Guild Wars 2

What I would define as oppressive would be any mechanic that exists to discourage melee combat overall. Thus, where the difficulty in removing stacking is. With small bosses we get players standing on each other by default. It is difficult to come up with an option where all the players can melee an enemy, but not be standing on top of each other while they do it. It is also difficult to do this in a non-punishing manner. Heck, even the ideas of player based damage auras end up discouraging at least one player from meleeing.

IndigoSundown.5419:

Maybe I don’t often repeat the on-farm dungeons that everyone seems to base their comments against stacking on. My experience in dungeons has been that while there are similarities in mob design, and some dungeon bosses seem like big sacks of health that don’t do much, there are other bosses that punish the mindless stacking that gets folks upset. So, I’m not sure it’s fair to base an evaluation of stacking on bosses with simple AI or who lack AoE — because they aren’t all that way.

That’s not to say that AI in general couldn’t use improvement. However, taking away existing farm paths or turning them into harder paths that get under-utilized (TA AP, I’m looking at you) is not a good idea. Leave these paths alone, and generate new dungeons with different mechanics, and which might require some variety in tactics. Half the problem with dungeons is habituation anyway, so adding new paths would allow for both new challenges and new mechanics.

Stacking is an issue where it is, and not an issue where it isn’t. There is very little reason to fix stacking in places where people aren’t stacking. Abridged the quote to save space.

While TA Spider path was the least run dungeon in the game, you do bring up a conflict that exists in the game right now: drastically different scales of difficulty. Players, wanting to easily acquire money, will take the path to least resistance by default. This means that they will run paths where the simplest tactics work, and avoid places where it doesn’t.

Many game designers embrace this philosophy, and begin something that I call farm creep. Like power creep or spectacle creep, farm creep is the tendency for developers, wanting players to always like new content or always play new content, will constantly make new content that has more and higher rewards than ever before. When this is done over and over again, you end up with a great divide between rewards of different content. This, of course, leads to a lack of diversity in gameplay and massive inflation.

Excluding content en masse from tweaks in enemy behavior doesn’t solve the problems that stacking causes. Instead, this just causes a new problem of difficulty shock in new content. Thus, to resolve the issue, the changes need to be done on a nearly global scale to the game. And yes, by making things in the game require more actions and more coordination, the game will become more difficult overall.

What must also be stated is that I am not against raising rewards to compensate for this difficulty. In fact, that seems like a proper way to balance the discouragement of difficulty with the incentive of monetary compensation.

The WvW segment isn’t directed at anybody in particular. Mostly because I can’t really find a good person to quote for this.

Now, while stacking in WvW has the similar aesthetic and entertainment issues as PVE, it is a bit different. For one, the engagement of WvW is much higher than PVE, so that isn’t as much of an issue. For two, mass war isn’t going to be particularly organized or pretty.

But… I chose not to talk about it here, for a very simple reason: WvW has a series of constraints and issues that make it so fixing stacking and zerg balls by proxy is often an issue of hardware limitations and class balance. Things like player collision in PVP, AoE damage limits, buff limits, and culling have issues how fast the servers can process information, and how quickly it can be sent to players, and how well player computers can process information.

Running around in PVE doesn’t have this problem. And now for something completely unrelated.

Sartharina.3542:

I’d rather have all NPC attacks be cleaving at point-of-impact, just like all/most player attacks seem to be – If you’re all in the same place, you all get hit equally. There don’t have to be particularly devastating, dedicated “Stack Breakers”. Having anyone who’kittenbox is in the same space as an attack box get hit is a simple, intuitive fix to the problem that puts NPCs on the same footing as PCs. Ranged weapons should only pierce a distance equal to the projectile’s range, though, unless full piercing is a trait of the boss. It might still result in player “Clustering” for boon and res purposes, but they’d probably actively avoid trying to be in the exact same spot to avoid focused but still-omnihitting enemy attacks.

I do like that ranged limit idea as well.

In the overworld you don’t see many cleaving attacks, but in dungeons you’ll find that the majority of enemy attacks are, indeed, cleaves. The issue lies in frequency: enemies have slow attacks, meaning that they are easily dodged/blocked/blinded and many times even face tanked.

If the attack frequency was higher, then stacking in one spot would be more dangerous. However, doing this with enemies below champion rank can be quite difficult, as these enemies have a habit of swarming players, and giving them too much of a stack breaker would just mean instant death to meleers in general, and not just stacking. It’s hard to encircle an army, after all.

AlexEBT.7240:

At the end of the day these dungeons must be run multiple times. Can you see yourself running molten facilty and aetherblade retreat, every day, multiple paths for tokens or money and not get fed up with the mechanics at one point? Cause that’s what happened with the aether path :P

The Aetherblade is my favorite dungeon path, and I like to run it for fun on occasion. I usually encounter a different issue with that dungeon, and it isn’t because players are any more bored with the path than any other.

The Aether path, in all it difficulty, doesn’t get taught or run that frequently. Because of this, any random group that you make on the Aetherpath is going to be full of newbs and n00bs who are undergeared, don’t know much about game mechanics, don’t know much about dungeons, and have never had to follow directions before. Because of this, the players have a bad and slow time in that dungeon, and carry that bad experience with them wherever they go.

