in any game mode you want, WvW we are very strong and PvP we are okay, although we have issues. In PvE the problem is we are simply the weakest profession, however unless you plan to do coordinated speed clears that isn’t ever going to be an issue (humorously others like Rangers are more likely to get kicked from a group, I’ve noticed).

Infect.2738:

Grrman.5312:

What do you think is the biggest limitation to a minion master playstyle? And what do you think is the ceiling overall for the playstyle. I like it but from what I hear, it limits you when you try getting more serious in the game

I will be honest with you, Bhawb truly fools around with minions more then me and probably can answer it better. But from my experience with dueling high tier players and queueing with them for fun, the AI is both a blessing and curse. Blessing because it pilots itself (not including using the minions abilities). Curse because the AI is verrrrrrrrrrrrrry dumb and buggy. Caed kites my minions all day long on the Z-axis. Just leashes them around then comes and spikes me hard. Minion masters probably wont ever be competitive unless the AI changes in the game/or the offer greater utility.

Everything Zombify said is very accurate, although I do think the lack of viability atm is far more due to perception than reality (few at a high level really understand MM I’ve noticed). AI not only has an issue with Z-axis movement, but stealth and instant movement in general. Fighting Mesmers and Thieves feels much less like fighting an enemy, and more like fighting your minions.

Big issues except AI:
1) Random stupid mechanical issues (Haunt’s 2s activation time, Rigor Mortis being simply an AA buff that doesn’t reset your AA timer, etc.)
2) Dying to mass AoE
3) Forced into certain builds (must be tanky, must have certain traits)
4) Low mechanical skill ceiling but very high knowledge ceiling
5) Slowish rotations

There might be something else I’m forgetting but oh well. Also, note that literally all of the major weaknesses can be mitigated, not completely stopped or anything, but there are methods you can use to make them not nearly as big of an issue (for example renewal sigils + transfusion make it much harder to die to AoE).

The realistic ceiling of MM is basically anything that isn’t serious 5 man tournaments. You can basically do anything you want that doesn’t rely on entering “serious” tournaments. Also, I personally think that the main reason you don’t see MM in tournaments isn’t because they can’t be played, but because the effort to play around an MM’s weaknesses isn’t really worth it, and so few players have the necessary knowledge/experience (since if you want to be competitive, condi is more worth your time). So I think you might be able to make MM work at a competitive level, if you had an understanding team who would work with you to fit MM into your team, but good luck finding one when so many other builds fit in much more easily.

In general, I don’t think they necessarily didn’t know of our faults (or did), it was, to me, more of a talk about where they want things to be, instead of how things are. They didn’t really mention anything that would make me think they did or didn’t know of issues like this, because they were talking very very broad things, like Necromancers can’t have good boon access. That said, this is a really good list of specifics.

1) Totally agree. There is no reason this should stop our stomping, it is our defensive mechanic, just like a guardian putting on stability + protection while ressing.

2) Agreed again. Either a trait to allow healing, or simply allow all self-traited healing (obviously change Transfusion so it doesn’t try to heal you through DS) to go through DS. Start off small, but give us something.

3) This is by design, and I think its fine. If we had ways of accessing CC immunity (stability, Shade, mechanics that aren’t stopped by it) this would be absolutely fine, we have by far the best ability to simply take hits to the face and laugh them off, the issue is that our ability to do that is stopped by CC. Give us access to these mechanics, and maybe a few slight buffs to LF gain on weapon skills (mainly scepter) and we’re good to go.

4) This is simply PvE design. Look at some of teh Queen’s Gauntlet bosses (which are trivial in a condi build, even if you have no idea what you are doing), and even some of the Boss Blitz bosses, and you can see some spots where condi is just as good as zerker.

HardRider.2980:

Cleave would be a powermancer weapon.. minion and conditionmancers would have to stay ranged.
But that would also means people would need to learn to necro then.

You should not be ranged on MM, unless you have to. You really want to stay within 600 range, even with Staff equipped, unless you are in a specific situation where you don’t want to get onto the point (need to quickly rotate back to home), and Dagger/WH both are amazing MM weapons.

