Guild Wars 2

Warmaster Mesmer

As a Berserker Mes, stealth burst Thieves and tanky Rangers. Rangers can waste your dodges with ease leaving you vulnerable and burst Thieves will punish any mistake with instant death

If you’d actually watch the video (source), they mentioned it (shatter nerf) might possibly be an avenue they could consider looking into if GS beam AoE proved too powerful.

There has been no confirmation of a shatter nerf, don’t worry yourself.

Wow, this thread…

The only OP thing about thief is perma stealth which is getting nerfed this patch. PvP balance is solid and they are just as good as warriors in PvE.

If you think they are OP, try one.
If you suck as one, review your build/practice.

Conditions get worse the more players enter combat (devastatingly low cap + Aoe cleanse). Do not go conditions for large scale battles, currently conditions are in a bad place. 1v1 they can be absolutely excellent though, for sure.

Short answer: No.

An issue that allowed thieves to maintain near permanent stealth (which was extremely annoying) is getting fixed and may or may not affect Mesmers.

All that has been mentioned at this point is that they are implementing new beam technology that allows beam attacks to hit the enemies that they pass through on the way to the main target, which sounds awesome to me.

So old bugs left in and new bugs introduced put aside, there is no reason to expect a nerf.

Go try Necromancer staff auto, get some real perspective. Mesmer staff auto is way faster, homing and it bounces.

Going for a regal look with my mesmer

Assuming a berserker shatter build, the difference is damage (GS) vs survivaility (Staff).

The GS however, was broken recently in that the phantasmal berserker has trouble landing attacks. Massively reducing GS’s potential.

Build is a big deal for sPvP. Having everything set to work together in a way you understand and will exploit is extremely important. Remember that the build has to fit your play-style also, if you run a shatter build but always shatter at range, maybe change the self shatter trait to a reduced cool-downs on GS trait from another tree, stuff like that. Don’t restrict yourself to sticking with someone elses build.

Aside from that it really is just practice. Trust me, the feeling when totally owning a match and getting #1 score is worth the effort!

The condition caps are bad design and do nothing for individual balance. They NEED to be removed and there as so many avenues down which to travel to remove the server cost issue that it’s actually sad to see them bring it up as if it’s a legitimate reason to stall.

I love this game but I think after all this time they really need to consider hiring additional staff to put towards balance, they seem to be putting next to no effort into what should be a factor of supreme importance…

Andele.1306:

Bhawb.7408:

I think healing your real HP while in DS would unbalance it. The problem would become that you are now not only tanking damage and/or stalling for time for CDs, but if you could heal, you could nearly “restart” the fight every time you went into DS by healing up at least portions of your HP bar and getting extra time on your big CDs, all while the enemy is completely unable to truly hurt you.

And the problem lies in? Theif stealth (except for shadow refuge in combat), Guadian Renewed Focus, Ranger Trap nest into Spring and ele water switch (especially if with 30 arcane) all do pretty much the same thing, reseting the fight by maximum potential damage output, but returning the hp bar to a reasonable survival level while cooldowns get up, for the other classes same could be said with Mace/Shield Warriors, Mesmer Moa and Elixir S, but they are way stronger in combat abuse than a hp reset.

Yep, especially considering the only healing you could be receiving is residual ticks of regeneration which you may or may not have running at the time you go into shroud. I don’t think that’s anywhere in the realm of OP, just fair.

Why not just fix Death Shroud…

• balance life force acquisition for sPvP
• remove downed UI
• modify skills 1 and 4 to create synergy with a wider range of builds
• look into skill 2 in regards to reducing casting/travel time and it’s inherent failure rate
  and
• … maybe do something with the 5th skill slot

I’d also be interested to experience the effect of healing being allowed in DS first hand, seems an unnecessary restriction to me.

Server lag or some such thing since the Jan patch. It’s causing a lot of lag-related issues. Last I read there is no ETA on a fix either.

It’s easy to “over-react” to a comment as ridiculous as Chris’ there, but he probably just didn’t understand the question/doesn’t actually know that minion/pet AI is terrible.

Bas is actually right (so tempted to be a kitten and write “for once” :P haha) here though, AI is improving significantly and this is coming from one of the most harsh critics of their AI on these forums. I still run the flesh golem for world PvE and actually haven’t had an encounter in recent days in which he hasn’t eventually joined the fight. It feels good. There is definitely work to do, and large groups still mess with the AI as well as objects, but things are looking up for minion AI if they continue making improvements as they have been.

Might as well take this as an opportunity to thank the devs for the work they’ve done on this so far, so: Thanks guys, great work! It is very much appreciated!

Mostly it’s just the delay on impact after casting enfeebling blood that rustles my jimmies, it’s much too slow for an AoE (they are easily gone by the time it lands).

The server lag after the Jan patch are making cast times into much more of an issue, with delays of 1/2 a second plus added to the start of a skill we are dealing with 1.5+ second ground target AoE skills, making them VERY hard to land…

The discussion in question

Weigh in below.

This would add a lot more strategic depth to Plague Form to be sure. At least concerning fun, this is a good suggestion.

Andele.1306:

Just to mention, if a higher bleed cap was possible, condition cleansing abilites would have to give about 5 seconds of condition immunity after the cleanse to balance the gap and Consume conditions would probably count every 5 bleeds as a seperate condition.

No, not at all. This makes no sense.