Repeat this with pretty much any hard path, and you get a frightened population that regale each other with more terrifying tales. I went and got dungeon master recently, and I got it by actually doing the Arah paths myself. I didn’t want to buy the paths, because I am a MAN despite what all the cheerleaders in highschool who rejected me say. For someone who was new to the dungeon, it was grueling because all the people who are experienced with the dungeon cut themselves off from the rest of the playerbase, leaving only a largely inexperienced group who are undergeared and unprepared for what is to come. In my first runs of these paths, I actually found myself teaching the path to the rest of my n00b armada, because I was the only guy who read a guide and watched videos on what to do.

That said, I think a big distinction needs to be made between good mechanics, and bad ones. Something like the dredge fractal is a pain, because it is poorly designed overall. This poor design incidentally also discourages stacking, and so people come to relate the idea of anti-stacking mechanics with imposing, oppressive game mechanics. But, if someone can make things merely interesting, and not just oppressive, then the community’s reception will be much more favorable.

Dark Catalyst.1028:

This is an ultra casual game focused on looks and armor skins, so of course the PvE is going to be shallow and unrewarding. Some people like the game just the way it is, OP. No need to make the game “harder” because it’s not the right environment for it.

When I want my PvE fix, I go to games which do it better.

Hence, why I try to avoid draconian changes. I… think I’m using that word right. With the debate on the casual-ity level of the game aside, the issue with stacking is both in aesthetics and entertainment, and these aren’t without consequence.

Entertainment: A lot of people find the whole stacking thing boring and repetitive. Now, while I find many people who like stacking, this is usually because of reasons tangentially related: they like high DPS, they like the feeling of power, they like the ease at which it is done, and they like the insurance of being less likely to be sabotaged by n00bs. While this can all be accomplished without everyone standing on one spot, gathering together is just so much easier mentally.

The complaints with stacking are also a different issue. Boring and repetition comes from a lack of intricacy in enemy design, which encourages all encounters to be handled the exact same way. This simplicity betrays the game, since repetition is boring, and bored people go somewhere else to be entertained.

Aesthetics: Without the identity and visible agency, players find themselves awash in a sea of unrecognizeable polygons and flashy effects. They don’t look like a hero, they don’t feel like a hero, and they don’t feel engaged. This also makes a large portion of the game ugly and unappealing to look at. From an outside perspective, watching the game looks like this

a)Players stand in a spot
b)Enemies come around a corner
c)Big splash of blinding particle effects and damage splats
d)Everything is dead, and I have learned nothing about the game

This discourages future purchases from prospective buyers. It is a double whammy on the wallet: players get bored and leave, and new players don’t want to join up. So, while stacking isn’t an issue of functionality, it is an issue that Anet should be concerned about nonetheless.

CETheLucid.3964:

Hm. I was expecting some manner of BS or doublespeak. Maybe I’ll pry it out of you yet!

You sure do post a lot about a game you find stale and boring. I find that’s a trend with folks who think as you do.

There’s something you like about this game, something that brings you back here, or else you wouldn’t bother.

Friends? Or do you really just enjoy the forums that much?

Little secret: I’m not actually playing the game right now either. Do not think too negatively of this: talking about the game and playing the game are two different things. Sometimes, people want to do only one or the other. For many reasons, really.

Ah yes, the good ole “dredge” argument. For those who are unaffiliated, the dredge argument goes like this:

“The dredge are hated because they are harder than the other factions in the game. Therefore, the harder you make enemies in the game, the more like dredge they become, and thus the more people will hate the game”.

This is an argument for complacency and the status quo. But, one must look hard at the game, and ask the question as to why people have this expectation in the first place. The majority of the game is full of rather simplistic enemy groups that have no active or passive defenses, and whose total strategy can be summarized in 3 words or less under their health bar. Players are people, despite what all the cheerleaders who rejected me in highschool said. And as people, they recognize patterns on a subconscious level, and develop a set of expectations based on those patterns.

It is ultimately a self reinforcing problem: people expect the game to be easy and simple because it is easy and simple, and thus embrace a lazier playstyle. Were the game designed differently, players would develop different expectations, and thus wouldn’t have an issue with dredge.

In general, my arguments against complacency usually goes as follows: Don’t be like that, then.

And now, to respond to players and stuff!

Kaiyanwan.8521:

IMO, stacking is the reason why the DEVs don’t ever give us new dungeon content.

It trivializes all dungeon content. It also makes fights incredibly boring. Stack in that corner, burn down the boss.
The DEVs seem to not be able to work around it, so they just don’t introduce more dungeons. Seriously, one path replacing an older one in what, 19 monthes now?

I think this was, in part, problems with dissolving the dungeon team and a focus of different priorities rather than it was about being unable to solve the problem. There were other issues around at that time, and TA-A attempted to solve these via gates and movement challenges. Many of the boss mechanics in that dungeon attempt to encourage all players being in melee range. Incidentally, this also encourages stacking to a large degree.

Also, there are many additions via fractals, which is basically a randomized dungeon with scaling difficulty.

I said this in another thread, and I’ll say this again: One of the biggest issues with necromancers in team play is that dark fields suck. Blind on blast and leap is useless since one of the dark fields just spams blinds already. Life steal on projectile and whirl finisher is alright in theory, but without solid numbers on how much damage they do or how much healing it does, this might be something nigh useless.

