Should they change the current ones to do that? No thanks. I’d love to have new corruption type skills that used a % of your HP though.
Axe fits best in spite is why. It deals direct damage and non-damaging conditions.
Axe is generally fine in an A/x D/x build where you can constantly swap between the two weapon sets, DS, and utility skills to not have to auto attack much, or if you are an MM and the AA is fine.
For me it can be boring because of the lack of competition and investment. I only vaguely know a very small number of teams, and almost every game involving a good team was a stomp. Also the breaks were too long, imo, you shouldn’t be having breaks almost as long as the game itself, unless you have something more than music/bad jokes to fill in the dead space.
TDM gives you the ability to do both, whereas a strict annihilation only mode doesn’t. Also TDM is more hotjoin friendly (neither would have ever made it to tPvP rotations), whereas annihilation is basically over after the first person is stomped.
The team with the largest biceps.
Our traits for lifesteal are not effective on their own, except in very large situations like a big pull of trash mobs in PvE/zerging WvW, since they scale on how many times you can deal direct damage. MM is the only build that effectively uses it because Vampiric Master (makes minions siphon HP on hit) is the more effective of siphon traits, plus they have the tankiness to stay alive a long time, and can afford to take a lot of non-trait reliant siphoning like leeching sigils.
And as I kind of mentioned it procs on every direct damage application. This means any AoE that deals direct damage can proc it 5x per second, and if you are in certain situations you can stack up the AoE and get a lot of procs.
Dungeons are still by far the fastest way to grind out a set of gear (unless you do both at the same time), I don’t see why PvErs complain about that.
First, it wasn’t strictly max damage, it only made your weapon damage equivalent to staff (staff had average 1100 weapon damage, axe had 1000, with the trait it increases by 10% to 1100), however by having two sigils you could get more damage out of axe/whatever. However now staff has two sigils as well, so with no traits staff has exactly equal damage to traited axe.
Axe 3 needs to be a blast finisher and tone down a bit the cd.
I’m assuming you mean increase the CD?
I don’t know that a necro not being in the finals had anything to do with us being weak, EU has had necro hate ever since the anti-condi meta just a bit after launch. As a result there are very, very few good necros in EU coordinated teams.
I’ve noticed that if I attack enemies from max range while my minions are still running to catch up to me, it increases the chance that they’ll stand there and do nothing. Anybody found a way to break them out of this lethargy if this happens?
Limit how much you roam with minions alive. Melee minions tend to be the issue, and I only take 1 (flesh golem) that can’t be killed at will. Limits their ability to mess up.
I believe the LB projectile actually starts a bit in front of you, and generally you have to hit people in the feet area, whereas you tend to target people in the center. So chances are you’re just unable to hit the hitbox (despite the visuals hitting).
I really think they should focus less on what is going on and more why, as you said. The reality is that everyone watching can get a very basic idea of what is going on, and if they can’t then you telling them doesn’t help. The PvP in this game is interesting because of the strategy behind it, so talk about how each team will try to win, how they are moving over the map, controlling secondary objectives, etc. because those are the things that matter, not every detail of a 1v1 that pretty much anyone can follow in general.
Also, stop with the in-jokes and constant plugs. The in-jokes don’t really add anything, the people who know the jokes are going to watch no matter what, you want to appeal to the crowd who isn’t on the in-crowd to get them into watching PvP and staying. Also, I understand you guys have twitters and stuff you want people to follow for giveaways. That is totally fine, but do it sparingly, and mainly through graphics. While you are on break you can have the casters’ twitter stuff along with details about their giveaways, so people paying attention can participate, and then you guys can do a quick thing like “and as we go on break read the screen for details on gem giveaways”.
Anyway, Blu and Sireph didn’t do a bad job. They’re basically having to teach themselves how to cast a game that is fairly difficult to cast. Just give them respectful feedback.
MMs have never been successful in any coordinated high level play ever, let alone a finals like this, yet they’ve seen at least occasional nerfs. They also just recently nerfed dumbfire in PvE despite conditions still being subpar. You’re never safe, unless you’re a warrior.