I’ve made a big post on how to make them good. Basically:

1) Make all passive damage increases instead change their active abilities. Basically, summons that have support for a full summon build (turrets, minions, spirit weapons, spirits, phantasms) should all have their damage and utility mainly focused around their active abilities, and should have traits that boost this, in unique ways.

Example: Necromantic Corruption is no longer just passive boon removal, it adds specific boon-related utility to each of the minion actives.

2) Fix AI, make it no longer react on its own. They only attack when the player signals them, and don’t remember targets, they just attack what you attack when you are attacking it.

3) Fix some of the few issues that exist. Shadow Fiend has a TWO SECOND post cast activation on Haunt, that is absolutely ridiculous for an ability that isn’t killshot or something. Give all actives decent reads and counterplay, fix bugs.

TL;DR fix bugs, make AI all active (but not give them micro like pets), push utility/damage to actives.

DeceiverX.8361:

Any self-respecting power necro is going to run Lich Form, seeing as it’s 1.5x a backstab each #1 at 1200 range.

Not in PvE.

The old corpse mechanic was, at best, limiting. There is no gameplay reason that the mechanic itself allows you to summon more or less minions, the number of minions is balanced by how strong each individual one is. They chose the current system because it fits the overall game much better, although unfortunately they haven’t raised the skillcap back up to match the GW1 builds.

Ramethzero.3785:

I’ve always felt that necro minions were just basically shaped ectoplasm. They used to come from corpses in gw1, but now they come from nowhere. So, where does all the flesh and blood and parts come from? My guess is the ether.

(Insert wrong answer buzzer noise) they are simply created by using dead crap that’s all over the place. The corpse mechanic was removed because it was highly limiting and created bad gameplay, not because minions are not still created from corpses.

Let’s not skirt around the issue, this isn’t a tweak, it is a nerf to all bunker and condi based summon builds, and at best a way to make zerker builds better (even though zerker summoner builds will never be very good). The second you introduce scaling, you set a break even point: how much power/precision/ferocity do they need to equal what they do now. No matter what you set that to, you end up nerfing and/or buffing certain builds.

The reality is that scaling doesn’t fix anything that people want it to. Zerker builds don’t work as full summoners in this game because you need a lot of personal defense for the summons to do their effects over time, but do you want zerker necro with bone minions dealing 6k damage on a 20s CD because you made Putrid Explosion crit now?

Scaling doesn’t make summon builds better, it just shifts things. If you nerf the damage tanky builds do, you simply remove full summon builds from the game (trust me, I understand them well enough to say that as a fact), if you buff damage, you simply increase abuse cases of gimmicky summon builds dealing tons of damage.

MrSimpleMan.6194:

Thank you very much man this helps a lot. So Rabid is both good for WvW and PvP?

Any should I go all Rabid if i choose so? Weapons, armors, trinkets amulets etc?

Thanks again for the input it really helped alot.

Rabid is good for both, yes. In WvW toughness > vitality because of how much healing you’ll receive and how much better that scales over time, also toughness has better multipliers that give you some extra condition damage (undead runes if you use them, consumables).

If you go rabid, you can go full rabid, part rabid part dire (dire if you want more vitality and don’t need as much precision), and you can mix in some carrion if you want as well. But you generally want a lot of armor for WvW.

As to the death question, I asked my dad (who worked as a mortician’s assistant for a few years and had picked up plenty of dead people + grew up on a farm, dude knows the smell of death) and he says generally speaking, fresh corpses don’t smell all that bad outside the whole fact that their bowels excavate. Basically, unless they have started really decomposing and have been left out for a while the smell isn’t that bad, but floaters (people who’ve been out in water a while) and people who’ve been out in a field for a month or so, smell like nothing you can believe. However, with the exception of a floater who you accidentally poke, the smell doesn’t stay with you.

Also realize that not all Necromancers necessarily directly sit around death every second of every day. Death happens around them, and they might harness its energy or use it, but they aren’t just chilling in morgues having parties and stuff.

And as to the smell buildup, even if we do assume it happens (although why would it necessarily be any worse than say warriors who cut people up just as often as we do), there’s magic. Who’s to say that there isn’t magical ways to not smell gross.

However, your idea actually makes a lot of sense, not because of smell but just who Necromancers are. Generally speaking Necromancers were outcasts because of their craft (would you want to hang around the guy whose magic was all about death, disease, misery, etc.?) and so weren’t necessarily party people. I have always wished that profession choice had been more important to things like how NPCs reacted to you.