My idea is to inflict vulnerability on blast and leap with dark fields. That way, when players inevitably start fighting inside of a necro well, all of their blasts and leaps will increase damage instead of just spamming unnecessary blinds. It won’t be as useful as the fire field, but at least it won’t be utterly useless.

I call the ascended materials a tax on inventory space. If you intend to keep the materials, you have to buy materials to convert them. If you don’t want to buy the materials, you have to eat up your bank/inventory space with all of the materials. But if you don’t keep the materials and just trash them, if someone should decide to make ascended in the future, you have to go grinding for materials again.

All in all, not the most user friendly implementation IMO.

I like to rep carrion myself. Enough power to do direct damage, enough malice to do condi damage. Since shrapnel isn’t proc based, I just load myself with might stacking runes and go grenadier.

I considered putting this in the dungeon forum, but there is stacking in other places of the game. There, it is more affectionately called “zerging” due to how many players are usually involved, but you’ll also see these tactics in living world content. There can also be stacking in non-dungeon content if the devs make more of that, which they probably will.

The ideas for mob design aren’t limited to dungeons, either. I can easily see the distance flag and directional dependent damage in the overworld.

#4: WHAT ARE THE SOLUTIONS and WHY ARE YOU SAYING THERE SHOULD BE SOLUTION WHEN YOU SAY STACKING ISN’T A PROBLEM!!11!1!NEEEEAAAAAHHHH

The thing with stacking being counter-intuitive to standard game design and feeling awkward and all that is still a bit of an issue. This isn’t just an issue of fun, but an issue of presentation: if I show someone I want to play some videos on guild wars 2, then watching a bunch of players gather into an indecipherable blob and then smash a gigantic bear head against a wall… it just isn’t a good look.

The other thing about solving this issue is that there’s very little you can do without going all third world dictator on how people play the game. The bosses in this game aren’t too big. Take Agent Bela from Arah p2, for example. She’s just a regular asura, so if all the players go to melee her, it is night impossible to not stack.

So, for solutions, I propose more interesting boss mechanics, and more diverse mob AI.

For example: If there is a mob that likes to attack at range, give this mob a flag where they will always try to be at least 600 units away from any player, and treat this as a hard line that mob will refuse to cross. That way, when they come upon enemies stacking in a corner, they will orbit at a distance to get in range, instead of just running up to the players.

Another idea: make a boss that has a directionally dependent damage reduction: all direct damage from the front is reduced by 90%, due to heavy armor or a big shield or whatever. Then, players will have to encircle the boss, so that only one player gets reduced damage while the other 4 get full damage.

Another idea, give a boss an extremely dangerous and frequent melee cleave attack, but make it so he alternates targets after every use. That way, players will have to surround the boss, because otherwise his attacks will plow through nearly any defense.

A good example in-game is the wraiths from Arah p4, where you have to stand in different circles to attack the boss. If you get more enemies that require spacing, like a gigantic plant monster who’s buds only open for a moment at different corners of the map, but need to be attacked so there isn’t a map wide heavy DoT, then you can encourage being in different directions.

The player locked damage fields that certain bosses use (Golems in Sorrows Embrace and Fire Shaman) are also decent examples, but their attacks can be dodged. Another idea is a boss that constantly streams lightning to players and polarizes them, so that if oppositely charged players are nearby (radius = 300), they’ll receive a high DoT. That way, if this is on a fairly large sized boss, players can alternate which sides they melee.

The solutions to problems should make the game more interesting, and not just limit how people can play. I can’t stress this point enough. Now, if you aren’t going to argue my undeniably more-awesome-than-yours wisdom on matter, or if you don’t want to praise my gigantic wisdomly wisdom, then I’d like to make this a thread where people can post and critique their own ideas on how to make enemies more interesting in a manner that rewards dynamic placement and activity with bosses.

Because if we can’t come up with ideas, then how do we expect Anet to come up with ideas?

We engis are pretty chill overall. It’s been known around our forums for awhile that we’re one of the most satisfied professions.

The engineer is a hard niche to fill. It isn’t easy to play, and unless you understand the game’s mechanics well, you’ll never be good at the engineer. The engineer also isn’t a bread and butter “role” based class, so most people have no idea which direction to take it. That is why so few people start with the engi. It was like this on launch day in the west, too.

Anyway, engineers in zergs aren’t bad, so long as you keep a few things in mind:

#1: Be flexible. Don’t keep your utilities or traits the same, as attacking keeps, attacking zergs, defending keeps, and escaping all require different tactics.
#2: Be mobile. The most important thing to note in zerg combat is not to be out of place. Otherwise, you’ll get trained down.
#3: Know the class well. You have to always know the following: combo fields, blast finishers, how to swap kits quickly, and which utilities are useful in different circumstances.

That said, the engi can be quite useful. They have 1500 range on grenades, so they can attack from afar. They have a wide radius on bombs, which also provide the useful might and stealth stacking combo fields. The mobility on elixir gun and rocket boots provides useful escapes, as well as blast finishers. They have an invulnerability skill, a stealth skill, a few blocks, a few reflects, AoE heal + condi cleanse + water field, permanent swiftness uptime, reflects, heals, and if used rights a well placed turret can signify an enemy zerg around the corner. Engineers can do both direct damage and condition damage, and can do these both at the same time as well. They also have bouncing attacks.

