Guild Wars 2

Hm.. interesting point, OP. Something I’ve always wondered is why it is that the only amulets with malice as a supplementary stat are shaman and rampager. It always bugged me that if I wanted to just have conditions as a supplement, I either had to go full DPS or nearly full defense. I always kind of wanted Carrion to provide power as its main stat, then condition damage as its supplementary stat.

It is a flaw in sPVP in general. I think it may have been what guided me to using condition builds in the first place, since for the first month of the game’s release I did nothing but sPVP. The amulets themselves are fairly flawed:

Berserker: does what it says.

Celestial: just good enough to be bad at everything.

Cleric: defensive amulet through and through. Not bad, but defensive.

Knight: little known fact to anyone but a number cruncher, but the knight amulet actually provides very little offense, making it inferior to the Soldier’s amulet for anything that isn’t proc related.

Rampagers: Gives you enough precision to do nothing with it.

Shaman: Works fine as a defensive amulet.

Soldiers: arguably the best amulet since it provides good bulk and substantial power.

Valkyries: decent amulet, however you don’t have the precision to use the crit damage it provides.

In PVE and WvW we’ve resolved this issue quite easily: we can mix and match our equipment to fine-tune our builds quite precisely, and where that fails we have food buffs to take care of the rest. But in sPVP, you end up having to either go full out, go bulky, or get stats you can’t really use if you build for anything other than conditions. I think it may be for this reason that we had a bunker game for so long: bunker builds simply take advantage of every point they are given in a meaningful fashion.

What I’d love to see is either 1 of two things, since this is a problem that does more than just affect the balance of conditions in sPVP:

#1: More options to fine tune the builds via multiple jewel slots. If we’re going to get 923/644/644, then the least they can do is divide this by 6 and let use customize our stats to a point.

#2: More jewels. The fact that we don’t have a jewel that has power as a primary with precision or condition damage as a secondary is just unacceptable. The devs seriously need to make the following happen (in order of primary/secondary/secondary)

Power/Precision/Toughness or Vitality
Power/Malice/Vitality or Toughness
Precision/Critical damage/Toughness or Vitality

and so on.

…and then I remember why the condi amulets are like that.

Now, for a bit of history, there is a reason why it is the amulets were like this, specifically Carrion and Rabid. People don’t bring this up often, but condition cleansing in the game was originally substantially better than it is now. It is hard to find specific example, but one such example is Mantra of Resolve. Originally on activation, Power Cleanse would cleanse every condition the mesmer had. A build with mantras could fully cleanse themselves twice in the battle before going into the relatively short cooldown. Fighting something like this on a condition build was near suicide, since the mesmer had both the ability to wipe your offense clean, but the utilities to stall you while it was on cooldown. I also think Arcane Thievery was in a similar boat, transferring everything instead of just 3.

I think when the devs designed the game, they originally intended it to be slower paced than what it has become. Hence, why it is the only true “offensive” amulet is the berserker. But, of course, the meta spiraled out of Arenanets control.

jportell.2197:

I’m not suggesting that vitality do anything to condition mitigation. I was not the one that suggested that. I suggested that there be a way to directly counter conditions through traits other than removals. Guardians and eles are pretty much set in this sense but other classes are way further down on the totem pole and need better condi mitigation. Which is why this is my suggestion in that is 30 points deep into the vitality FOR SOME CLASSES such as warrior, engineer, mesmer, maybe in ranger but as I understand it their condi removal is pretty decent.

My suggestion is “Take 3% less damage from conditions for each unique condition on you.” The number is not of great importance however a way to directly punish condition spammers is of great importance. There are ways to punish putting a ton of boons on yourself such as destruction of the empowered (not sure if it is taken) however I do know that flanking/larcenous strike is taken. And it is an amazing way to help a team spike down a boon heavy bunker through straight DPS.

Boon Heavy Bunkers=Have a counter through LS and condition damage.
Toughness Heavy Bunkers are countered through condition damage.
Vitality heavy bunkers are non-existent because vitality is a terrible counter to condition damage and goes down with even bigger numbers like wet tissue paper to direct damage.

So no i am not suggesting making vitality scale where you take less condition damage the more vitality you have then we would see nothing but P/T/V in the entire meta.
What I am suggesting is to make it so that there are traits that mimic the “more damage for a condition on a target” I am suggesting there be a trait that says “take x% less conditon damage for each unique condition on you.”

I didn’t say you suggested anything about vitality. It was someone else who mentioned the vitality idea, which you immediately supported. Of course, the beginning of your thread didn’t provide much in the way of suggesting, either:

“The game needs more. Condi removal and vitality aint cutting it.”

Is the topic post. This says nothing, so you’ll have to realize not every player is going to chase after every stray thought that comes along in the thread. After supporting another, you offer this nugget of wisdom:

“Conditions have no hard counter.”

Which is perplexing since nothing in the game is meant to be a hard counter to anything. Boon hate itself was introduced into the game not to be a hard counter, but because there was no counter for boons, period. Either you brought a necro with consume conditions, or you were stuck fighting your way past nigh permanent protection, retaliation, and vigor on bunkers. The confusing is also that condition builds do have some really powerful obstacles to deal with.

I main an engineer in sPVP, second a necro, and in WvW vice versa. I encounter builds that flatten my condition builds a lot, sometimes not even through intentional mechanics. I miss half the time because they’ve got vigor or weapon skill based evades, or they pop in and out of stealth frequently. Sometimes their direct damage is so massive that I spend half the fight just running away and blocking. Sometimes I get knocked around so much that I can’t get up and fight. Sometimes they happen to stack so much active and passive condition removal that I can’t hit them for beans. Probably the worst time I was ever pwned on my condition builds was when I was on my Engineer fighting a Mesmer who just happened to be packing Arcane Thievery. Good bye might stacks, retaliation, and swiftness, hello my own 12 second burn, 10 stacks of vulnerability, and 8 bleeds.

So when a mesmer managed to obliterate me through the use of one skill, most thieves run enough cleanse to nullify me (hide in shadows, shadow’s embrace, shadow step), guardians and elementalists have so much passive cleans that I have to risk all my cooldowns to make an impact, Automated Response Engineers laugh at me, and I can’t hit rangers for beans, I have to wonder who exactly condition builds are overpowered against. The only conclusion I can come up with are people who don’t run condition cleansing, and people who don’t know how to use condition cleansing that well (I.E. blow it as soon as they see 3 bleeds). And warriors, whom everyone is overpowered against.

I’m B.R.A., and I support this idea.