We’re live now!

Georgy.7401:

I feel like people are forgetting about the mesmer here…

No, people are forgetting that part of balance is that professions can’t have everything. ANet has designed engineers to be a bit weak on the removal side of things because they have so many other strengths (even if those strengths might be comparatively undertuned right now). If engi is weak, buff what they should be good at, not what they are supposed to be weak to.

NeXeD.3042:

It’s a little ridiculous that torment was originally supposed to be just for the necros. Now we only have access to it through one skill, a rune set, and a sigil.

No, that was never going to be the case. We were allowed to pitch ideas for it, and we were going to be the first to get it on a new skill, but we were never going to have exclusive access.

Today on But of Corpse we’re going to talk about minions. I’ll not focus too much on little details that will probably bore most players, but instead we’ll focus on this post that I made in the profession balance forums a while back. The idea behind that post was changing minions to be less useful when players aren’t actually doing anything themselves and relying on the minions to carry them, and more useful and with more interesting play to those who can use them. There were also a number of QoL changes, small changes, etc. Basically ways to make minions, in my opinion, much better without fundamentally changing what they are.

Anyway, at 2pm PST today (in approximately 4 hours from posting) we’ll be talking about that post and some general minion stuff, so if that interests you come and join us here. Also, feel free to discuss the podcast and that post here if you have questions or anything specific you’d like us to go over on this topic.

Necromancers aren’t just viable in WvW, it is by far their strongest gamemode and the only one where they are a nearly required profession to have. Note that condi falls off hard as the groups get bigger.

For condi builds, this should almost always be your base setup nowadays:
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fRAQNAW74ic0UeD/NJCGqoFAnLlJBA

Anything left blank/unassigned is because its optional, up to your playstyle, and because that build works for both PvP and WvW.

Runes:
In PvP I’d almost always use Traveler or Speed runes (you need movement speed to rotate properly), in WvW you can use Undead, Traveler/Speed, or basically any of the runesets that proc conditions (Perplexity, Krait, etc.).

Skills:
Corrupt Boon – if you don’t have this, you shouldn’t be playing Condi Necro.
Flesh Wurm – the go to stun break because of its ability to get you completely out of danger, and in some cases z-axis movement can get you places where only thieves can follow
Spectral Armor – basically the main other one you should consider, if you pop this and go straight into DS you’ll basically take no damage for the duration
Signet of Spite (aka Signet of Skill) – great for extended overload, can be used after CB to completely screw someone, or as a secondary CB like effect without need of boons to corrupt.
Plague – the go to elite, a big AoE blind and poison, plus with Chilling darkness you get some chill up in there too
Flesh Golem – if Plague isn’t that great in your situation, or especially if you have on-elite use or on-interrupt runes, you can pick Flesh Brolem to help you out

Sigils:
You have a few choices here: corruption, doom, geomancy, earth, generosity, and plenty others. Pick something that fits your playstyle and situation, see if it makes sense, and try it.

Stats:
Carrion or Rabid for PvP (they all basically scale the same, its simply a preference)
Rabid or Dire for WvW (you can use Carrion for roaming, but these are much better for all around due to toughness’ scaling in groups)

Traits:
If the trait was filled in, you should almost always take it, unless you have a big reason not to. Extra traits can be used in Spite/Death Magic/Soul Reaping as desired. Spite is generally for extra boon removal, Death Magic is for staff traiting/general purpose defensive traiting, Soul Reaping is if you want Foot in the Grave or Master of Terror + Soul Marks.
In the extra slots:
Chilling Darkness – good for plague, otherwise don’t use
Weakening Shroud – if you expect people to hit you in melee, pick this bad boy up, along with geomancy you can get some nice bleed bursts
Path of Midnight – good overall, faster Dooms, faster Dark Path’s, more Tainted Shackles, all good

PvE look at spoj’s build that’s stickied up top of our subforum, it explains it all. We can compete in single target DPS, but lack cleave (only have AoE on high CDs) and bring very low utility. Necromancer is the last person you’d ever pick, but you’ll still be able to do the content.