But… they can’t do this all at once. So, change your utilities and change them often. The only thing I recommend be on your bar permanently is the grenade kit, since it is useful nearly everywhere. Now, for the weaknesses of engineers:

#1: Engis don’t really have good stun breakers. Elixir S is good if you are about to be trained, but otherwise most of our stun breakers are kind of meh. You’re weak to control, so beware this.

#2: Retaliation is murderous to us. Engineer DPS is about multiple hits, so things like static discharge and grenades can cause an engi to slap themselves to death. Funny thing, we’re decent at granting retaliation, so an engi’s weakness is another engi…

All in all, engineers are an underrated class that can fulfill nearly any role.

Don’t you know it isn’t enough to just win? I have to let people know that they are worse than me in all manner of existence. That’s what all the real winners do.

When skipping fails, there is always the nuclear option: squash the bugs then continue on your merry way.

If they are still in the LFG, you can acquire their names by scrolling over the LFG. I did this once when a team kicked me for bringing an engineer (even though I myself was the host).

It’s harder than it sounds, considering that there are entire industries based off of getting through account protection.

I would hesitate to confuse inaction with inadequate action. I don’t know how it is with Anet, but I’ve never seen an MMO that doesn’t ban gold sellers. The problem is, gold sellers reproduce faster than they can be banned.

Right now, I think one of the biggest issues in-game at the is PVE balance and execution.

#1: There is nothing in-game to teach players how to play the game. Anets philosophy on this is to increase difficulty, and expect people to figure it out on their own. This doesn’t work: it just discourages players from playing the game. There needs to be an in-game tutorial that teaches players about blocking and dodging, the absence of hard roles, about combo fields, about telegraphs, and particular class basics.

#2: The condition cap puts a hard limit on the contribution of condi based builds and classes. Again, this is not something Anet tells players, but something players observe.

#3: Unblockable and undodgeable attacks don’t have any special indication of their nature. Players have to learn what is unblockable and undodgeable by getting their face smashed in by these attacks, and then trying to remember that experience for the rest of their lives.

#4: PVE enemy behavior is incredibly basic, which causes DPS to be the best way to play the game.

#5: The way leveling and scaling works in the game is so disjointed that lower level zones are a bore now.

For sPVP:

#1: Lack of game modes. Conquest is fun… for awhile.

#2: Lack of maps. Variety is the spice of life.

#3: Guild vs. Guild is needed.

I just wonder why Anet designed the events so that succeeding in defense has much lower rewards than succeeding in attack. That right there is a recipe for disaster.

In general, you’ll want to go power > precision > ferocity. However, as the thief has both precision and ferocity in the same trait line…

I actually get this sometimes, too. Little backstory: I run with pugs only. Too hectic a schedule to keep up with any guild schedules or requirements. And, as an exclusive pug runner, I don’t run meta builds that often, and for very good reason: Meta builds are “meta” for highly coordinated groups, who have predefined roles and operate under a set of tactics that aren’t achieved in standard play.

With pugs, you don’t get that kind of insurance. Will the group stack or scramble around at range? Does this group have appropriate gear, or they running around in greens? Is this group full of healers, or are they running DPS? Is this direct damage or condi damage? If they are new to the encounter, are they going to run ahead or hang back in timid fear? Does this group know how combo fields work, or is my might stacking on engi/ele a magic trick to them? Because of this, I have to run builds that opt for maximizing utility and having potent defenses, since I need to be capable of handling any situation that arises.

What annoys me is when players start demanding that I change my build and change my playstyle with no prior discussion on the matter. When I see an LFG that says “meta builds” I don’t join up, for obvious reason above. But as of late, I have been getting random pugs that will start demanding that I play my thief/ele a particular way, using particular weapons and a particular build, then kitten incessantly if I have to stop to change my whole loadout for their sake, or if I don’t run what they demand I do. And half of the time, their reasoning is completely wrong, such as demanding inappropriate weapons for sections, or saying that support skills are useless because they already have a dedicated tank/support player.

Thankfully I haven’t had one of them join my “all welcome” groups. Because if they did, I might make an exception and kick them.

I think we need to look past just being unique, but also being the most potent in something. A lot of classes get their mark for doing things that other classes do, but just doing it best. If we can give necromancers a “best role” without dethroning the use of another class, then this would be sufficient as well. Currently, necromancers have spots of support, but nearly everything is done better by another class. The one thing necros can do that is unique, which is the mass condi spreading, isn’t particularly useful due to how infrequently it can be done.

Now, as for my ideas…

#1: We need more combo finishers. Staff #1, Life Blast, and Deathly Claws should be projectiles finishers (20%), while Spectral Grasp should be a 100% finisher. Enfeebling Blood, Weakening Shroud, Tainted Shackles, and Unholy Feast should be blast finishers. This isn’t something “unique” as much as something that is really needed for necromancers to have potency in the game. This increases weakness application, and also ties in with my second suggestion:

#2: Dark Fields need to not suck. The blind on blast/blind on leap should be replaced with 3 vulnerability (5 seconds) on blast, and 5 vulnerability (5 seconds) on leap. Combine this with more finishers, and this greatly increases a necromancer’s contribution to the team.