The idea behind giving different classes their own basic form of condition damage is that it is much easier for the server to handle than just increasing the cap. Why? Don’t know. It must have something to do with programming, since without some knowledge on the subject I don’t see the wisdom of introducing torment at all. I don’t know jack about what an array is in game design. Regardless, there is a precedent for this, and continuing this precedent is not unreasonable. Regardless, if you get enough torment users in an area then the server already experiences the amount of stress that my suggestion would impose. So, it is safe to assume that the servers can handle what I am suggesting.

You must also realize that there is far more issues with conditions than on just environment world bosses. There are plenty of champions and bosses who allow crits, such as every temple boss in Arah. There are also all of the bosses in dungeons who aren’t environmental objects.

Thankfully Arenanet is already making the enemies more engaging. Molten Facility and Aetherblades has demonstrated that the content designers are more than capable of making more engaging content, and the AI for WvW guards and the AI enemies in the mists, everything I’ve suggest has not only been done before, but is getting better. The real hope behind this is that the PVE team will go over enemies from pretty much every part of the game and make them more engaging.

The ironic thing is that I am not sure if your suggestion would go well in PVP, unless it was a mechanic reserved only for overworld bosses, champions, veterans, and silver rank mobs.

If you want my advice, it wouldn’t be to grind. Often times in the game I end up with so much more money that I anticipated. At any time I have 20-30 gold just sitting in my bank, usually because at that point I decide to overhaul some of the builds I have on my 3 level 80 toons. Each of them with multiple armor and trinket sets for different builds. This involves things like converting an entire set of skins from one type to another, like Knight to Berserker. Heck, I even have a set of tier 3 cultural armor on one of my toons because I just ended up with so much money.

My advice is to do what you want to do. Do different dungeons, do overworld bosses, go exploring, gather materials, run amok in WvW, increase your fractal rating, partake in temporary content and try to rig the election, stuff like that.

jportell.2197:

It’s no surprise that so many people would come in and say “OMG THAT IS GONNA BE SO OP IF THEY DO THAT!” However consider, right now certain classes can spam 4 or 5 conditions on a target in less than a couple seconds sometimes in one or two attacks traits depending.

You know, when I was taking classes in engineering, they tried to teach us rudimentary problem solving skills. They didn’t “teach” as much as “punish you for not already knowing”, but regardless there are several things to be learned about problem solving in general.

For example, the first step in problem solving is identifying the problem. Now, after over a day of bouncing around between different extremes and troll logic, you have finally identified (what may be) the problem: There are certain classes that can apply conditions too rapidly to cleanse them.

Therefore, conditions are not overpowered. The ability to effortlessly spam them may be the problem.

This is a big step, because it helps in identifying a solution to the issue that deals specifically with a problem instead of a gigantic nuke into the metagame targeted at a tiny issue. When someon came up with the suggestion that vitality mitigates conditions directly, I said it is overpowered. While you have just denied it is overpowered, I will explain now why it is overpowered.

Toughness and vitality straddle a thin line between their effectiveness. Vitality provides a bigger health bar to take every type of damage and provides more up-front survivability, whereas toughness reduces direct damage in such a way to improve healing effectiveness, providing sustainable survivability. The important thing to note is that in this respect, they are roughly equal to each other…

However, if you give vitality reduction to condition damage, it makes it so vitality is unquestionably superior to toughness. This is gives vitality the advantage toughness had over vitality: improved healing efficiency against a certain type of damage. This would be fine, except for the fact that vitality also provides survivability against direct damage as well. This makes vitality do everything where toughness is just an inferior version to vitality.

Then we have the side effect of this change: there are classes that use conditions that do not spam a multitude of conditions all at once (a horrible simplification of how a good condition build works). Guardians, Warriors, Thieves, and Elementalists fall into this category. A suggestion such as the vitality one will completely kill any viability that these class could have in the condition line, and it will do this for no good reason whatsoever.

Likewise, increasing the cleansing available to classes will kill any hope that condi Guardians, Warriors, Thieves, and Elementalists may have. If you give every class enough cleanses to completely mitigate the conditions caused by engineers and necromancers, then this ruins the potential other condition classes have to win.

Then you have to look at things from a balanced view point. If we aren’t going to look at counter builds, then the offensive power and utility of condition builds should be equal to that of power builds. So, how do you propose that we achieve this? In what way is a condition build supposed to beat another build? You complain that condition builds just throw on a bunch of conditions, but against passive cleansing how else are they supposed to maintain an offense? Are condition builds meant to be completely countered by an adept major trait? What is the appropriate balance between condition application and cleansing? Should all classes apply an equal amount of conditions at the same rate? Should all classes have an equal amount of passive and active condition cleansing? Then we have to factor in counter builds, and how much of an advantage one build should be given against another build, even when specced to specifically beat one another.

Have you considered any of this at all before going to the forums and making a topic about it?

Look, I’m not a smart man. If I was, I’d be rich. All of this comes from effort, not brilliance. I actually try to think things through. I’d wager that most of the QQ on these forums would fade away if people would just wait 5 minutes before making up their mind on an issue, and actually look into what is causing a problem if it is a problem at all.

insanemaniac.2456:

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

In the real world, there is synchronization and formations spread out among the landscape at various tactical locations.

formations get you killed

theyre so 1800s

Bad formations get you killed. Good formations avoid friendly fire.

Nretep.2564:

@OP
Bleeding
As I’ve understood your post, you suggested for the main bleeder to cause torment instead of bleeding. And this would lower the capped bleeding for other classes since they cause bleeding without being blocked by necro and mesmers bleeding ?

Well, seems interesting but has three flaws.

• Making them torment would boost ehm in pvp/ wvw but nerf them on PvE. And this would result in a balancing patch to reduce it’s total efficiency (since devs balance in PvP means) so PvE gets a double nerf.
• Making another stack with 25 torments would sure stress the server more than right now.
• It wouldn’t take care of the problem, but slightly push it back. Two necros in a party would still reach the cap and on world bosses, both caps would easily be full.

Poison
PvE mobs fairly often use regeneration. And here again, ANet balances for PvP … all conditions could be buffed in PvE, but they’re pretty strong in PvP. So we won’t get a change.

Confusion
And here again. Confusion was really bad in PvE and fairly strong in PvP. So as balancing they nerfed it in PvP.

Burning
Good suggestion, but have you read the mechanics of duration stacking conditions? What you suggested is already ingame. And even better, it doesn’t only priorize on infliction but on every tick. So buffing yourself (might) might put your burning first. Once you lose the buffs, another burning might get ticks then.