Also we are actually useful in boss blitz because of certain mechanics: Boom Boom for poison, Shrek because we essentially bypass his mechanic, Sparc because ranged non-projectile, and literally anyone can do Kuraii and Wiggins, so literally 5/6 bosses we are at least as good as anyone else, or specifically favored. I specifically mention this because if they are making new content that specifically favors certain things (although AGAIN they overvalue reflects, since nearly every boss is affected by it) then Necromancers in the future might find themselves in better spots if we get some QoL changes alongside good new content.

In PvP, run condi if you want to practice for “competitive” play, power if you want to just have fun in soloQ (not high viable really), and MM if you want a fun but not considered very high tier viable spec. In PvP you can definitely play Necromancer and succeed, even at the highest level, but it won’t be as easy as rolling your face over the keyboard on Warrior, for example.

It teleports the full 1200 range unless it isn’t allowed to because of shadowstep rules.

NeXeD.3042:

necro using axe can have almost 100% retal uptime.

Fixed that for you. Axe 3 = 100% retal uptime if you hit 5 people, with 30 in DM you only need to hit 4, and if you have a boon duration set you can get it down to 3 needed.

“Warriors are broken because they can do everything at once with no weaknesses”
“Hey can we have these few changes so we can do everything and could you give us this thing to get rid of our weakness”

Mega Skeleton.8259:

I wish Flesh Wurm just worked like a personal Mesmer Portal :\

Does it have a range limitation or does it just get blocked by Z axis changes?

Yes. Not necessarily. It is a shadowstep just like thieves have but without a LoS requirement, and so it behaves just like those would.

Inscrutable.8347:

Minions are just a gimmick. It is not good in teamfights at all, there are so many AoE heavy builds that crush the build its unreal.

What do I gain by a minion living after it has used its ability? DPS, if traited some healing (can be dropped easily in the right builds), and some light control. The best minions and builds utilize minions that aren’t easily killed, or whose death is unimportant.

Flesh Wurm’s range is too high to be killed without purposely focusing him, Bone Fiend is in the same boat, neither will die by random AoE. Bone Minions you’re going to kill anyway, and have absolutely no reason to keep alive. Flesh Golem has 20k HP, 3k armor, and in my build he’s getting healed by myself very often, he’ll go down eventually, but if you’re relying on random AoEs to do it you better be using the right build, and there aren’t many of them.

In fact, the only minion who regularly goes down due to cleave is Shadow Fiend, who is generally considered the second worst minion anyway.

If you know how to use minions, they are fine. Are they top tier? Probably not, but most of the complaints against them are based on ignorance of how to use them.

And Necromancers should have lots of boons and mobility, and Thieves need to tank!

Seriously though, its designed for them to be weak to conditions. The issue is the existence of Warriors who spit in the face of the “weaknesses” they are supposed to have.

Malediktus.9250:

You forgot some skills attack a lot of times. 21 hits can be done with 2-3 skills

I reiterate:

Bhawb.7408:

“I want to be able to spam abilities without a care in the world and have absolutely no negative consequences.”

If retaliation is killing you it is entirely your fault. Out of everything in the game, retaliation is one of the few ones that gives the enemy 100% power to counterplay.

A good 50% of teams I see right now, in actual tournaments (like ESL) run Necromancers, even in EU which historically doesn’t run them as much as NA. The teams that don’t run them are ones like Helseth (who has the mesmer), or ones running things like double warrior. If a build can be used by properly skilled players at a high level, it simply means that the build in question has some mechanic that isn’t being fully leveraged by other players, or a weakness that isn’t being covered for. And I think both are the case, at a high level you see Necromancers with much better positioning such that trying to jump in and focus them will get you killed much faster than they die, and an ability to spike down boon heavy players that good teams capitalize on.

Inscrutable.8347:

• MM has almost no control over their minions and deny the Necro the ability to reinforce teamfights as effectively as other builds. AoE heavy builds demolish the minions, like Staff Ele, Bomb/Nade Engi, etc., there are no good stun breaks, and you’re forced to put most of your traits into minion buffs. It’s a gimmick.