Axe shouldn’t be 900 range either. It is made to be a mid-range weapon, leave it as a mid range weapon. We could also use melee condi, melee support, melee cleave, a defensive OH, etc. as other weapon set archetypes that we don’t have right now. But those should exist as new weapons, not by trying to change one that already exists.
Axe is built around being a 600 range weapon, and it works in certain builds (mainly MM builds and PvE power builds), and even if it was fixed to be competitive it still wouldn’t fit with a range increase. Just wait for them to give us a bow, firearm, or something that actually has a kit meant to be 900-1200 range.
Just because we don’t have a 1200 range power weapon doesn’t mean that should be axe.
Axe’s issue is not its range.
Personal mechanics just aren’t that big in this game. You have quite a lot of time to do things like dodge (with 3/4s cast times it is easy to always dodge a skill so long as you know what it looks like), targeting takes nearly no skill, about half of your skills are used consistently on CD or in a pre-practiced rotation (that requires no though), the other half have very simple decisions involved (big damage incoming? press defensive button, someone out of defensive CDs? press burst buttons).
The real “difficulty” in personal play comes down to knowledge. As long as you know how and when to take actions, it is actually very easy to accomplish those actions. Compared to other types of games, you just have so much time to react and so little that requires difficult thought I can’t consider the game mechanically difficult.
PvP in GW2 is 90% team interactions and 10% being able to perform your build at a sufficient level to carry out team strategy. This is why you generally see very low risk builds in tournaments, because it allows players to reroll quickly to adapt to the best possible build for the team, instead of playing the build you are mechanically best at.
The teams who win tournaments though are not necessarily the ones with the best players. They are the ones with the best rotations, the best team comp, and the best team play.
To directly answer your question: the game just isn’t really suited for having a lot of high skillcap builds, since the skillcap is almost entirely focused into team-based things. Thieves aren’t even that hard compared to actually difficult games, its something you can pick up fairly well pretty quickly if you just devote a lot of game time to it. Certainly builds have varying amount of skill differences, but even the hardest build to play in the game isn’t that hard to play.
(edited by Bhawb.7408)
They are way better than they used to be. Their current AI is certainly bugged and annoying but workable as long as you are doing it carefully.
Gotta love how people are responding to a 6 month old post like it just happened yesterday.
Like others have said, its not about profession its about build. Also it depends a lot on you as a player, and what you find difficult. For some people ele/engineer is hard because there is a lot to learn, for others the memorization is relatively easy.
The best full siphon/healing build is going to be Cleric’s MM with A/F D/WH with some kind of healing rune (vampirism, dolyak, or one of the healing power ones), sigils of leeching/renewal on each set, and 20 into Blood Magic. Heals for days.
Outside of MM however, siphoning is never a full build, you can never fully commit to it. You are always a power build with siphoning on the side, or a condi build with siphoning, or a bunker with some siphoning; it is always a small secondary function, and the only time it works is with a significant investment in other sources of tankiness and healing.
As for what individual siphons are worthwhile to constitute a build? Sigils and runes are both universally good. Vampiric Master is good, in an MM build. Vampiric is fine, assuming you had sufficient reason to go that deep into Blood Magic already. Vampiric Precision/Vampiric Rituals are both really subpar and should only ever be used in a build which has a crapton of other healing sources.
Also note that these tend to get much better the more you have. For example sigil of leeching is decent on its own, but it is still only 975 damage/healing, which probably won’t get you to another rotation of anything to keep you alive. However, with one on each set, plus sigils of renewal, plus siphoning minions, plus vampiric, plus dagger 2, plus some healing runes, topped off with healing power, your healing sources actually carry you to another rotation of healing sources, which then carry you to others and so on. So while each proc might be small, the sum of the procs allows you to stay alive long enough for even more proc’ing.