The bleeding thing is a pretty complicated suggestion. It won’t just be a straight up conversion of bleeds = torment. Ultimately, things will be scaled for PVP, and because in PVP torment is equal to 1.5 bleeds, necromancers will lose 33% of their bleed duration on all bleeds that are converted to torment.

This in itself can be a mixed bag. For one, there are enemies that move around a lot, so a necomancer can maintain full offense against enemies so long as they just cripple/chill and kite. Condi necros in PVE will require more activity this way. The second thing is that, currently, condition necromancers are incompatible with every other condition build in the game sans guardians. This means that there a very steep drop in offense should two of them ever collide, and this happens a lot. With the torment fix, necromancers won’t have nearly as much as an incompatibility problem, and this results in an increase in damage for the class in group scenarios..

Overall, this will (hopefully) result as a buff for conditionmancers and condi mesmrs. The server itself will receive more stress since there are more stacks of torment around, but in theory the servers already deal with this stress whenever enough torment users come together.

The goal of this fix is for smaller scale groups and dungeons. World bosses will always be impossible to fight with condition damage, so long as they take conditions. Other than a straight up condition to damage conversion on the bosses (a suggestion that they’ve heard a thousand times, no doubt), there is no fix that won’t overtax the servers.

The suggestions for poison and confusion can be roughly summarized as “make PVE better and more engaging”. The effects they themselves have is fine. It is just that PVE is built in a way that these effects never take place.

If burning behaves like this, then it is good news. I could’ve sworn I’ve seen my burning on my condi engi overwritten by other classes, though. Maybe they changed that already.

I’ve suggested something that will help necros in another thread I made, which I will now shamelessly pimp:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/suggestions/Fixes-for-damaging-conditions-PVE/

For those who can’t be bothered with shameless view grabbing and bumps, the gist of it is that I want necros to inflict torment as their primary condition instead of bleeding. That way, a condition necro can work right alongside of a condition engineer or condition ranger, and still maintain nearly full offense. Of course, the individual skills would have to be evaluated to come up with a torment equivalent, since torment and bleeding aren’t identical. But all in all, I think this could really help out the necro.

Only problem is, I make the same suggestion for mesmers, so condi mesmsers will be a bit incompatible with condi necros, but that’s better than everything being incompatible with everything.

I suppose the biggest issue for me and blobbing, other than skill lag, lack of player skill, lack of independent though, or the lack of a counter is that blobbing is counter-intuitive to how combat works in the real world.

In the real world, there is synchronization and formations spread out among the landscape at various tactical locations. Our army doesn’t just gather tightly together because missiles arbitrarily only hit 5 people in that area. If I see 30 players group up in to a tight ball in WvW, I should be able to shred them effortlessly with my wells or grenades, depending on what I’m playing. But I can’t. They remain an impenetrable mass of of players who outheal any damage I do to the group because I can only hit a few of them at any time.

The good news is the devs are already working toward solutions to these problems, via better tab targeting and overall reduction in AoE damage. I think your problem is a temporary one.

#1: The class is already the most versatile class without resetting traits. Swapping through utilities and traits is never meant to be a permanent build. Ever. What every engineer does is make themselves a base build, and then only change flip trait abilities and utilities when the situation calls for it.

#2: Engineers are the best at many things. In my list, I bolded where they were best.

#3: The second advantage to switching between traits and utilities is that, due to an engineers versatility, the solution to any problem is always available to them. No other class can claim this, since each one has a large gap in the skills they provide.

#4: The engineer does not need to specialize so much that diversity goes out of the window to do damage. The example I provided was the bomb kit, and to use that power you only need one thing: the bomb kit. And by having the bomb kit, you get all of the utility the bomb kit offers. Speccing in purely one build type results in a decrease in DPS, not an increase. This is because having various kits and alternate utilities gives you multiple high-damaging skills to alternate through, as well as controls and utilities that provide defense where it is needed, as well as control where it is needed.

The build example I listed wasn’t a “build” at all. It was a generic condition build, with the only requirement being condition damage. This means it can be a shaman healer, a pure DPS rampager, or a more modest carrion/rabid. The only requirement listed to do that damage in a condition build is the bomb kit. The bomb kit itself offers a lot of utility via fire field, smoke field, AoE blinds, cripple patch, and AoE knockback + blast finisher, but this leaves 2 slots open for whatever is needed, and with how low maintenance the bomb kit is (arguably requiring only 10 points in explosives for larger radii), there’s a full 60 points to invest in doing whatever it is they want to do. This includes going for a power type build, since bomb #1 has good direct damage, too.

Also, you seem to have missed something: The OP already knows that engineers are challenging in sPVP. You mentioned it yourself why: other players have no idea what we have until we use it. This is better than you realize, since it means there is no counters to engineers. When making a competitive sPVP build, players will analyze how they will try and beat all of the other common competitive builds, but this can’t work against an engineer due to the lack of counters. The fact that our opponents are facing the unknown works in our advantage because it means the fight is in our control until we blow all of our secrets, and our opponents learn about those secrets by getting a prybar to the face. As for what they do best, engineers are, after all, the most controlling class, in competition with highest condition pressure, capable of bunkering quite well, and also has what is arguably the best counter to condition builds through Automated Response.

While everything in that big list can work for sPVP, it is generally assumed that no one will let your team gather together under a fire field and spam blast finishers. In PVE and WvW the scene is much different, where you can all gather together and use blast finishers in a fire field.

jportell.2197:

So whenever you die the top cause is never conditions right? I can’t remember across any of my characters where the most damage that killed me wasn’t due to conditions.

Nope. This is a trick of reporting system. You see, the damage done by any attack is reported as being done by that specific attack only. So when you are fighting, say, a guardian who is flipping through greatsword and scepter/focus rapidly throughout the fight, the damage done by each of those is only listed as “symbol of retaliation” “blinding blade” “smite” individually. However, the damage inflicted by conditions and by retaliation are indiscriminate of their source, just listing themselves overall as “conditions” that was done to you as a whole. This often causes the damage done my conditions to be misrepresented as being the highest source of damage, neglecting to mention that it was 8 different skills that inflicted bleeding on you from three different players.

Were the condition damage only given to the skills that inflicted it, with procs being the only “ambient” source of condition damage, it would tell a much different story.

Vengeful Virtues doesn’t give retaliation in an AoE. Blast finishers in a light field only gives 3 seconds of AoE retaliation.