#3: Necros need a unique buff. I’d replace one of the new grandmasters with a new trait: Malicious Aura. Effect: gives all nearby teammates 150 additional condition damage (radius 600). Now, the hard part is choosing which one to replace, since they’re all so bad…

Thats all I have for now. I could get really crazy and creative with these things, but I like to keep it simple.

Being tied to kits, the engineer utility slots have the highest competition out of any of the classes. In this sense, the greatest asset of engineers is also their most limiting. Engineers are balanced around multi-kit use, so if you don’t use multiple kits, then the engineer becomes severely limited. While it may seem like an engineer can do anything, this is only true so long as your opponent doesn’t know what your setup is.

Likewise, engineer skills suffer from mediocrity issues. While you speak about always having a counter on hand, the fact is that engineers lack anything potent enough to be a true “counter” to most players. Sure, engineers get a blind field for meleers, but it isn’t nearly as strong as the blinds doled out by thieves. Sure, engineers get knockbacks, but they can’t chain-stun players to death like warriors and mesmers. Sure, engineers get condis, but they can’t burst players down like Necros can. Sure, they get stealth, but they can’t pick and choose their fights like thieves or even mesmers. Sure, they have some movement skills, but not as much as the elementalist or the warrior.

Etc. and so on. Also, engineers almost always have some big holes in their setups. For one, engineers have few and bad stun breakers, leading to engis getting chain stunned to death. A lot. Second, engis don’t have good condi cleanse, so they frequently get torn up by necromancers and rangers. Third, engineers have bad boon removal, so they often get stuck fighting opponents at their strongest. This is pretty severe, since retaliation chews through most engineers quite quickly.

The grass is always greener on the other side.

Stealth and run. Pick your battles, so you’re always fighting with an advantage. Also, you only get the revealed debuff if you attack while in stealth, so if you become visible through stealth running out, you can re-enter stealth immediately. This means you can weave back and forth, bombing with Cloak and Dagger while being nearly completely invisible.

It’s one of those weird things that humanity does in general. See: spectator effect. It is also the reason why no one speaks up in class at college.

To form the party is to take leadership, to take initiative, and to take a role of responsibility. Many people don’t like this, for many unsaid and subconscious reasons:

#1: As group leader, failure is considered your fault. People don’t want to risk looking like a failure.

#2: Groups are forming all of the time. People won’t form one because they’re expecting the next one to be right around the corner.

#3: The leader is expected to discipline unruly members, and many people don’t want to be harsh or judgmental to other people. They would rather avoid conflict.

#4: The leader is expected to be experienced and knowledgeable in the game, capable of solving problems as they arise. Many people have neither experience, knowledge, or problem solving skills.

#5: Many players don’t know what being a leader entails. They attribute leadership skills to wizardry, not knowing that we’re making it up as we go along. They don’t feel qualified to be a leader, so they don’t step up.

#6: Being a leader requires you to be in conflict with other leaders. Again, they want to avoid conflict.

All in all, it just isn’t worth the effort and risk to get to a dungeon a minute quicker.

Now, then there is the other elephant in the room, which is about player trends and behaviors in dungeons. Now, with these issues, the whole “just form your own group” thing is actually a red herring. These complaints are community based, and represent a trend with negative consequences to the community itself. Because of this, forming a party with x special circumstance does absolutely nothing to solve the problem.

Spoj The Second.7680:

@Blood
6/6/0/0/2 yields the highest dps for power necros now. I assume you either thought it was unchanged or followed Brazils video guides. Brazils video is out of date and inaccurate. 6/5/0/0/3 is only better when you have a ranger providing spotter.

I never said it was the highest DPS build. Last Gasp is an awesome defensive trait that I recommend power necros always take, except in special circumstances.

So I see Wooden Potatoes has broken the game somehow.

Cool. Don’t go changin’, wood.

The best thing necros have going for them is superior statistical bulk. Their high HP and Death Shroud gives them the highest scaled HP. They also have quite a bit of relative healing if you stack their lifeforce regen skills right.

Problem is… this is rarely useful in higher end PVE. The vast majority of bosses require you to dodge/block/LoS attacks, and they do so much damage that they can smash right through your 30k starting HP. In the overworld, and against bosses that can’t one-shot you, this high amount of face-tanking bulk is great, but the lack of active defenses otherwise can be a serious drawback.

Power necro’s playstyle is quite passive and low-key, giving me a nice break from my usual ele/engi/thief playstyle. The most complicated maneuver you’ll have to do is something called DS flashing, where you pop Death Shroud to absorb a dangerous attack, then immediately drop out of DS to continue doing damage. Otherwise, most necro play is using the auto attack, using reaper’s touch and locust swarm when it is off cooldown, and using niche utilities as they are needed.

Condi necros are a bit more active, since they rely on bursting conditions for epidemic. However, due to how conditions work, and how quickly enemies can die in PVE, it is not recommended to use a condi build.

So, power build is the way to go. I recommend full berserker, even for beginners, since necros have a lot of statistical bulk. For traits, I recommend 6/5/0/0/3 for the majority of content. For weapons, I’d recommend axe/focus and dagger/warhorn until you get the hang of things, then drop the axe and just main-hand the dagger the whole time. Utilities are usually a case by case basis, but personally I like to use consume conditions, well of darkness, well of suffering, signet of spite, and flesh golem.