-Minion Master had telegraphed attacks
-Didn’t achieve most of it’s DPS from passive damage
-Wasn’t absurdly tanky compared to the damage it put out
-Relied on properly timed active abilities to succeed
I agree with the telegraphing because generally its non existent, although in some cases they would require buffs for that to be the case, such as Rigor Mortis which is a weaker Pin Down with double the CD. But Rigor Mortis needs a better telegraph, as does Flesh Golem, otherwise the rest have appropriate telegraphing for the effect of the skill.
Also, maximum DPS is not achieved through passive play, you have to actively use your CC to get the minions in range, otherwise the other person can literally run in a circle and never get hit by a melee minion. Every minion relies on their actives being landed for the minion to have maximum effect, all of the minions are absolutely awful without their actives. This is why Shadow Fiend never saw the light of day until people started using him solely for his blind (with the LF being a nice addition). As for the unblockable explosions; you control when they die, you understand the danger and tradeoffs (leaving minion alive vs taking death nova), and the trait requires a 30 point investment that forces the MM to exclude either 25% damage increase or condition removal. That trait is entirely under your control, if you eat the damage its due solely to your own actions.
Using the exact same build and trait allocation, but without my minions having offensive traits, they have almost the same DPS as my dagger spam with cleric’s amulet and healing power runes; they are just a tiny bit higher (about 1-2 seconds faster kill on a heavy golem). Essentially I am investing most of my trait points, all my utility skills, my elite skill, and some of my runes/sigils to get a return of a cleric auto attack worth of passive damage.
I can’t speak for the other AI builds, as only two of them are remotely viable (and both operate in vastly different manners), however MM is just fine as it is, and will be perfect once it gets adjustments to its AI, telegraphing, visual clutter, and small trades of passive damage to active.
(edited by Bhawb.7408)
Has there ever been any official word on whether this is intentional? I did some searches and came up empty. It certainly feels like a bug. GW1 minions felt far more reliable; GW2 minions seem to spend 80% of their time on coffee break….
Its a bug, AI has gone through a ton of changes since launch. This is about the third most reliable its been, although originally it was only “reliable” because they tried to murder anything and everything in sight. However with the current AI system they used to be a bit more reliable.
According to people I’ve talked to, one of the issues is how GW2 is coded. It has a lot of things that inherit their functions from other things, and this leads to a lot of issues where changing one thing changes everything else.
AI builds are almost always worse in PvE than PvP. They are also widely unviable in coordinated play. AI itself isn’t an issue, just keep pushing the passive play into more active (a la Bone Minions being awful without landing Putrid Explosion), reduce the visual clutter, and increase readability of certain skills.
Pretend that the skill doesn’t exist… its that bad.
+1
+1
Seriously, I didn’t even unlock the skill because its worthless. The only situations where it might be worth running are situations where the fight is so easy you don’t need a real healing skill.
They won’t remove them because there is nothing inherently wrong with the builds. The only issue is if they are too dominating, like spirit ranger was.
They could still use to a bit more of the power to the active abilities and away from their passive, reducing visual clutter, and generally increasing the readability of their actives. But as it stands no AI build has ever been tournament viable except spirit ranger.
You also took 37 ticks of bleeding, 21 ticks of burning, and 18 ticks of poison. You have no excuse to have allowed 18 seconds of fear.
It isn’t a bug, its an intentional design choice. GW1 we couldn’t even tell them what to attack.
Death Nova is 30 point death magic trait. Every time one of your minions dies or you get downed, a poison cloud erupts from the corpse, leaving a poison field and doing fairly significant damage.
Well of Suffering, Corrupt Boon, Blood is Power, although that list would change a bit depending on perspective.
To my knowledge no good MM tutorial videos are out there. Not even sure there are any decent MM videos at all really.
I’ve had flesh golem and bone minions stop when I roam from home to mid and jump over things that they have to walk around. There are ways to work around it, but yes its a bit annoying. I’d probably notice it more if I ran more than 1 minion with decent uptime.
So I can see why people are complaining, it just took me forever to notice it because of my playstyle.
In a minion build Fetid Consumption always. Otherwise I’d say if you can expect decent uptime on 2 minions then Fetid, otherwise Unholy.