You know that giving so much AoE retaliation is actually really hard to do, right? Seriously, Signet of Judgement is 3 seconds. Stand your Ground, 5 seconds. Symbol of Wrath, only while standing inside the symbol. Those skills are stun breaks that do little else other than short duration stability and weakness. Unless they are timed perfectly, you aren’t cleaving yourself into 1200 points worth of damage with every auto attack with the sword.

Retaliation does well what it was meant to do, but the fact is that it isn’t overpowered at all. When running a grenadier engineer, when I encounter retaliation I just switch to something slower for 3 seconds and then go right back to where I was 3 seconds ago. In order for a guardian to maintain high duration retaliation, they have to invest so much into the skill in lieu of everything else. The only way that you’ll smack yourself silly against retaliation is if you obstinately spam unload and refuse to do anything else.

Giving retaliation an inner cooldown defeats the purpose of retaliation: a means to discourage multi hitting attacks.

No, they are not.

That would make vitality overpowered, since it works on both conditions and power damage.

There seems to be a dichotomy that people are missing between blind, Aegis, blocks, and retaliation. Let me explain.

There are a series of skills in the game that are affected by the number of hits that are dished out, and not the damage itself. This includes Aegis, single use blocks, and blind. For you see, blind and Aegis only work against one attack. But when there is a skill that sends out multiple attacks at once (for example, Life Transfer), then suddenly blind and single target blocks are completely useless as a form of mitigation. It goes right through those skills!

So, a defensive mechanism that works contrary to how blind, Aegis, and single-use blocks is Retaliation. Retaliation ticks for damage against any hit that is incurred, so where mulit-hitting attacks normally breeze right past blind and Aegis, Retaliation is an offensive measure against it, discouraging players form using multi hit attacks.

Unless this has changed since I last checked.

Now, the only class that I think blind may be a problem in is thieves. Pretty much every class has access to a blind or two on medium length cooldowns, making the use of blinds highly tactical. Thieves, however, have access to blinds on a near permanent basis via two methods:

#1: Black Powder. For initiative, this makes a smoke field that applies blind to anyone inside of it. This blind has a fairly decent length, and this makes fighting thieves difficult, so many that spam black powder also build themselves with good initiative regeneration abilities.

#2: Cloaked in Shadow. This skill emits a blind when a thief enters stealth, and every 3 seconds they are in stealth. As it happens, thieves are capable of entering rapidly, over and over again, spending the majority of their fights invisible. This makes it so Cloaked in Shadow applies a blind every 3 seconds in an AoE, AKA spams blind.

Now, without these two skills thieves will have a lot of access to blind, but it won’t be on nearly as much of a “spam” level. So, by fixing these you can deal with the blind issue quite succinctly. Here, I’ll make a suggestion:

Cloaked in Shadow: Cooldown of 20 seconds.
Black Powder: Now only pulses once every 2 seconds. Applies a 1 second blind when it pulses.

daweed.6520:

Although the list of things an Engineer theoretically could bring to the table…is long and cheerful, the grim reality of the matter is that there is no way to combine the majority of those in a “self-dependant” build..

Its all good when you have 1 to X amount of people tending after you (buffing/clearing agro/healing or w/e you need to make it work out there), but 90% of the Engineer builds that would bring a lot of versatility on the table will go down as soon as their babysitter gets distracted with something else (Dungeon Boss/Enemy player being the prime suspects).

I have never seen a person willingly run a medic build (unless its for testing purposes) nor do i ever expect to…and i would never expect to run into “blast finisher” builds or some other wacky combination…unless the engineer in question is still exploring his options or is being forced to trait as such by his guild for specific reasons.

Its the state of the class that causes this.We lack true versatility and have baptised a few preset paths as such.

What Engineers really bring to the table that no-one else can bring in such obscene amounts is Control (rifle #2/net turret/supply drop/toolkit magnet) which paired with the knock-backs the class offers allows them to dictate (on paper) where the fight takes place.

“On paper.” is the key word here, since we have no access to stability, while other classes have fewer knock-backs + control + stability or some other nifty trick to pull out of their sleeve.

We also bring RNG Buffs and AoE Heals…but would you take an engi over an ele or a guardian for their heal or buffs respectively, nerfing your groups damage in the process?

Perhaps i’m being narrow-minded here, but anything else i look at…either somebody else does it better than us or excelling at it requires us to be a one trick pony. I’m not saying there are no viable/strong/dominating builds out there that don’t heavily involve CC, what i’m saying is CC is what we do best than everyone else.

It is impossible for any class to bring everything they can do at the table at once. However, with Kits and a toolbelt, as well as the general versatility of blast finishers and combo fields in general, the engineer can bring a lot more to the table all at once than other classes can. The key in PVE is not to build to do just one thing well, but to choose a build spec that allows you to do many things, with the flip of a trait or the exchange of a utility.

Your assessment that an engineer cannot somehow work by themselves is also fully incorrect. Someone has already posted a build that provides a fine example of multiple working abilities at once, but what also needs to be understood is that our various contributions to any team comes from the fact that our skills have multiple uses in themselves. There is always the utility and the tool belt skill, and for kits there is an equivalent of a weapon swap as well as a toolbelt skill. The engineer brings a ton of diversity to any group no matter what build you run, unless you specifically try to run as bland a build as possible and refuse to swap utilities for when it is appropriate.

I have run a blast finisher build on multiple occasions, particularly a dedicated healer type. It is really easy, since it is just any build except you switch utilities to use blast finishers for that particular engagement. In any circumstances where it is needed (For example, Temple of Balthazar) more than other skills are needed, you can swap in a few turrets or kits that have blast finishers, and then either use the combo field that is needed or if someone else takes care of it, use their combo field. Doing this, I’ve been able to manage AoE bursts of healing upwards of 8k on a berserker build, by myself.

EDIT: Engineers are also not that low damaging. They are low power damaging. Grenades have arguably the highest ranged damage in the game, and also stack a massive amount of conditions in an AoE. Their attacks all hit in an AoE, and with something liked Coated Bullets you get obscene amounts of damage in the right circumstances. They have the longest lasting and most reliable burning in the game, so each time they drop a fire bomb, they do 8 × 700 × 5 =28.000 damage and/or stack might as well. Engineer bombs have 84% the power of a thieve’s cluster bomb, but with no initiative limit, so even when an engineer goes for all out power they can still hit hard.

No one is perfect.

Poplolita.2638:

Ok… so you want to nerf necromancer to buff necromancer so we can have a chance 1v1 or in teamfight against other necromancers. And all this because necromancers can easily exploit there own weaknesses? Seriously… Is this some kind of a joke?… Seriously, at this point, arena Net should consider adding a blacklist for spvp.