This kind of protests speaks more about you than it does about the map. If you want something changed or improved, the worst way to do it is to appear as whiny as possible.

Don’t quote me on this, but I think this was done as a response to a rather infamous bug, where a karma merchant was selling gear for pennies on the dollar relatively. People exploited this, got banned, and it was a big mess.

Now, we can’t do anything.

When running a grenadier build, my damage can vary quite wildly. It is anywhere from 900 per nade to 1500 per nade. At 3 nades, this comes to 2.7k to 4.5k per toss.

Necros suffer from the same issues with vampiric traits.

There’s a reason why it is so low, though. Under extreme and unusual circumstances, the healing can become quite powerful.

For example, Symbol of wrath can hit 5 enemies 5 times, for a total of 25 attacks. Whirling Wrath can hit 7 times with its spin (not sure if it counts as cleave, so I’ll just say 21 hits) with the projectiles hitting an additional 7 times. This comes to 53 attacks in a very short amount of time, resulting in 1325 additional healing in two moves.

Of course, the chances getting 5 enemies lining up, and not doing so much damage that this heal is meaningful is extremely rare. But, Anet is terrified of heals, so they’ve balanced things like Zealous Blade around ridiculous conditions, and refuse to budge from that spot.

One in PVP, WvW, and PVE. Seems quite poetic.

I’m not sure if the issue is dungeon design, or the lack of proper instruction on that end.

Something I noticed about GW2 is that it does a crap job of teaching players how to do anything. That’s why we had players running around 14/14/14/14/14 builds. Players who have no idea what a blast finisher is, or how to use them well. Players who use orb of wrath at maximum range in clerics gear, because they’re too terrified of one hit kills to get in melee range. There’s no real indication if something is unblockable, unavoidable, or an instant kill, and it is frightening to players who, to the extent of their knowledge, have skills that don’t work right for arbitrary reasons. Worse yet, things like the sheath weapon key are unbinded, so many players will auto attack themselves to death against reflection and retaliation.

Anets stance on this issue is a bit troubling. In general, they say nothing, however they did once post saying that they want to push the difficulty of events slightly forward, in hopes that players will spontaneously generate knowledge of more game mechanics to compensate. You can tell I’m not a big fan of the “don’t teach, punish for not knowing” method of instruction, especially when so many players don’t know what they don’t know.

Dungeons are a learning cliff in this game. Without being taught proper techniques, players will run heat first into a wall, then throw up their arms in frustration. To this end, I can kind of see where the whole “stacking ruins skill levels” comes from. It’s wrong, though, since it misdiagnoses the problem: A lot of players will copy stacking, but with no real knowledge of how to do it properly they’ll fail at it, and the lack of understanding shows through. I’ve seen plenty of groups try a cookie cutter method, but once it fails, simply give up in frustration rather than trying something different.

It’s chicken or the egg again. The players never had skill to ruin in the first place.

Barbed precision is in curses.

I think the lack of emphasis on healing is actually a good decision. Healing in games is extremely hard to balance, because it subtracts from damage directly. This usually leads to one of two outcomes:

A)Heals don’t subtract enough damage, and thus are useless.
B)Heals subtract too much, and thus are overpowered.

It is really hard to find a perfect balance for this, especially when you have two stats that improve the efficiency of healing. Hence, why most games tend to dive headfirst into one of the two options.

Though healing power sucks in general, it is like this to prevent imbalance. In sPVP, things are already bad enough with certain bunkers.

IMO, they need to change the way healing scales more than they need to change healing power. I don’t have an exact idea on how to do that, but something I find interesting is the ele trait which increases only outgoing heals. If healing power only affected outgoing heals, then you wouldn’t have a heal tank problem in sPVP, but it would also be possible to scale healing power up more.

You guys must broaden your horizons a bit. Necromancers are bad at torment… against a single target. In AoE, however, they are pretty good at it. You’ve got to remember that torment hits 5 targets with tainted shackles, and not just 1 like all other classes. If I were to breakdown the amount of torment ticks per recharge for all of the torment inflicting skills, it would look something like this:

Warrior: 4 seconds of torment per second of recharge
Necromancer: 3.75 seconds of torment per second of recharge
Mesmer: 3.33 seconds of torment per second of recharge
Thief: 2.5 seconds of torment per second of recharge for Shadow Strike, 0.33 seconds of torment per second of recharge for Skale Venom, but with venomous aura this becomes 2 seconds.

So the necro is second only to warrior in frequency of application.

#1: Swimsuits. I want them.

#2: Total reformation of PVE mechanics to resemble PVP more.

I wouldn’t mind a damage increase or a range increase, or a cleave. Or… something.

The axe itself isn’t completely useless. There are a couple of circumstances where I find the axe is good:

#1: The axe attacks are spells. Being a ranged attack that is immune to reflects, bypasses walls, and has no flight time means that it is good in circumstances where both meleeing and ranging is dangerous. For example, HotW P1 final boss is great to fight with the axe.

#2: Unholy Feast is a good escape skill. The large radius means that anything chasing you gets crippled, and the retaliation isn’t too bad, either. This is nice, because it can help against stealthed foes.

But barring those, I keep the axe on the back burner mostly. For ranged attacks, I just go with Death Shroud now.