- How would you rate Necro Minions in order of most valuable to least valuable and why?
Flesh Golem (duh) – deals significantly higher DPS than any minion, perma cripple with only 20% condition/cripple duration, plus his active is super strong AoE CC, plus in some rare situations it deals stupid amounts of damage/life steals a lot
Bone Minions (traited w/ Death Nova) – 100% poison uptime, 50% weakness uptime, both of which are AoE, very large burst damage, all on super short CD and nearly impossible for the enemy to purposely dodge
Flesh Wurm – shortest CD stunbreak, highest single target hit (decent DPS as well), plus gives the strongest mobility, and can save your butt. also is ranged so never dies and has projectile finishers
Bone Fiend – guaranteed CC, plus look above for why ranged minions are really strong, and this guy has some cripple (kiting) and double projectiles
Shadow Fiend – good active for sPvP securing stomps, also really good LF generation, but with a long activation time, also melee so deals less overall damage because he’s going to be kited/die more
Bone Minions (untraited) – low passive DPS (like really low), low HP, the untraited damage is only about 3k every 20s
Blood Fiend – just passive HP regen, doesn’t scale, low active healing. just doesn’t do a whole lot except for fun
- What is each minion’s role? Are Bone Minions relevant?
Basically answered above
- What is a MM Necro’s general fighting style (I doubt it’s simply: “summon minions, roll face.”). What weapons do they use and what are their defenses?
Depends on the player/build. Generally its either about being really tanky and killing the enemy with long CC chains and bursting them, or having a ton of sustain and basically waiting for your enemy to die on their own. Staff, dagger MH, axe, focus, warhorn are all used. Defenses are DS, CC, generally high HP/armor, and healing (depending on build).
- How vulnerable is a MM Necro with no minions?
Again depends on build. Right after your minions die is actually the biggest spike in defenses for current MMs due to LF gains/death nova. It only matters if your minions are consistently dead one after the other.
- What conditions to Necromancer have most easiest access to?
In general? Bleed/poison. Compared to other class? Fear/poison/maybe weakness
Its not an issue of WoP being bad, its an issue of the other stunbreaks being better for condi necros (which is the context of this thread). Positioning yourself relatively out of danger and kiting is the best way to stay alive to deal damage, because you are easy to train down. WoP doesn’t do anything for you in this way, it only breaks the stun off you, and a lot of people will have follow up stuns. You should already have a ton of cleansing as condi necro, plus the constant application of bleeds from pretty much anything means WoP often doesn’t even get deep into your condi stacks.
SA will almost negate damage while active
SWalk will allow you to run and kite far more easily, plus give you a second break
Flesh Wurm instantly creates distance, and in teh right location will put you on top of walls that the person attacking you will have trouble getting up
Plague Signet instantly transfers all your conditions to the enemy, often giving them stacks of cripple/chill/immob to kite
There is no situation where I’d ever bring WoP on a condi build.
Its actually really easy to get crit chance if you want it. The new sigils of intelligence give you three guaranteed crits to work with per weapon swap, and you could potentially go into SR for DS crits, also rune of the pack would work really well with an offensive minion setup. However, yes the healing power is important because it gives you the ability to have staying power, that is the large difference between soldiers (relies on the higher damage of your first few rotations) and clerics (you just kind of not die until the enemy dies).
Also I wouldn’t use this for point holding. If you are going offensive you want to go with your team to the mid fight and murder the bunker, or invade the enemy home point.
The issue with any kind of more damage focused MMs is that you become a bit too reliant on your first all in, which isn’t necessarily reliable. That said, I am going to try Valk MM and see if I can’t make a more damage focused necro work for fun (although I wouldn’t expect it to do as well).
WoP just isn’t worth it for a condi necro. If you are power its a different story, but every other stunbreak gives you more as a condi necro. You don’t need cleansing, you don’t need to stand in one area, and you should never be on point to benefit the team that way. The other stun breaks give far more ability to kite and avoid being trained down, and that is way better.