If you’re properly playing MM you have enough control to make the minions do what you need. If you have the right build, this includes them having very meaningful teamfight utility. You don’t actually have to fully trait for minions, either, only Death Magic (6 traits) will be focused on your minions, 5/6 traits of which actually make minion’s deaths fairly trivial. The only thing that happens to an MM build in a teamfight is a drop in DPS, everything else remains constant. Also, MM’s stun break is so good that non MM builds use it, so I don’t see the point there.

Inscrutable.8347:

• Burst is better performed by other classes. Thieves are faster, can use blinds, stealth, and evades, Rangers are also faster, can pew pew from 1.5k, and Mesmer has portal, with Shatters being more effective. Necro is too slow without having to use Runes or giving up a Well.

Power Necro is a gimmick, that’s the only reason it isn’t used. You either single handily wipe a teamfight, or are fairly weak,it all relies on you landing fairly difficult to land projectiles.

Inscrutable.8347:

• Condi got nerfed a ton after they goofed up Dhuumfire because of the reason they gave on the stream. They want Necro to be an attrition class, and being able to 100-0 people with condis while having death shroud was too much. Now its becoming less effective to condi dump on people because Eles have easy condi cleanse again, Warriors just zerk stance and lol, Guardians can just bring Purging Flames, and people are moving away from running Engineers, who are a Condi Necro’s snack. Condi Necro needs at least one Condi teammates to diversify the conditions, like how Outplayed has a Condi Engi and Necro on the same team.

Plenty of teams have done just fine with condi Necros and not having someone to babysit them. So quite a few people have found ways to be successful regardless.

Something to note as far as sPvP goes, a lot of teams are still using Necro well, and Helseth continues to show that Mesmer can still be played. So while we “should” be weak as far as normal accounts go, people have been making it work well.

Amethyst Lure.5624:

They would have to reduce some other skills I think. Wells, epidemic, shroud etc, has the potential to put out a lot of damage, so if you also had a high cleave weapon the necro would probably be the best Aoe class in the game by a mile. So I’m pretty torn

I love both the idea of a cleave and the idea of having actually hurty use skills for AoE. Just seems really hard to balance vs other classes.

All 3 of the damage ele conjures (hell eles in general), GS warrior, at least would have something to say about that. I can deal more damage with a single Meteor storm than an entire double well + DS 5/4 + WH 5 + Focus 4 will do (or at the very least, it sure as hell feels like it).

And frankly, necromancers SHOULD have decent damage if we’re going to entirely lack decent utility. But even still, a single cleave weapon wouldn’t suddenly put us into speed runs, it’d just put us on par with damage.

Lorelei.3918:

It would not be a stretch then for a disease to have a magical basis. Since we are necromancers, a caster class, it should be a non issue to do. It would be something like a self-spreading curse. This would eliminate any lore issues regarding cross species interaction.

This, and its within Necromancer’s power and theme easily.

“I want to be able to spam abilities without a care in the world and have absolutely no negative consequences.”

How larger are larger fights? 10+? 15+? 50+? Basically the more players the less condis matter. Up to about 15-20 condi can be made to work if you are really amazing with landing corrupt boons and chaining that into easy deaths (its super easy to catch a guardian with a big stack of boons and CB+PoC 7 boons off them, then fear chain to death). But once you’re above that power just gets better and better, especially since if there are tons of players you know some of them are going to afk in your well.

I wouldn’t even have it barred to same-species spreading, just nearby enemies exactly how you said.

I am so bored of pressing 1 on every single weapon I don’t care if we get the Signet of Vampirism of weapons. I’m tired of pressing 1 on dagger, I’m tired of pressing 1 on scepter, and I’m tired of having two other weapons that are only included in my builds because I have no other option, even though they are badly designed and mind numbingly boring (its pretty sad when pressing 1 is more enjoyable than using an entire other weapon set). It doesn’t matter to me at this point how much awesome new content they add for me to press 1 in, I’m still pressing 1.

Its been two years and the only thing that’s been added are 5 new traits, 4 of which I’ll never use, a new healing skill which I will also never use, and a new ability on deathshroud (which is awesome, I’ll give them that, and why I think they are capable of adding new content without it being overbearing). At this point in guild wars 1 they had added hundreds and hundreds of new skills. And while I understand that adding too much is an issue, the direct opposite of adding nothing is just as bad (if not worse, I’d rather have the rotating FotM troll builds than what I’m doing now, at least those kept me mildly entertained).

