Guild Wars 2

You can handle 2v1s on a Necro, if I can I’ll try to record a video of it. You can survive 3v1s for a bit in certain builds as well, but that depends on you being VERY good because all of your defense needs to preempt their offense. I don’t have current videos, and none of my old ones were really competitive anyway (they were all SOAC tournaments), but in a while I should hopefully get it. Its rare, but you can do it if you get a good matchup, but again except for MM in 2v1 (3 is too many for an MM) you’re working a lot harder to make a bad build work, when you could just be a guardian.

Anyway, to address specific things.
1) Lack of weapons. This is a huge issue and it affects literally every build we have.

Every other good power build in the game either has the ability to run in face first and survive while dealing damage (ele), poke people down from afar and then jump in for a burst (thief), or a combination (warrior). Necromancers just run in and hope to put out so much damage that people get scared and forget how to play. If we had a ranged weapon, or one with some tankiness/CC we could either poke from afar before bursting, or jump in and deal damage and then CC/tank through damage when needed.

Condition has no melee cleave weapon. This is a bit weird, considering how well we would technically function with a melee condi cleave weapon, and would allow us to maybe turn on people diving us (melee = higher damage, always) and just try to at least go 1 for 1 with them, or with good positioning turn and punish them for over extending. Also it would be a good place to introduce sustain for condi builds, without making it too strong because it relies on melee.

Bunker? Can’t do that because our weapons are bad for it. No good CC weapons to debunker other bunkers, no good support to be a support bunker, not as good of AoE scaling sustain as we should get off weapons, we just lack here as well. This also applies to MMs who end up having very weak weapon/minion synergy. If we had a defensive support weapon MMs might actually have some more meaningful interaction with minions.

So weapons overall hurt us. We have no many things we need from weapons, that we don’t have, whereas our traits and utility skills actually support so many different build types.

2) Trait options hurt us. We simply need some more traits to support certain playstyles. Read above for an idea of what I mean. In this case though, we especially need access to reactive damage negation (something like an instant AoE blind on DS entry w/ ICD). Blood magic and its DS issues needs some help too. Again, we have a lot of options, but we just need a bit more to flesh them out.

3) Utility skills, really just need one or two additions here, especially with one being a source of stability. Far more accessible and meaningful than a trait source, innately makes us sacrifice something else. Win-win.

4) Non-transform or minion elite, preferably a spectral, well, and/or corruption (for training purposes).

Overall, Necromancers are so close to a good position. We have a ton of builds that are just close to working, but miss just this one thing here, or something else there. If we got those issues addressed, Necromancer becomes more diverse of a profession than all other 7 professions combined.

If you are worried about overwhelming new players, why not copy League, another friendly game for new players, by presenting similar information to what we have now, but maybe explained better (why did my team win, why didn’t we win, why did the enemy team win, etc.), and then have separate tabs for more specific breakdowns.

For example, first screen can stay as is on the top, the bottom instead of being some stats about myself, show how each team got its points. Then have a separate tab that shows where I got my points, and also various stats about what each player did (like in League you can see a full chart of damage done, healing done, etc. but only if you want to).

Generally what Kain said. Most PvE players will have alts to play and generally can leave their Necromancer for “fun” or other content. People like myself who are lazy end up just having to play Necromancer, and many don’t learn how to do it well.

That said, the issue is even further complicated because most players don’t play Necromancer for direct damage. They think Necromancer = condition damage or Necro = minions, and so they just screw around doing whatever they think is okay even though its making the run far harder than it should be.

As a side note, you can technically make minions work for zerker PvE IF you know the content well, how to swap them out so they don’t screw up pulls, still build high damage, etc. But its rarely worth the effort so I save them for when my pug group is wiping on “hard” bosses so the minions can tank for them, because god forbid we have to actually fight the boss to kill it. They really just exist to make content easier, but people bring them into runs where everyone else is perfectly capable of killing the boss the “proper” way with no need of the minions to help things along.

I’ve been here a long time and read a lot of comments, and I don’t think I’ve ever been as confused as I was reading that comment.