Shadow Fiend is just fine because if you are good on the timing he can secure stomps pretty well, but I’d only ever replace Bone fiend with him. I would never drop Flesh Wurm from my build because it is insanely important to have a stunbreak in PvP, plus that instant movement is one of the only ways to allow you to do something other than sit your collective butts on home point all game. With Wurm in the right area you can roam mid or nearby objectives and just keep a general eye on home, and get a 1200 distance quick jump to home, and if someone is there DS 2/WH 5 gets you there easily.
Minions deal 1.5k – 2k DPS fully traited, assuming they hit every single attack with the target standing still and all minions alive. Also over 1/3rd of the damage is centered on Flesh Golem, so if you kill a single minion you can lower the minion DPS to sub 1k if you aren’t a zerker thief.
It is very easy to do nothing and still succeed at low levels. I’m all for shifting large amounts of power over from passive to actives, however I really don’t think people would stop there. They’d just realize that any decent MM is just as strong if not stronger, and then finally it might dawn on them that they never actually wanted balance in the first place, they just wanted to have an easier fight. As it is now the truly strong minions are the ones that are already like this (bone minions are by far the strongest non-elite minion, and blood fiend, the most passive, is absolute garbage).
This is exactly what soloQ is for.
Yes, passive play is bad.
So lets remove all signets from the game, lets remove banners, anything that is summoned, boons, conditions, defensive specs, healing, auto attacks, any proc that doesn’t rely on you pressing a button, any buff, all AoE, and downed state, and we’ll all just have berzerker only naked power builds 5v5 mid (unless 5v5 is too hard, we can change that too) and whoever has the largest kitten at the the end wins.
Seriously though, these topics are old, ANet obviously isn’t going to nerf AI just because clicking the right target is too hard for you, or because your super skillful build is actually awful.
In this case at least, Necro downed state has been bugged before, including this exact skill. It would not be surprising if the bug returned.
Makes sense, I have a lot of AoE healing (transfusion, water runes, renewal sigils, regen) and less melee minions, so the cleave isn’t as scary to me (he might be able to cleave out flesh golem), but I lack the removal and range you do so a condi necro can possibly kite and out damage me. So its basically the opposte for me, I just train down the power Necro and Condi ones tend to have more fight.
Well of Power is a stunbreak
I’ve had multiple games with leavers recently. Generally if your team gets any kind of big early advantage (like getting 200-100 and having secured most objectives on the map) there’s a good chance someone will rage quit. It doesn’t always happen, but I’ve had 3v5s and 4v5s a few times, and honestly it ruins the game for 9 people (because its boring as hell to 5v4 as the team with 5).
The reality is that the debuff should always apply regardless of your reason for leaving. Also AFKers should have an equal punishment, based off player reports and also automated systems (check to see if they’ve contributed recently).
What does the PvP rank mean now??? If you cant do anything specific to your rank or if you can’t show it to other players what does it mean to the player?
Its the stuff you unlock with each new level, plus the feeling of “progression”. That’s about it really, and honestly that’s mostly all its ever been.
Its melee minions only, and its only a problem when you have pre-summoned them before the fight, and even then they tend to get involved at some point.
My suggestion: don’t pre-summon minions when you can help it. It is actually sometimes better to do this anyway if you’re planning to melee the target, but I believe its an issue of their aggro/pathing gets so messed up it just takes a long time for them to get with the program and start attacking. This is also why I only have 2 melee minions in my build, and one of them I can blow up whenever I want to reset their AI.
I feel that power and condi necros are good against mm necros… or is it that i never encounter a decent mm necro?
Power Necros shouldn’t stand a chance against MMs. You just don’t have the damage to drop the MM quickly enough, and MMs have so much CC you’ll have major issues staying on target. The best you can do is try to cleave down the minions, and even that won’t be possible all the time depending on the MM’s spec.
Condi Necros definitely have the ability to kill MMs, although it is (I would consider) an even matchup. It depends heavily on who gets the first hits in, and if you have epidemic or not. I haven’t personally lost this 1v1 any time recently, but also most condi necros shouldn’t really be 1v1ing anyway.