I’ve found the problems in the spite tree to be… the problems with many necro trees, actually. Most necro minor traits suck, so much so that I completely ignore anything that isn’t in curses, or is Last Gasp:

Parasitic Bond: This is one of those traits I don’t like to use, because it is only works if you’ve already won the fight. But, if you’ve won the fight, you don’t need additional help. If you are fighting against loads of weak mobs… you’re probably killing them before they can do a lot of damage anyway. All in all, I can’t point my finger at one instanced where PB has ever helped me win a battle against anything, PVE or PVP.

Death into life: Healing power is utter crap. Sitting at 2700 power regularly, the addition of 180 healing power accomplishes nothing. Necromancers are lacking both in self healing and group heals, and an extra point or two from siphoning isn’t noticeable.

Siphoned Power: Much like haste at 20% health, this is something I can never take advantage of, because I’m already dead once I hit this point. 20% health for a necro is 3.7k health, and at that point I"m either losing the fight so badly that additional might won’t save me, or the enemy’s burst rotation has pushed beyond this and killed me. In PVE, enemies just don’t attack fast enough for this to matter, or attacks are so strong they go well beyond the 20% mark.

Curses: This trait line is pretty solid in minors.

Armored Shroud: a 9% reduction in damage while in DS. It is better than nothing, by mere fact that it isn’t nothing. At least it helps me win fights…

Soul Comprehension: The LF from deaths can be pretty major, but this is another one of those “only works when we’re winning” traits.

Deadly Strength: Isn’t too bad.

Full of Life: This is a really weak trait, but it is not “bad” like parasitic bond or death into life. Full of Life works when it is needed, and helps you win a fight. Basically, it is what parasitic bond and death into life dream to be. Still, the contribution is barely noticeable, and often overwritten by how easily regen is permanently available from teammates anyway. Never seen it meaningfully contribute.

Vampiric: Life siphoning is bad. When I’m hitting for 6k with the dagger, an extra 33 points of damage means nothing. The 31 points of health also means nothing. But hey: at least it helps you win the fight instead of waiting until after to do something.

Blood to Power: Pales in comparison to deadly strength. Where deadly strength gives you 126+ power based on your toughness always, Blood to Power gives 120 power only when you are above 75% health. So, for power builds, this is less than a 5% increase in damage, but only at the start of the fight.

Gluttony: The additional LF gain is invisible. I’ve never even seen this skill have a noticeable effect. Ever.

Last Gasp: this is an awesome skill, so good that I’m willing to put up with gluttony to get it.

Strength of the Undead: Also not too bad.

IMO, the problem isn’t that CC is too strong, but that there isn’t enough access to stability in the game.

Most skills that grant stability do so for only a few seconds, and do so with long cooldowns. This makes stability a desperate clinch move, and CC safe and spammable. The tables should be a little more balanced, where stability is something more frequent, and CC is something more tactical.

Isaac.6041:

WvW forum seems to be same topics rehashed over and over.

Most forums, actually. The dungeon forum made a bingo card out of it. However I digress:

The appeal of obsidian sanctum is that it is a PVP place. There are very few areas in the game where you have

#1: Large, maze like area.
#2: Tightly knit variety of environments.
#3: Open ended PVP.
#4: Lack of overall objectives.

And this makes the obsidian sanctum an unpredictable place, filled with danger and tension, honor and betrayal, and shifting advantages. Heck, there are even spots that grant long duration stealth if you want to avoid most of the combat.

Though I have to ask what is so horrible about PVP that so many players are averse to it. It isn’t like in old games, where the victor looted your corpse for everything you owned.

Zerker is statistically the best gear in the game for PVE.

While you can live longer in tank gear, so do all the enemies. The enemies that also live longer do more damage, making the benefit of tank gear moot. Worst of all, you don’t exactly absorb attacks or hold aggro, so while you live longer, no one else does.

Death is the ultimate debuff; dead enemies do no damage. The faster an enemy dies, the less damage it does, the quicker the fight ends and you heal to full health. This all goes on top of something else: active defenses. Players all have dodges, blocks, invulnerability, evades, and blinds on cooldowns. If you kill enemies quick enough, you don’t run out of active defenses. But, when you take forever to kill enemies, you’ll use up all your blinds, dodges, and blocks, meaning you’ll take more damage in the long run.

On top of this, the faster an enemy dies, the faster you get their drops. So, it is more profitable as well.

This is where the zerker meta comes from. Though players exaggerate the necessity of zerker gear, they do not exaggerate the benefits. As for being kicked: this only happens if you join a party that demands all zerker gear, or is denoted as a “speed running” party. Other groups don’t gear check at all, so join those groups instead of zerker groups.

It should be obvious that the response to condition cleanses is more conditions.

If I am zerging with my condi necro build, there are always two things that I notice going on:

#1: My conditions only last for so long before being cleansed.
#2: No one else is running a staff necromancer.

Any one player’s conditions will be cleansed away, but if you throw down enough pressure on a group they’ll cave.

You really don’t have to find something to keep you playing. This isn’t a subscription game, mind you. If you want to take a break and go do something else for a few months, then go do it. GW2 will be there, waiting for you.