Mystogan.4157:

if they have 3-5 players on you in pvp then they are doing something wrong lol

That is the definition of what a teamfight bunker needs to be able to withstand, otherwise you aren’t a bunker at all.

Dirame.8521:

So if we were really going to ask this question, we’d have to analyze every build for every class and ask what weaknesses they should have and why.

Very much this. Although I would argue that professions overall have certain built-in strengths and weaknesses to differentiate each other, there should also be the ability to make up for those weaknesses a little bit. Unfortunately sometimes professions are so good at their strengths that they have no meaningful weakness, or were simply given ways to ignore their weakness entirely.

Malcastus.6240:

I think most of you misread his question.

We read what we wanted to and responded to the question we made up for ourselves. It makes us happy that way.

You can’t really function as a main bunker by killing people, there is no way you’ll have the damage to do it while still surviving through 3-5 players attacking you. To be the main bunker you either need spectrals for defense/utility and then you’d be using like a hammer for CC and dagger/WH for offensive/selfish tankiness. The other setup is wells which is more of a supporty role, and then you’d want hammer (again CC is absolutely massive for a main bunker, being able to debunk the other bunker is a big deal) and then another set to support it. Note that a bunker guardian deals pretty high damage just autoing too, its not like our damage is super special about that.

Necros can side bunker (see: MM) because your defenses still scale fine and offensive pressure counters for a lot more when you are in a small fight. But side bunkers are an entirely different beast, its a bruiser build that needs to deal high sustained damage and survive 2-3 players for a short period.

In the build you listed, all they’d have to do is focus you until you pop SA and DS, wait 6 seconds (or frankly just keep loading CC and damage into you, its not like you can do anything about it) and you’re dead on the next focus. You have 0 stability, no extra dodges, just a bit of melee CC. A standard warrior/guardian combo with an ele, thief, or mesmer to burst you will just pop stab, hammer train you, and keep you CCed until you die.

I’ve tried to make Necro main bunker work with an even heavier focus on defensiveness and it just doesn’t work. You work harder to survive the same that a normal bunker would do easily, while bringing far less utility and support to your team, and not enough damage to make up for it. If we had support weapons that gave us a standard set of bunker tools we’d fit it really well, but until then it just won’t work.

Pelopidas.2140:

what about DS skills ?
Bunker weapons you mean a weap like guardian’s staff? self buffing/cleave ?

DS is nice, but its not the same as a weapon set. We need hammer or some kind of true support/CC weapons, all of ours are super selfish without enough CC.

Necromancer bunkers can’t exist as we are now. Not that we are necessarily weak, but we have no proper bunker weapons. Dagger is “okay” for it, axe is okay for it, warhorn is okay for it, but none of them are necessarily great, and there are no full weapon sets that support it well.

Besides that, if we do get weapons for it, then yes we could do well with a few different kinds of bunker builds (at least 3 or so).

Linnael.1069:

2k over ten seconds is laughable. Learn about some condition builds.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fRAQJArImgYokC0clRHAWAA-TJRAwAAOBAKeAAM3focZAA

You were saying? No one even runs that build, but that is a very high condition damage and its only 2k for an auto attack over 10 seconds.

Linnael.1069:

Exactly the kitten point. You can’t.
kitten you must have been so confused by that post.

Because an auto that deals 2k damage over 10 seconds is too strong, but a power auto that does 3k instantly is fine. Gotcha.

Necromancers should be the kings of long fights, through sustained DPS and debuffing via constant aggression. A Necromancer should want to be constantly fighting and have the tools to thrive in a fight where they are able to stay on their targets, while being weak when fights are over quickly, or when large amounts of mobility are involved. To compensate they shouldn’t have very high mobility (only offensive mobility to stay on a target) and should be generally weak to burst.

Low overall burst, somewhat high “ramp up” time, very aggressive focused playstyle, naturally bulky, lots of debuffing mechanics, buffing and defensive mechanics should be tied to offense, but weak to people who can end fights quickly.