I suppose this is what I mean by “get it”. The OP is simultaneously claiming necromancers are overpowered and underpowered at the same time. This means either 1 of two things:

A): This is a satire of the feedback about necromancers constantly contradicting itself. I feel this may be the option, since a conditiomancer with full Life Force has anywhere from 36K to 50K health, rendering the 9k chain stun useless unless used as a dedicated finisher.

B): He is reflecting on the dual nature of how the necromancer’s design leads them to be both overpowered in certain situations, and yet underpowered in others.

Anyway, while I do think the increase in necromancer fear is the greatest asset to condition necros, I also do not think it is overpowered. There are several reasons for this.

#1: None of the skills in the chain are unavoidable. Spectral Wall, Reaper’s Mark, Doom, Spectral Grasp, they can all miss, be blinded, or be dodged, and many can be blocked. When they miss, this can mean the end of a terror chain before it begins.

#2: It is hard to sustain a fight without using any of those utilities in the first place. Fact is, there are times when you need to use Doom to stop an enemy burst, or you need Reaper’s Mark as a defense against a stealthed enemy, or Spectral Wall as an escape maneuver or area denial. These are 4 skills that are needed for the combo, not one. The mere course of combat can halt these things.

#3: Even when hit, the combo can be countered by stun breaks and stability. If the necro layers up every fear they have as fast as possible, then stun breaks can cut off the damage by the second tick, blowing all cooldowns and the combo. If they only use their fears right before the previous one was about to end, then this can be interrupted by a stun breaker or stability beforehand. The combo usually goes Doom → Spectral wall where they are running → Reaper’s Mark or Spectral grasp → Reaper’s Mark or Spectral grasp. If you use a stun break between doom and spectral wall, then the combo ends as soon as you break the stun and walk out of the way of the wall. It is harder to end after spectral wall, though, since both Reaper’s Mark and Spectral Grasp can still hit you. If an opponent puts down spectral wall before doom, then get out of line with the spectral wall because otherwise they are attempting to chain you to death.

This also depends on the stun break. If it is an evading stun break, the combo ends. If it is a stability granting stun break, the combo ends. If it is a teleporting stun break, the combo ends. As it happens, a lot of stun breaks already evade, teleport, or grant stability. Position is key with the terror chain, and if you break that position, the chain ends.

All in all, chain terror takes skill, multiple utilities, build dedication, good positioning, and is far from counter-proof. The only thing that stands out about the Terror chain is that, as burst, it is the only on that goes through toughness and protection. Otherwise, there are much better choices.

Caran.3217:

So why fight fire with fire? Wrong approach entirely – the perma CC spiral is out of hand already. Smart game design is about making tactical choices at the right time, not to spam CC over and over – it’s just bad. We don’t need more pseudo-counters to CC but much less spamable CC with long cooldowns.

I don’t agree that CC is that out of hand at all. Even while on a turret engineer or a terrormancer, I still find my opponents not stunned for the majority of the match, and I myself end up not stunned for the majority of the match despite not running a stun breaker on my engineer.

It is mildly annoying when a hammer warrior starts bashing you over and over again, but that is it: mildly annoying. Fact is, most of the stuns in this game already have long cooldowns and short durations, which is why on CC heavy builds I need to dedicate nearly everything I have to CC in order to pull off a few consecutive stuns.

What an engineer offers in PVE is simple: quantity, and combos.

You see, while other classes can do a few things that support the team and can arguably do them better than the engineer can, the engineer has a sheer volume of things they can do that is so massive that no other class can really compare:

Condition cleansing (elixir gun, healing turret, cleaning formula 409)
Cripple/chill (Glue shot, glue puddle, sitting duck, freeze grenade, Elixir F, Battering Ram, Box of Nails)
Immobilize (Glue shot, glue puddle, net turret, net shot, net wall)
CC(Overcharge shot, Both Shield skills, Every turret with accelerant packed turrets, battering ram, throw mine, Big Ole’ Bomb, Magnet, Electrified Net, Exlposive Rockets, Thump, Elixir X, Supply Crate, Air Blast, Slick Shoes)
Blocks/invulnerability (Both Shield Skills, Gear Shield, Elixir S, Toss Elixir U)
A ton of blast finishers (every turret, throw mine, Big Ole’ Bomb, Magnetic Inversion, Thumper Turret in particular, Supply Crate)
A ton of AoE Healing (Healing Turret makes 2 water fields, and with a ton of blast finishers this can heal for massive amounts, Cleansing Burst, Super Elixir, Elixir Infused Bombs)
A ton of might stacking (repeat above in fire fields for massive AoE might, H.G.H., Enhance Performance, Juggernaut)
A ton of retaliation stacking (Repeat blast finishers in light field from Super Elixir)
A ton of stealth stacking (repeat blast finishers in smoke from flame turret or bomb kit, Toss Elixir S)
A ton of weakness stacking (repeat blast finishers in poison field from poison grenade, also Elixir Dart for single target weakness).
A ton of AoE damage (coated bullets, grenade kit, bomb kit, static discharge. Nearly everything they do is in AoE, actually)
A ton of AoE burn damage (Blowtorch, Fire Bomb, Flamethrower, Flame Turret, Rocket Turret)
AoE blind (smoke bomb, flash grenade, static shock, toss elixir U Go for the Eyes for single target blnd)
Vulnerability stacking (Steel packed powder, Utility Goggles)
Projectile Reflection (Toss Elixir U, Magnetic Shield, Air Blast)
Permanent Vigor
Boon Stripping (Acidic Elixirs, Throw Mine, Mine Field)
1500 max range on attacks (grenadier)
Confusion (Static Shot, concussion bomb, Pry Bar)
Incredibly high precision stacking + fury (scope, elixir B, Med Kit, target the weak, when combined come to upwards of 40% crit chance from nothing)
Self protection application (Elixir H and Toss, Protection Injection, Protective Shield)
AoE rez (Toss Elixir R)
And finally are the #2 choice for condition pressure following behind Necromancers.

I bolded the parts where, arguably, engineers are the best at it out of any class. Just flip your utilities and maybe exchange your weapon for whatever you need to do up ahead, and there is literally no problem in this game you cannot solve as an Engineer. A good engineer is flexible, capable of changing their role based on what their teammates need, while still preforming fairly well regardless.

Not sure what to think of this thread. I think I “get it”.

I imagine they’ll fix skill lag when they figure out a reasonable way how.