ArchonWing.9480:

Are necros frequently used in top level spvp?

There are still a number of competitive players who use them. They are not unviable, just require your team to be pretty spot on.

innocens.1582:

There is no best build probably.

No, there is literally an objectively best build for PvE. It depends on the content, but there is a best.

Now, if you enjoy something else and want to play something else for fun, and you can find a way to make it work without ruining other people’s enjoyment, then by all means don’t let us rain on your parade.

connvince.8061:

But nonetheless, I need a break from the Mozart playstyle that is Ele.

Mozart =/= smashing your face on keys repeatedly.

Weapons would be massive. I’d rather they take 6 months to add a lot new to the game instead of taking 6 months to try to improve whats already here. Bugs will always exist, things will break, oh well, but I’d rather play with NEW broken things than the same weapons I’ve had for 2 years.

Wells can be amazing, you just need to be smart about using them. Make sure your opponent can’t get out easily without giving up something big (like allowing you a cap/decap). They can be used to secure stomps (darkness), or to put down massive downed pressure (suffering/corruption). Just keep track of what your opponent can do to get out.

Also, if you’re in a build with something like Lich and DS/LB build, remember that wells are only one of your huge damage sources. If they blow all their defenses to get out of a well, they might not have the ability to get out of Lich or LB spam.

There is some utility you can bring, like weakness, poison, vuln stacks, etc. but its all something someone else could do better, while also bringing other unique utility, fields, finishers, etc.

We need new mechanics, mainly ones that either buff our teammates with Necro-like things (life steal for instance) or unique unremovable debuffs for bosses to be meaningful.

How about instead of nerfing builds, you simply have ANet remake them so the summoned creatures do very little without input from the player. I made a fairly large post focused on minions, but the gist of it is that they can make the full summon builds less passive by:
1) Stop letting AI pick aggro on their own, make all aggro based on player action
2) Change passive offensive traiting to enhance the active skills
3) Focus the strength of full-summon builds to the active skills OR heavily gate the passive strength behind limited uptime

This wouldn’t fix anything, it’d just introduce new problems. If you accidentally prioritize bleeding, for example, which generally is easy to at least apply one stack of often, all of a sudden you might not take much bleeding damage, but you are permanently affected by every other condition. Not to mention professions like Engis who can put out confusion, bleeding, and burning all at once.

Bunkers can now remove Poison constantly, which was one of their biggest counters to keep from never dying.

People who have low condition removal still have issues, because removing one condition all the time isn’t much better than what is going on now, and professions who are good against conditions become even better (Necromancers, for example, have a removal on a 10s CD that right now is weak, but the ability to remove a certain condition whenever we wanted would be really good).

It just introduces too many problems without actually fixing the ones you want. If you want certain conditions to be removed, they need to introduce more removals that are condition specific instead.

The biggest thing for me is that boon removal needs to get a priority system that makes more sense. As it is now, certain removals are artificially better simply because they prioritize stability, which is 99% of the time the boon you want removed first (followed by might often).

Either the system needs a condition-like system (first in last out), or each “type” (corruption, removal, steal) needs a consistent, spelled out somewhere priority system that makes sense.

Everything about the base system I enjoy. It condensed the old system that was overly complex into a set of common buffs and debuffs that are fast and easy to learn, so even if you don’t know the skill that applied it, you know what’s going on now.

KOPPER.1458:

I will be very surprised if anyone uses a necro.

We can kill the suspense and say no one who does well will. Its unfortunate, but its reality, and its why most Necros I know of who want to do PvE much have leveled someone else by now. Even my lazy self has gotten around to it.

ProtoGunner.4953:

Just a not so serious assumption. But they do a lot to hide the Canthan stuff initially planned for release like the Great Collapse in Diviny’s Reach replacing the Canthan district etc.

I wouldn’t be surprised if stuff like that was due to them being rushed, or other complications, not necessarily that we aren’t going to Cantha. The final boss fight also wasn’t supposed to be what it is now, but they were basically told to hurry up.

They’ve added Cantha-like stuff since launch, so they aren’t totally shying away from it, just not openly saying HEY WE’RE GOING TO CANTHA when its probably not planned for a long time (since it’d require an expansion or expansion-like update).