At the moment there isn’t enough access to reactive defensive mechanics, making us even weaker to focus fire and CC than we should be, and with no stability we’re basically triple screwed since all our defense relies on attacking, which we can’t do while stunned, which we can’t really avoid. There are some passive procs, like Chill of Death, that should be looked at to have more clarity so you don’t just get Lich auto + CoD + double sigil crit proc. Also minions need their traits (training of the master and necromantic corruption especially) reworked to be more active, and we NEED that AI looked at, so that the MM needs to be more active in their control of the minions to succeed, but should be better when they do that.

dancingmonkey.4902:

I disagree with that. For every condition damage attack that you can list as being poorly telegraphed, I can list you one that is heavily telegraphed plus a direct damage skill that is poorly telegraphed.

Exactly this. For every random condition proc there are similar mechanics for power.

If conditions were too strong, they would be seen much more. But they aren’t, they are just a different way to deal damage.

Numot.3965:

Boon corruption is far stronger mechanic wise than boon removal. If you steal someones boons it may be a net 2 for you (1 for you, -1 for them), but they only have to deal with rebuilding their boons, and you only have those boons you stole for so long (you can’t maintain them or you may not even have them for long). Boon corruption is at least a net +2, and often a net +3 (they lose boons, gain conditions -2, often take further damage/deal reduced damage as a consequence -1).

Stealing is the same thing, but through a different mechanic. You steal might, you now do more damage and they do less (just like if it was weakness applied). You steal stability, they now are vulnerable to CC and you aren’t. It is directly comparable, there are some situations where it will benefit you more to steal and others where corruption is better, but overall they are very similar.

Or you could just compare it to Path of Corruption, a very similar setup. One trait to one trait:
Steal 35s CD
Steals two boons (only one application of each) and grants you and your allies those boons plus vigor. Master level trait.

Dark Patch 15s CD
Corrupts two boons. Grandmaster level trait.

Very comparable, both are the same range and teleport to the enemy, both only treat the boons as a single stack (corruptions don’t increase in severity for larger stacks/longer durations), both are tied to profession mechanics and deal with two boons. One is a bit more “selfish” but on a very low CD while the other applies AoE boons but on a longer CD.

The one BIG difference is that thieves get to prioritize stability over all other boons, whereas Path of Corruption, and all Necro corruptions, have stability at the bottom of the list, and in fact many of the boons we want to remove seem to be fairly far down.

That is the one big thing that needs to change, all boon removal skills (corruptions, removal, steal, and anything else) need to have a singular priority system.

CDI isn’t so much about balance as it is about a well designed profession. Those three professions were community voted to need the CDI the most, and I think its pretty reasonable to say they all need it.

PvE MM Build:
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fRAQRBIhdu1IDNN12VjfNs3moWokMH+BIrzAg65oNqWA-TRCBAB1s/AEHBgKV/5MlgScQAwS5HAnAg80PwwDAgUAjKMC-e

This is the only kind of PvE MM build I’d suggest using. Bone Minions should be swapped for Shadow Fiend if you aren’t in a situation where you think blast finishers will be useful, also you can swap staff in for axe (in which case you’d drop warhorn for focus on dagger set) and then trait TotM instead of Axe training, and if needed you can swap blood fiend out for consume conditions.

The whole point of the build is using minions as a wall of flesh to keep mobs from attacking you while you sit in deathshroud pressing 1. If you can dodge remotely well you’ll basically never get hit by damage, and also gain a lot of LF from the minion deaths and their skills. The only big loss you have compared to a standard build is the loss of Close to Death and the AoE from wells.

Building an MM for PvP
This is fairly involved so I’ll give you a basic idea.

First decide what kind of amulet you want. Clerics is for best bunkering/sustain, Soldier is for more damage without giving up initial tankiness, the various power amulets are stages of damage/tankiness between Soldier and Berzerker. The condition amulets are for slightly stranger condi MMs.