Wait.. this just occurred to me. Aren’t thieves the apex class for stealing boons? I know not everyone runs sword/dagger, but on my condition build I use Bountiful Theft. If retaliation is such a big problem and you can’t slow down your offense, stealth it out, carry on regardless by doing more damage than retaliation does back, then isn’t there always the option to running S/D on swap with P/D, or using Bountiful Theft in the trait line that gives condition damage and a shorter recharge on steal with which to use bountiful theft? Or is AoE boon granting + stealing + long duration vigor too bad a trait to use?

I just don’t see the case for retaliation being overpowered against thieves. Maybe it is because all of that above, plus I run a carrion build on my condi thief (no good procs anyway), so I have around 70% more HP than a rabid build. There, retaliation is just the occasional plink against my health pool, if I haven’t hijacked it for myself.

Also, bunkers should totally be able to kill people.

Last I checked… didn’t every class have access to burning except thieves?

Warriors: Longbow with Combustive Shoot and Fan of Fire
Guardians: every 5th attack and half their skills.
Rangers: Off-hand Torch, Flame Trap, Sun Spirit, Salamander Drake
Engineer: Half their skills.
Mesmer: Staff auto attack and clone auto attack w/ staff, off-hand torch
Elementalist: Anything in fire attunement or related to fire attunement, so a quarter of their skills on any build.
Necromancer: Dhuumfire Trait.

You guys are complaining about a condition being overpowered when everyone but thieves and necros can use it well, not counting any rune sets that cause burning. Elementalists, Engineers, Rangers, and Guardians can all keep it on permanent uptime, whereas the RNG nature of the staff for the Mesmer makes uptime unpredictable (I figure, 4 attacks per second, 1/3 of them causes burning for one second, average of 1.33 seconds of burn every second. Good odds). No one uses it, but the warrior can have nearly permanent uptime, too, since Fan of Fire causes 6 seconds of burning at close range on a skill that recharges in 6 seconds.

If you want to be fair about burning, why don’t you include all the caveats of burning, too?

#1: It only stacks in duration. Having more than one burn instantly nullifies their damage, since pretty much every class can sustain permanent burning by themselves.

#2: The damage of burning is overwritten by other sources. So if you have a non-condition specced Guardian or Elementalist around, consider the damage from burning completely unreliable.

#3: Burning is the worst scaling condition in the game, requiring 50% more malice to achieve double damage than any other condition.

#4: Even at 1,312 condition damage, burning is the equivalent to only 6 bleeds. The only class I can think of that can’t sustain more than 6 bleeds on a target is the Guardian.

The problem with nerfing burning is that this really hurts the few classes that are reliant on it. If burning is such a problem to your class, then I would suggest bringing more condition cleanses and more vitality. Seriously, whenever I am running on my Thief or my Guardian, I make pretty darn sure that I have a way reliable way to move a ton of conditions at once, since they lack the health to deal with it on non-vitality builds. And no, investing in passive condition removal is not reliable cleansing: then you are just betting on the RNG then QQing on the forums when the RNG doesn’t favor you.

I play rather control heavy classes myself (S/P thief, turret engineer, terrormancer, etc), and I think the problem isn’t the presence of stun. In order to accomplish all of the stuns that I have on my classes, I have to put pretty much everything I’ve got into them. I sacrifice thins like stealth/cripple, boon stacking, greater utility, and burst damage. Does every with stuns do this? Certainly not, but I know the 3 that I play do.

That said, there are two problems in the game as far as control goes, and both of them can be solved by the same thing.

#1: Stun breaks don’t stop an immediate CC afterward. I see this a lot on my turret engineer: they use a stun break to get out of net turret’s stun, only for the rocket turret to stun them immediately. There are some evasive stuns that help with this, but most do not.

#2: There is very little stun protection. Stun breaks only work after the hit has landed, and with knocbacks and knockdowns and pulls, this results in characters being forced off points an over cliffs over and over again.

The solution is quite simple: We need a LOT more access to stability. As it stands right now, stability is a rare boon that has short durations with very long cooldowns. Any reasonable build has access to stability at maybe a 15% up time, and the current solution to stability is to just wait 3 seconds for it to go away, then resume the chain stunning again. Stability is never there when you need it, and there’s not enough for when you need it.

Since every class has plenty of access to CC, a nice counter to this would be so every class as plenty of access to Stability as well. Then, stability does more than buy you a few seconds where you are immobilized instead of knocked down. Stability gives you a rather large safe zone, making it so opponent’s defensive utilities have to be played smarter, and their controls have to take initiative. If they don’t want to give very class longer duration stability, then the least they can do is give short duration stability on every stun break that isn’t some type of evade. That way, you aren’t instantly re-stunned a quarter second later.

1: There might be, actually. A lot of people bring up the fact that torment exists as evidence that conditions work via a matrix array, wherein adding more conditions is less strenuous on an array than increasing their cap. I don’t know much about programming, so I’ll trust their theories on this matter.

1: Good to hear it.

1: I wouldn’t consider that “gaming” as much as I would “intentional function”. The whole point is that once someone has lit the fire, other people just stoke the flames. Fact is, permanent burning on an engineer is already pretty easy to obtain, and I suspect that it is also somewhat easy on Rangers and even staff mesmers. So that level of burning damage is already being done in the game.

Problem is, it is only done when a guardian or elementalist doesn’t inadvertently interrupt it. To take advantage of the intentional function, you have to already have a condition class in the team that effectively utilizes burning. This includes… Rangers and Engineers, who already light everything on fire around them.

EDIT: Darn it. Confused Matrixes and Arrays. My n00b is showing again.

On P/D, there’s always Shadow Strike. Also, weapon swap. You have the stealth to wait out retaliation, so use it.

Retaliation is supposed to be a counter to multi hitting attacks.

If you think you have problems, try running a grenadier engineer against retaliation.

To be fair, they did buff necromancers in a lot of ways that made them more more powerful without changing how they worked. To also be fair, a lot of necromancer players were begging for burning before they got it. Truth be told, I do agree with the OP that Necros are suffering for a lot of things they didn’t want, and the devs refuse to give us what they want.

Sad part is, that reminds me of my parents when I was growing up.

It is pretty frustrating. I Necromancer is my second most played class next to the Engineer, and I suffer from both of the problems that the classes have.

Engineer: Devs have no idea what they’re planning. They get nerfed frequently despite not being topped tear, with builds literally being eliminated instead of nerfed. They make them low damage in a game where damage is king.

Necromancer: Devs have a concept that makes Necromancers incredibly hard to balance. They deny the necromancer all of the survival skills that other classes rely on, then give them a strange mix of power and finite survivability in order to compensate. This puts necros in a strange place where they are hard to balance, and how well they do really isn’t in their control.