Maybe this is just the aspergers talking, but whenever I post anything on the internet, I know very well that there is a person behind the screen. The way I act on these forums is the same way I act IRL, and I have acted this way since long before I became accustomed to the internet.

There are evil people out there. As much as I’d like to pretend that every scrap of condemnation towards me and what I stand for are just inconsequential whispers in the wind, the fact is that this is not true. There is a principle in business of proportional representation: the idea that since the vast majority of the public are silent, the few people who send in letters of complaint or negative feedback in truth represent thousands each.

It seems farfetched, until you notice that what the youtube comment trolls yell about under random videos is the same stuff that members of congress and influential businesses believe. I draw ire regularly from people I’ve never even met, because they are under the same bigoted, paranoid, or stupid notions that most people just ignore on the web. You can’t really ignore these people when they are in your face. It is kind of a funny thing when grad students with degrees in physics and engineering are philosophically indistinguishable from 12 year olds who troll for attention on popular websites, largely because no one has ever bothered to tell them otherwise.

For evil men to succeed, it is only necessary for good men to do nothing.

As for GW2, I made a post about this subject awhile ago. Its pretty big, so I’ll just link to it there: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Collaborative-Development/page/3#post2991656

In short, monsters don’t deserve respect. Any given is purely out of charity, and this charity is often wasted and detrimental to everyone else.

I don’t really go in sPVP that often… but for my Engi’s WvW build I use Aristocracy. This is mostly because, with 30 in power + koi cakes, enemies already get permanent burning.

This is the biggest dropoff for the runes of Balthazar. Burning has an extremely finite cap of permanence. Once you reach that point, additional burning duration or sources of burning don’t really do anything, other than lingering on escaped or victorious enemies for a tick or two.

The runes can have a use, though. If a class like engi runs a burning build, but doesn’t want to take napalm specialist, or doesn’t have many sources of burning on their particular build, then the runes of balthazar can be an extra kick in the pants. But, this doesn’t change peak performance for burning at all, since many builds already achieve permanent burning without those runes.

Maybe for condi classes that don’t have good burns (necro, thief, mesmer), these runes can be used for their last effect to apply a regular burn. This is similar in use to what runes of perplexity or runes of tormenting do, except instead an intensity condition it is a duration condition.

Overall, I don’t think these runes warrant any kind of nerf.

The AoE cap has always been one of those things that I am conflicted on, mostly because I can think of extremes where things can get pretty messy.

To start with, the boon cap being in place is… really useful. As an engineer in WvW, I get hit by retaliation really hard. Now, without the boon cap, a single guardian could give an entire zerg retaliation. If I hit, say, 30 guys with 5 grenades, that comes to 150 ticks in an instant… I’m dead. So is everyone else who attacks this group. Get 30 people together with retal, and they’ll be unstoppable.

Second one is stealth. One of the reasons why veil is so useful is because it can bypass the limit, but it gives a very short amount of stealth. Imagine if you could give stealth to the entire zerg with just a few blasts… suddenly there is no “countering” a zerg because you’ll never see them coming.

Third one is haste. Time warp. That is all.

As for attacks, the most dangerous things are the stuff that don’t have big red rings, but just work as an AoE. For example, without a target limit, Life Transfer and Tainted Shackles would be unstoppable, since the combination of life force generation plus 600 radius damage means that a couple of zerker necros could wipe an entire zerg with just two attacks. If you think hammer trains are bad, remember that you can get out of the way of a hammer trains.

So, there has to be stipulations. You go with an arbitrary boon limit, or a heal limit, or a “special attack” limit where attacks have to be balanced around having limits hard baked into the attack. This is when complaints come in, where you have some classes complaining that they are nerfed too much, other classes saying they don’t get enough, and every person demanding to have the abilities of other classes.

If anything, I wouldn’t mind a trial period where the limit on offensive attacks is removed only, but it might be fun, but I still remain cautious about the whole thing.

Taygus.4571:

Beorn Saxon.4762:

I’m a guy and I’ve converted most of my characters to guys bc I hate getting sexual PMs from other guys that think I’m a chick IRL. -.-

seriously?
I’ve played only female chars and I’ve yet to get a “sexual pm”. Considering it’s a game that kids can play. I’d assume pms like that are grounds for a ban.

Good ‘ole pixel daters are always good for a laugh. The sole reason why I don’t mind the erper crowd is because of how funny things can get with them around.

In GW2 I haven’t received any propositions yet. But in older games, I used to get that stuff all the time. I think most of the MMO crowd has finally grown up and realized that most of the female avatars are G.I.R.L.s, or Guys In Real Life. Anyway, whenever I get those kinds of messages, I’d always respond with the same thing:

“If I was interested in pixel dating, I would’ve made a character that was my own gender”.

That said, in these games I tend to gravitate more toward female characters than male ones, mostly because I like looking at them more. I always have one or two guys, but as far as characters go, I make women more often.

Though my human male thief is rather dashing in a robinhood sort of way.

I usually main hand the dagger, and Air Attuenement has the highest sustained damage with the dagger, due to the strongest auto attack. It goes well with fresh air, which lets you pop into other elements for their utility, then immediately switch back to air to maintain damage.

Whenever I see one of these stacking threads, I can’t help but think how contrived it is. The bosses in this game aren’t huge; if you put 5 players in melee range, they’re going to be standing on top of each other no matter what you do.