After you have an amulet you know what your focus will be. Next decide a trait setup. 4/0/6/4/0 is the go-to one and should be what you aim for 9/10 times. X/X/6/6/X is another possible setup, as is 4/0/4/6/0. The second build has less damage but more condition removal, the third build has both less damage (loss of death nova) but also the loss of poison fields (big deal). You can also try for various hybrids that don’t fit the above, but I highly suggest that you put Death Nova in every single MM build unless you are specifically going for a build where permanent poison isn’t a huge deal.

Now that you have your traits and stats, you need to select your runes and sigils. This is where things get pretty open, and honestly there are a lot of combinations here, and many of them can work. Figure out exactly what you want from your build, find a sigil and rune combination to work with it. Keep in mind your runes and sigils should either be enhancing the strengths you’ve already gone for, or supplementing weaknesses you have.

MrSimpleMan.6194:

Thank you very much for the answers, may I ask;

What are necros pros and cons? Where do they shine? (pve pvp wvw) and when are they underwhelming?

Shine in WvW zergs where you get near infinite HP because of constant LF generation, underwhelming in PvE.

1) 6/2/0/0/6 is probably the most “universal” build you’ll find for both. http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fRAQNBIhZakjmWarpx2GOcTgLUQ/mBQLE1FQdbcGPLA-TZQaAAQZAA I didn’t include runes and sigils because those are a bit more down to your preference and not necessarily “must have only these sigils and runes”.

2) Solo leveling is very easy for Necromancer, although not necessarily the build above since you are brand new. But just throw some minions into your utility bar and let them tank damage for you.

Merlin Dyfed Avalon.5046:

Been a while since the “Attention Poll” was put out and it was decided that Ranger was the profession that needed some attention followed by Ele and Necro.
So my Question: Did the Rangers get some attention and isn’t it time to think about the other two professions mentioned above?

cheers!

Ranger’s got their CDI post, but it has not been followed up on with the full changes, yet. I wouldn’t expect any other CDI’s until ANet has at least fully decided on a way to take things and has started doing the actual work of implementing it.

alamore.1974:

Wells, when the drop turret you drop well on top, use.spectral Grasp lock them in with dagger. Siphoning wells do more damage and heal you

He specifically states the type of build he’s running, and you state not only siphoning wells which he won’t have, but also grasp, which he won’t have.

The whole point is “can I handle the turret engi in my current build” the answer to which is basically no.

EremiteAngel.9765:

hmm is the utility afforded by the staff really worth the downtime it takes to swap back to the scepter?
I often find the swapping cooldown ridiculously long and i can die or get brought down very quickly during that period while not inflicting any real damage to my opponent using the staff

Yes. Need poison (very important condition) better have staff. Need condition removal, also staff. Not to mention the 5 skill is not only a CC but also 2k damage to each player you hit with it. Staff is also very important to use for LF generation and bleed bursting.

Unless you are a thief you can’t really afford to bring two of the same weapons, and for condi Necro that means you have to take the only other weapon that does condi.

PvE needs a rework, not balance patches. You need to completely redesign PvE encounters so that they aren’t a DPS race before you can even consider trying to balance for it.

Lorelei.3918:

No not without some way to actively remove condis while in DS. Otherwise you are going to get overloaded with conditions too fast.

It’d become a trait you could only use with things like Plague signet or Consume conditions. You’d have so many conditions on you you’d need a near full removal.

And god forbid you pull something like fear and chain fear yourself to death. Although I guess that’d be pretty funny.

If you don’t want to blow lich, just don’t fight them. Power Necro isn’t able to fight them well unless you specifically build around doing it (which is dumb).

If you remove any “competitive”-ness out of it, then you might as well say there is no reason to not run Magi’s with a completely randomized set of weapons/traits/runes/sigils/utilities. The fact is sure, the game is about having fun. You know what isn’t fun? Having to run a boss that should be dying in 30 seconds because someone is running an absolutely inane build.