There is more depth to the situation than that. Engineers get a much better trait there. One thing, though.

Engineers get a whole crap load of burning. I rarely ever use incendiary powder, since with my builds I have a 10 second cone burn on a 12 second recharge via blowtorch, or I have a rocket turret that gives near permanent AoE burning, and if I throw down supply crate I keep many enemies permanently on fire. Even without that, there’s always the flamethrower, rocket boots, and the bomb kit, each of which provides a lot of burning.

That trait seems like it might be overpowered, but Engineers are balanced around high access to burning. In most of the builds I make, incendiary powder is redundant because of all the AoE burning I have access to.

Frankly, I think necromancers should abandon most of their bleeds and just inflict a whole lot more torment. Make scepter skills all torment, make the staff inflict torment instead, make signet of spite inflict torment, etc.

EDIT: Fixed it so I can count now.

I have kits and elixirs. In WvW an PVE I run a might stacking build, and the elixirs really help. In PVP, I run kits and turrets. Grenade + Net Turret + Rocket Turret is pretty boss.

I am considering switching to gadgets. I won’t get as much might, but the problem with HGH and might stacking is that it is high maintenance. I have to spam my skills constantly, even when just roaming to an objective. I figure, gadgets are much easier to manage and can make more diversity.

This reminds me of a suggestion I made once that I will now shamelessly pimp out:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/suggestions/Fixes-for-damaging-conditions-PVE/

For those who don’t want to read it, the hilarious thing is that my fix to Poison and Confusion in PVE can be summarized as one sentence:

Make PVE better by making it more engaging.

Seriously. They make it so enemies attack rarely, all their damage is loaded into one or two attacks, they rarely stack meaningful boons, they don’t heal themselves, and there is very little tactics in their actions. If they were to change this, then a whole lot more things become viable.

I think the big focus on PVP is that PVE is static. People have CoF1, Hotw1, Lupicus, and Subject Alpha down to a science. Eventually, PVE gets old, and requires constant updates.

PVP is continually dynamic, with new trends emerging in builds and competition without a bit of influence from Arenanet. Ultimately, PVP is what will help to sustain the game the longest, and I’ve seen what happens when a game doesn’t have a good PVP environment.

Though I do suggest that they make PVE better by making it more like PVP.

sas.6483:

Not to be overly critical, but I think your survivability / damage breakdown is limited to how a particular build plays in sPvP. My experience has been different; I tend to play power / survivability builds in casual PvP and serious WvW.

I have this feeling that there are a bunch of name-recognition necros out there that really want big, complicated changes to necro mechanics. I hope that doesn’t happen. I think that small, simple quality of life changes are sufficient. For example – the whole Dhuumfire incident could have been avoided if Anet just improved baseline power scaling for weapons used by power builds (assuming that the talent was intended to bump power build damage).

As for the proposed changes in DS, again I hope they don’t happen. I think the modest changes that were made by Anet put DS in a better place than it was, although the bleed over into health should be reverted for the obvious reasons. The only further change I’d make is to allow vampiric traits to heal through DS.

… one last comment, that I hope Anet considers, is this – the way this has gone down has pretty well wrecked any interest I might have in organized sPvP, on any class. It seems pretty clear that “balance” is achieved on the basis of listening to a few players that have alterior incentives to say one thing or another. I’m not sure why this is, considering the limited appeal of cash tourneys and such.

By all means, criticize.

I do think that LF is limited to particular builds, too. In particular, power builds tend to have a whole lot more Life Force generation, both in axe/dagger mainhand having reliable gain in LF, as well as better access to spectral skills via recharge reduction and Last Gasp. Even when running Soul Marks, condition builds don’t accumulate nearly as much life force as a power build.

This may cause issues in such a change, since it makes the access to an active defense via DS block unbalanced in a particular build’s favor. Now, I’ve made power builds in sPVP as well, and I was never really stunned by them in terms of survivability. I haven’t run one with the new LF change, however. Whether in Soldier’s or Berserker, the defense of necromancer always felt lacking. I end up getting knocked around like a pinball, and even with double the effective HP from Soldier’s, it was rarely an effort to ever kill me by my opponents.

It’s the reason why I use a MM necro in sPVP instead of my WvW build. It provides enough control to alleviate pressure, and even when knocked down my minions continue to maintain an offense. But with all of the AoE now, the minions are dying much quicker, leaving me quite helpless despite my bulk. When fighting multiple opponents, the offense from the minions gets split and the die quicker, and in turn I die quicker as well.

So, I experience the survivability issue of “powerful in small engagements, helpless in large engagements” on conditionmancers, terrormancers, and power based minion master builds. Maybe there’s some build you’ve found that works that I haven’t found yet, but so far there hasn’t been a thing that I’ve found effective on necromancers that doesn’t suffer from the strange dichotomy of being strong by itself, weak in groups.

Glenn.3417:

I run a Death Shroud build in pve and wvw and this idea would complete shut builds like that down. We have the option, hell a bunch of traits for offensive ds use. I personally have no prob with ds as it is, cept for maybe the overflow to hp (pve wise).

That is a concern I had for the update. Not looking at life blast, a necromancer can accomplish everything in their bar in 5 seconds if done right. But looking at power necro builds, the loss of sustainable life cuts their offensive potential by a third, easily.

I hearkened back to another post I made about PVE changes to necros, particularly in letting the Axe work as a distanced cleave attack. The idea here is that, in combination with the staff and the Axe, a necromancer would have their AoE offense taken care of, letting them build for other things. Until those changes are made, I wouldn’t put in an update for DS-block, simply because of how reliant we are on Life Blast.

But, if our offenses are taken care of for AoE, then we can simply adjust the traits to make the ones that go with life blast better. Make it so you get 3 stacks of might instead of 1, make it so Life Blast inflicts 5 stacks of vulnerability when piercing instead of 2, and with 30% increased gain in life force generation it just may be manageable.

I’d prefer it tested, though.

Black Teagan.9215:

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

Spot who didn’t read the post.

Ok than show me the line, where he wrote something about the condition cap.

…The irony is so thick here I think it might be intentional.

I’m the on who made the topic. I was talking about how I received a generalized condition cap response from someone who didn’t read the topic.

Combo fields do a lot of different things. The poison field and the dark field cause weakness and blinds, making them disabling. The fire field and the light field give might and retaliation, making them boons and buffs. The smoke field and the water field give stealth and heal, putting them into the “others” category.

All in all, combo fields are complex, and each field should be categorized individually.

Spot who didn’t read the post.