Yes you can just have fun with Necromancer, I am a big advocate of that. But that is just an excuse when we’re talking about things completely unrelated to it. Even if you are having fun, it still remains that Necromancers don’t bring any unique utility, and by brushing that under the carpet in favor of “fun”, we deny that it exists and don’t do our due diligence of bringing it up so ANet can fix it.

Star Ace.5207:

I am afraid Necromancers aren’t supposed to be like the other Professions, which for better or worse means it may never escape its current PvE speed clear status. It’s important to note, however, that GW2 isn’t a speed run unless you boil it down to that FOR YOURSELF, which is also fine.

Necromancers can still be all dark and emo and special and everything you love about playing the profession without being the worst profession to take in PvE. Orders, an AoE buff that no one else would have, could give us unique utility. Traits that gave allies our life steal, minions that had better traiting like I proposed in the balance forums, a reworking of our defensive mechanics, there are a lot of ways they could still let us be unique and not necessarily force us to be like other people, but still allow us our own niche, just like everyone else has.

Play whatever you enjoy, not what is good right now.

Pathing is a major issue in WvW and the only way to get around it (summoning them only for combat) puts you at a pretty annoying disadvantage.

PvE they are okay for pug groups if you are smart about how you build (build for full damage with minions just there to tank) since they make boss fights much easier.

PvP they are fine. But you need to be more specific on what you want, there are a lot of different potential builds.

Carighan.6758:

Again, doesn’t make much sense. You’re developing for a minority, when you got a majority actually keeping your game afloat to balance for. You got PvE to improve (look at the later LS fights and how much they change up PvE compared to release-level stuff). You got WvW to improve and diversify.

They aren’t developing for a minority. PvE has 10x the changes (just not balance ones) that PvP does. Because PvE can’t be balanced until they change the mechanics. You can’t balance PvE so long as its a DPS race, no amount of profession balance changes will solve that, so why bother.

Carighan.6758:

Why waste resources on an unbalanceable minority game mode instead? Smallscale PvP in RPGs cannot be balanced below a certain team size (tPvP is much much too small).

They could choose any point to balance they want. You could try to balance 1v1, 2v2, whatever you wanted. Its the fact that tPvP has everything balanced except for the professions, so the professions are the last key that needs balancing. Every other part of the mode is balanced though, which cannot be said of PvE or WvW.

Carighan.6758:

The elements you cite, like equal team size, h igh personal stake in the outcome, those are not only elements which run counterintuitive to the whole “MMO”-idea, they also don’t work well with RPGs in the first place. Classes and specializations are meant to falter and succumb in certain situations. They’ll need the other classes and specs to make it through those situations.

That doesn’t matter if they are counter to MMOs, it is what balance needs. You cannot balance WvW while it is possible for one server to have 2x the number of players as their enemy. You can’t balance it when you can have uplevel players with subpar loadouts. The entire game mode isn’t balanced, and isn’t designed to be balanceable.

Carighan.6758:

And really, as much as we more vocal players can complain on the forums, 90%+ probably couldn’t care any less about whatever tPvP-imbalance there is. That’s really the big issue, the MMO devs generally see the equality-type of PvP balance as a beneficial side effect if they can create it while doing something else. It’s not going to be a focus as a result of how unimportant it is to the game’s health as a whole (players don’t notice the amount of imbalance the vocal community complains about).

That has nothing to do with anything, but okay?

You haven’t addressed what I said:
PvE cannot be balanced as long as its a DPS race. This has been the case since launch. To balance PvE they need to completely redesign the boss encounters, dungeons, fractals, etc. This is completely separate to what the balance team is actually involved in, so they are completely unrelated and can happen simulatenously.

WvW cannot be balanced from a profession standpoint when nothing else is balanced. Uplevels, being able to simply have more players than the other person, more money, buying out the best guilds, having players on all the time. Unless they redesign WvW, it is impossible to balance.

Domzz.1260:

I disagree.

That’s fine, people used to disagree about the world being round. They were wrong then, and you’re wrong now.

Domzz.1260:

What you just said can be applied to any other class. The only things you can’t expect from necros are stealth, portaling, and reflection.

Also banners, spirit buffs, any AoE boon spam that isn’t regen, finishers in general, fire/water fields, conjured weapons, a few traits that throw out AoE stat increases, boon removal that isn’t in large bursts on long CDs… There is a lot we can’t do, and very little that we can that someone else can’t.

Domzz.1260:

And while not only can we condition cleanse, but we can condition TRANSFER .

Not directly from our allies to enemies, only from allies to ourselves then to enemies, by blowing our own condition removal in the process.

Domzz.1260:

I like that necros have easy access to so many things without needing to specialize into one niche. Condition transfer, AoE buffs, controlling conditions, DPS, Zone control AoE — and all without specialization. Sure a guardian specced in purely healing can heal better, but that guardian has just lost out on everything else.

Not at all true. A warrior can spec for full DPS and spam might, vulnerability, banners, and boost their own and their allies DPS better.

We don’t specialize into a niche because we don’t have one. Everyone else doesn’t specialize into a niche either. The only niche for PvE is damage, which coincidentally everyone else fills just as well as us while bringing better utility.

These are simply factual statements that can be backed up by any member of the “hardcore” PvE community. Go read the stickied thread at the top of our forums about PvE builds, go ask anyone who tries to set speed run records, we are literally the worst at providing utility to our team.

Feel free to list whatever game mode you want, if you’re going for a specific one. We have bad general utility in them all, the only reason we do well in WvW is because of how tanky we get in zergs or how much power AoE we can do, and in tPvP its our burst boon removal paired with very strong CC+condition damage. But even then, these aren’t necessarily unique things, they are just things we currently do better.

Its a factual statement. Necromancers are the worst profession in PvE, largely because we bring nothing no one else can’t do.

Conditions? All accessible by other professions, not to mention the fact that conditions are weak against bosses.
Best teamwide condition cleanses? I think you need to meet guardians.
Vulnerability? Something other professions do easily and through their auto attacks that nearly match our DPS.

People don’t overlook us because we have some hidden potential, we are just bad at support. This translates to literally every game mode withthe only exception being Plague in zergs.

Domzz.1260:

I do think the Necro has a lot of access to offensive support, and some access to defensive support. In fact, I think the Necro’s specialty is offensive support.

The necro even in Berzerk form can have access to blind, cripple, chill, weakness, and fear, all in dependable, AoE form; these are defensive suppport. In terms of defensive support through boons: has access to heals, regeneration, and the best teamwide condition cleanses / control — all possible in Berzerk form.

Necro offensive support is mostly cripple, immobilize, chill, fear — and tons and tons of dependable vulnerability.

I think a lot of people overlook the necro as a powerful support because most people are used to more obvious forms of support such as healing and boons. But support is just as effective in the form of disabling your opponents — if they can’t do anything, you don’t take any damage. I think the necro is the class that embodies the saying “The best defense is a powerful offense”.

There isn’t a single form of meaningful support we can do that someone else can’t do better or in a better build while bringing equal or higher damage and unique support that we can’t do.

ArmageddonAsh.6430:

….Why would you want something that Ele already has but no one hardly uses? They would have to nerf the hell out of it. Give it specific skills. Increase cool downs, add in number of skills allowed to be used.

Trust me, you don’t want Conjures. They suck on ele and they would suck on Guardian.

Except conjures are absolutely amazing in certain content. Nothing makes PvE (especially AC) more trivial than having 2 eles dropping weapons.

Ynot.8397:

WvW may not be the best place to show balance but I think that is allows for far more build diversity than pvp. There are builds that just wont work in pvp but are very fun and actually work in wvw.

That’s fine, but it still doesn’t mean you can use WvW as the basis for balance arguments.

Carighan.6758:

How are the two modes which are – probably the two most-played a bad source for balancing-focus? Shouldn’t they be, considering their significance?

Yes, you probably don’t like it, “game will be balanced for scrubs”. I wouldn’t like it either. It still makes sense though, because the players the game caters to should also be the ones the dev effort focuses on.