Marduh.4603:

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

I’m surprised the reveal isn’t for 9 seconds.

Says necromancer, who can fearchain to death all glasscannon.

This is horribly shallow. In sPVP I play Engineer, Thief, Necromancer, Guardian, and Mesmer. I main the Engineer in sPVP myself.

Geff.1930:

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

I find auto-turning to be an incredibly unreliable, and even then a necessity for my limitations.

Not to sound unsympathetic, but not everyone suffers from whatever digital limitations you are afflicted with. While I understand that you might have hand problems, frankly with these hand problems you are handicapped “against pro players” regardless.

Then there’s no case to remove it. If it was overpowered then there might be a case, but because it is inferior to a gaming mouse through and through, then there is no case.

Golems are already kind of overpowered…

It is probably a shorter list to come up with the classes that aren’t good at tagging. For the ones that are good that I can vouch for:

Necromancer
Engineer
Guardian

The ones that others vouch for:

Thief
Elementalist

The ones who I cannot vouch for:
Warrior
Ranger
Mesmer

I think the hit to dhuumire was the only thing the devs could pull off without exacerbating the problems the necro already has. Dhuumfire is a trait that is alright in 1 vs. 1, and has little impact in larger engagements. The place where the necro had the most power to survivability was in 1 vs. 1, where they could more reliably use terror to lock down a player, and where protection and DS were their most potent.

It is really hard to make a fix otherwise, since the necromancer is in an uneasy place from which there seems to be no balance:

Survivability: great when you are by yourself and can build up Life Force, terrible in groups where you are helpless to focus and are vulnerable to CC.

Damage: Good when you are by yourself and the opponent has limited cleanses and stun breakers. Bad in groups where you are easily peeled, there are more cleanses about, and when your offense is reliant on blowing all cooldowns or an incredibly situational epidemic.

Whatever makes a necro weaker in 1 vs. 1 makes them much weaker in groups, and whatever makes them stronger in groups makes them much stronger in 1 vs. 1. No other class suffers from such a fierce dichotomy, mostly because the resources the necro has are all finite, and the skills that other players use in such a situation are all lacking on the necro.

I do have on idea. Someone else on the Necro forum mentioned the idea of having Death Shroud get a scaling damage reduction based on a number of players around. That is fine, however I’d like to go one step simpler.

So, for necromancer survival, I will come up with a very simple suggestion. I do not know if it is good or not, but it potentially will solve some of the problems necromancers have:

Make it so, while in Death Shroud, Necromancers do not take direct damage, period. Then, increase the degen on Death Shroud to be at 20% per second, giving them 5 seconds of DS time at a full bar, before traits are applied. The soul reaping line, instead of increasing the size of the Life Force bar, will instead give a scaling increase to how quickly Life Force is generated (maximum 30% increase).

This will make it so Death Shroud is, in essence, a block. It now has infinite potential mitigation, but a short time limit that a player has to slowly build up throughout the battle. For most tactical uses, DS will be used only for a second or two at most, used while at 50% of Life Force out of necessity for defense. Also note that the necromancer is not immune to unblockable attacks, CC, or conditions. Just direct damage.

The offensive skills of Death Shroud do suffer from this, however in the PVP I do not think this is much of a problem. For the most part, players would just pop in to DS to use Doom then Dark Path, or Tainted Shackles + Life Transfer really quickly, maybe firing off a Life Blast alongside of it. In PVE, players generated Life Force very quickly from basic mobs, and also Life Force gaining is a bit easier to obtain in PVE due to how basic mob movement is. However, I have borrowed some suggestions earlier (It is scary how rarely I have an original thought) to increase the Necromancer’s effectiveness in PVE, and with those changes the lack of a nar endlessly spammable Life Blast shouldn’t be a problem.

I find auto-turning to be an incredibly unreliable, and even then a necessity for my limitations. For I have this game in a manner that I have no mouse, and no access to right-click turning. This gives me a pretty big handicap against pro gamers, but what you guys are suggesting would spell the death of my presence in the PVP scene, as well as the death of everyone else who may have similar limitations to my own.

Half the time auto turning doesn’t even work. The first problem is that if you are in motion, at all, it won’t turn. Second problem is, the first attack or two before your toon truly designates a target (even after clicking on him) just goes off into a random direction, sometimes making me miss critical plays due to game delay. Camera turning without a right click makes it so you have to root yourself, otherwise you’ll just whip right back around and start running in the wrong direction.

The auto turning to launch attacks is one of the few saving graces built into this game that I can take advantage of without having to buy a gaming mouse (plus a table to use it on, plus a fan to cool the laptop down before it melts the cords it is connected to). It allows me to maintain offense when I have to root myself in order to turn at a rate quicker than what arrow keys offer me. The idea of having to keep some teleporting freak in a narrow cone of my frontal vision in order to fire off a few shots does not appeal to me. At all. It doesn’t sound like skill at all, just a wealth disadvantage.

I don’t mind the reduction in dhuumire. It still ticks 3 times for me, doing about 2k damage every time it fires off.

The reduction to terror wasn’t so bad, either. Necromancers gained twice the terror available to them, from doom’s 50% increase to Spectral Wall’s multi-use, area denial + protection generating effect. With twice the terror and only a 17% reduction in damage, that still comes out on top.

The survivability hit does hurt me though. Death shroud absorbs 50% more damage now thanks to a bug fix, but the overflow thing really does hurt pinch-plays and PVE Necros a lot. Whether this is a fair trade, I’m not sure.

All in all, it isn’t all bad.

I’m surprised the reveal isn’t for 9 seconds.

The thing I find most annoying about a thief fight isn’t that they’ll beat me, but that it isn’t a “fight”. Their combat strategy is the following:

1: hide in stealth
2: ambush someone from behind, hit them with everything you have
3: dodge a few times to avoid their counter attack
4: pop back in stealth

repeat. There is no hard counters to stealth, and most of what is done while fighting a thief (an extremely mobile class with multiple teleports on the same build) is just guessing. Heck, the only way you can be sure anything is accomplished is if you use Necromancer Marks and see them triggering it.

I do wish that stealth in the game had more diversity to it. I think that if a player in stealth gets hit 0.5 seconds after entering stealth, it should immediately drop them out of stealth. I’m pretty sure a warrior knows when he has buried his axe into someone instead of just flinging wildly into thin air. This makes stealth tactical: instead of being an omni shield that lets you lay down offense, it functions as an escape or an offensive tactic that can be countered if the opponent guesses where you are and attacks there. The approach to backstab will take skill, instead of relying on one of many gap closing abilities.