PvE is awful for balance because it is the least diverse of every game mode. Unless you are playing just for funsies, you basically ask yourself one question before making a build: how do I deal the most damage while giving utility to my team?

Necromancer is the worst off atm in PvE so lets use them as a point. How do you make them viable in PvE? You give them cleave, and you give them some unique utility skill line that gives them a buff type that no one else has. So lets say Orders, which would be similar to AoE auras, and cleave are added, and boom Necromancer is balanced and all is right in PvE.

If you want to balance PvE any more than giving each profession a good set of utility, then you change PvE, not the professions. PvE isn’t a good balance point because its very design vastly favors maxing DPS and utility over everything else, and as such it can never be balanced or diverse.

WvW is unbalanceable because how do you balance a gamemode with no limitations on how fights happen? How do you balance a 20v50 fight? How do you balance when uplevels are considered? How do you balance out one server having full BL 24/7? To balance something you first need to make everyone’s position balanced. WvW has no ways to really balance it without severely changing the game mode.

Compared to tPvP, where every team has the same amount of players guaranteed, with access to the same resources. Even if you do have a 2v1 one place, that means the rest of the map is a guaranteed 3v4. Even PvE technically could have this kind of idea (due to scaling, limits to how many people can fight a boss at once, etc.) if it didn’t have awful design that favors DPS>all.

TL;DR PvE can’t be balanced due to bad design, WvW can only be balanced to remove super OP things, and tPvP is the real place for balance.

ZudetGambeous.9573:

Anet recently hired an outside company to work on their AI system. Not sure how long until we see the results, but it seems something may eventually happen about it.

Of course I can’t seem to find the link and the search is worthless… anyone else have the link? It didn’t get a whole lot of attention.

I did not hear about this, but this would be an amazing change and if it is true I applaud them for doing so.

1. Single target: power dagger, always. In a theoretical situation where you have 6 targets standing in a smallish radius that don’t die (basically 6 giant HP sponges), condition will massively out damage power in 60 seconds (epidemic).

But this highly depends on how long we’re talking about, and how many targets there are. Power will out DPS condi in any single target situation, and then if you look at AoE you have to consider if targets will die quickly (power wins out), if piercing life blast will hit all three targets (power wins again), or if there are enough targets that don’t die to consistently allow you to hit AoE limits on every ability. Condi basically only wins when you have enough targets to be hitting AoE constantly and then epidemic’ing off.

2. I believe dagger has the third highest DPS of any weapon in the game, behind a Warrior (axe I think?) and Guardian (no idea) weapon, but I’m not sure how that DPS works out when you look at actual content. But you have very competitive DPS in PvE situations.

flow.6043:

It remaines open for speculation whether or not this gigantic stealth nerf was completely intentional and then left out of the patch notes by mistake.

It was an intentional nerf, they’ve said so themselves. The only thing you can speculate on is if they purposely left it out of the patch notes or not.

SonOfKrypton.4357:

pierwola.9602:

What about “changing attunement while channeling skills” ?

I guess that’s similar to exiting Death Shroud while using Tainted Shackles. Lets not go there, bub.

Tainted Shackles isn’t a channeled ability.

Einlanzer.1627:

Because it isn’t WoW’s hunter. It’s a woodsman.

And woodsmen carry rifles (and pistols) nowadays, unless they enjoy being mauled. If they were a Druid there’d be an argument, but they aren’t (only some builds are druid-yish).

Hey, forgot to mention builds. Here is the basic thing you need to do to make a condi build in PvE:

Decide if you want Dhuumfire (a trait), if so, you’re going to want 6 in spite, which will heavily affect the rest of your build. This gives you access to burning.

Decide if you want Terror (trait), if so, again very impacting. This makes your fears do damage (can someone say if they have made it so fear applies to most bosses yet? I know the boss blitz ones don’t but I notice a lot of dungeon bosses still get the condition/damage).

Then finish off your build with what you need from Soul Reaping (generally 3+ points), Death Magic (up to 4 generally), Blood Magic (rarely), and Spite/Curses. There is a fair bit of variety and you should be changing your build at least a little depending on the type of content you are doing.

DrDivine.5378:

Yeah, I always found it strange that MM get singled out as relying on AI when classes like engis and mesmers use similar methods but are considered strategic. Doesn’t it all come down to how good you are regardless?

Its not even that you “rely” on AI, you actually fight against AI in many situations.

Sarrs.4831:

It is not necessarily like hambow because it is OP- You don’t magically slough off your weaknesses like Hambow does; you’re still vulnerable to CC and you’re still vulnerable when your bag of tricks runs dry(arguably even moreso because the other player controls when you run out of tricks, not you). An MM can be a tricky shellfish to crack open for the uninitiated, but once you get past the razzle dazzle of the zombie horde, you can knock them down.

It arguably has a low skill floor, depending on whether you consider finagling the fine aspects of the AI to be a measurement of skill or not. You could argue that this makes it similar to Hambow in a respect.

You bring up a good point: MM has an incredibly low skill floor, which everyone can agree with. It also has, I’d consider one of the strangest (not necessarily high) skill cap because once you are playing at the very top level, you are actually having to understand how to make your minions work for you, and not against you, and this often means using weird tricks.

Tim.6450:

I’m all for giving healing in DS, but recently I’m seeing one potential obstacle:
the blood fiend. While it is not the best healing skill , I think it can cause quite some problems.

Less of an issue than Well of Blood would be, really. The over-time healing is fairly low even for a passive heal, not to mention that a single miss is 3 seconds worth of healing gone, and it can be killed (with no way to activate the heal while in DS).

At the least, traited self-healing needs to work in DS. Things like life steal. My traits should not be countered by my main defensive mechanic, even if other sources of healing don’t work.

Let me guess, you play a build with a lot of boons and not a single condition removal or stun break and you got destroyed by a Necro?

There is no such thing as “just hit this” to get them out of DS. Look at the actual damage you do in any realistic condi build, and then compare that with how easily an ele can heal themselves back up.

This trait is just flat badly designed, stop defending it because you have an unsubstantiated anecdotal experience where it didn’t counter you. Just pure math shows that this is not balanced in a 1v1 against a condi build, and in a game about “skill” its stupid that you can have a permanent hard counter to someone’s damage source.

Scepter/anything + staff is a good condi setup, although I’d reserve using focus OH for tPvP coordinated play (dat boon strip).

Like alamore said, which game mode. Also, what kind of minion build are you looking for? Clerics + healing for bunker/support, full offensive, offensive support, chill, various hybrids, etc. There are a lot of ways to play around, especially with runes/sigils to make your build fit a niche.

WvW is almost as bad a point of balance as open world PvE is.

Your self-traited healing should work regardless, imo. No other profession hard-counters their own mechanics like this.

Ozzy Toxin.3074:

its still too easy, just like the other classes that have ai massing builds. I say delete them all and bring back the skill in the game (mm, turret engi, spirit ranger, (Mesmer would not be so bad if they couldn’t just stealth away-.-) even ele’s elemental)

ps I realise Mesmer cant be deleted =p

Except only two other professions have true AI builds, Mesmer (PU) and Engi (turret). Spirits have no AI at all, they are just slightly different banners, and no other profession can successfully run a summon build.

Also, what skill? The majority of popular builds have just as little skill as MM without all the bugs or weaknesses of MM and far more effectiveness.

Rolyate.6753:

MM is ok, but it is out of your personal control as to whether your minions survive. Thus at higher tiers, they are very easily countered.

The issue however, is the simple effectiveness of such a passive build, as certain builds find it hard to put out the aoe pressure required to kill of minions.

This isn’t at all true, if you know how to build and want to go that route (hence: knowledge intensive, not execution). If you want minions to survive though its fairly easy to make it happen.

The big issues with MM right now is the completely passive traits and the ease that they can beat certain builds with no meaningful input (as far as them being too strong situationally, there are plenty of other issues).

Refer to: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/balance/Giving-Counterplay-to-Minions/