Consume Conditions counts each type of condition as seperate, this means that 1 bleed or 100 will still count as the same bonus healing. The same logic affects other condition removal, so an ability that removes one condition will remove any number of bleeds and count that as one condition.

digiowl.9620:

stack adjustment only apply to very big mobs (champions or higher) as that is the major sore point.

It may be the major sore point but the issue affects EVERY enemy in the game. Restricting a much needed game wide fix to a PvE niche would be EXTREMELY disappointing and infinitely frustrating.

Bas.7406:

Brew why do you always count only the bleed damage are you not attacking with direct damage at the same time? You are using isolated mathematical situations and overlooking the simplest and most obvious flaw to your math.

Because the issue is extremely simple yet so many have trouble comprehending it. I wanted to present it extremely clearly. Just as I added no bleed or minor additional damage source for the Warrior example, I didn’t include dd for the Necro example. I also assumed that a single Necro was reaching 25 bleed stacks, this is nigh impossible.
In reality, a condition necro will do an additional ~300 damage per second as direct damage.

Again using my extreme case:
Individually:

• Warrior capable of delivering 4,000 damage per second hits your boss for 3,200 per second.
• Necromancer capable of 25, 150 damage bleed stacks, (plus 300 dd) hits your boss for 3,930 per second.

In groups:

• 10 Warriors capable of delivering 4,000 damage per second hit your boss for 32,000 per second total.
• 10 Necromancers capable of 25, 150 damage bleed stacks (plus 300 dd each) hit your boss for 5,550 per second total.

Bas.7406:

While a necros damage is additive because they are dealing both bleed, burn, poison, and direct.

Lets deal with the bleed issue first since it’s the main one (Only one person can inflict either burn/poison at a time, mate. The burn/poison problem could be a whole other thread)

Bas.7406:

The big difference is when those warriors are doing 100 b. that’s all the damage they do.

You, I and everyone else in this thread know that’s not true.

Snafoo.2869:

So in actuality we may be looking at something like:
- warriors: 3.200 × 10 = 32.000
- necros: 1000 × 10 + 3,750 = 13,750

using the 40% reduction this would be saying a Necro could land dd worth nearly 1700 per second… Perhaps in a power/precision/condition damage build you could get half that per second in dd?

Andele.1306:

Despite my hate for some of Bhawbs logical gymnastics that would break the spine of every being alive, he was actually right here because direct damage does have a cap, its called the armor of the boss and crit chance. Good exaple is Claw of Jormag who while not weakned by imafirinmahlazor asura cannons takes about 40% of normal direct damage while still taking full condition damage.

Except he’s not right at all, because what you have just described is not a cap at all. Not only is your example not relevant to most enemies, it does not hard cap absolute direct damage to 3.75k damage per second in the absolute BEST of possible situations. In reality, most bleed stacks, especially in larger fights will not be taken up by those with the most condition damage. This limits damage far below it’s maximum potential through bleeds.

Your described limit reduces potential damage individually.
Let me show everyone in this thread an example of what that means:

(These individual damage values will be nigh impossible, at least for Necro, I’m not as familiar with PvE max stat Warriors, but an extreme case helps explain my point)

Individually:

• Warrior capable of delivering 4,000 damage per second hits your boss for 3,200 per second.
• Necromancer capable of 25, 150 damage bleed stacks hits your boss for 3,750 per second.

In groups:

• 10 Warriors capable of delivering 4,000 damage per second hit your boss for 32,000 per second total.
• 10 Necromancers capable of 25, 150 damage bleed stacks hit your boss for 3,750 per second total.

For those who missed it, 10 necromancers do the same damage as one. This is the problem and this is what we are complaining about.

Plus, does anyone honestly think it’s possible for one player to constantly maintain 25 stacks of bleed…?

Visible back pieces clip into the Corrupted Orrian Mantle. It’s disappointing to go to the effort of getting a back piece only to be unable to see it.

Could we possibly see a change in the future whereby the Corrupted Orrian Mantle pushes the back slot further from the character allowing the items to be seen?

Assuming the AI functions (which is a major obstacle):

• Open world PvE – excellent
• Dungeons – poor
• sPvP – excellent ?v1/?v2
• WvW – terrible

Essentially, if you expect to encounter much AoE, don’t use minions.

Snafoo.2869:

If the condition caps were increased/removed Epidemic would have to be nerfed into the ground or even removed though. Imagine being able to spread 50+ bleeds on 5 enemies.

It would have to be modified, yes. Perhaps epidemic only allows spreading to a cap of 25 bleeds otherwise no bleeds are transferred.
E.G.

• target has 20 bleeds. surrounding enemies have 6. epidemic spreads 19 bleeds to a cap of 25.
• target has 5 bleeds. surrounding enemies have 60 bleeds. epidemic spreads 0 bleeds as the cap has been surpassed.

There are ways to balance epidemic without destroying the skill.

The bleed cap needs to be removed however, it is entirely bad design.

Bhawb.7408:

Also, bleed caps are kind of necessary in PvE. Imagine having 100 bleeds on a boss, with each person doing 100 damage per tick, 10000 damage per second? The game is currently balanced with the bleed cap in mind, if they didn’t have it, they would need to increase boss HP, which would make power builds worse off.

Direct Damage hits per second caps are kind of necessary in PvE. Imagine having more than 1-3 players hitting an enemy at a time for 2000 damage every half second, that could reach WAY over 10000 damage per second! The game is currently balanced with the damage cap in mind, if they didn’t have it, they would need to increase boss HP for some illogical arbitrary reason.

See what I did there?

Getting sick of seeing that ridiculous argument to be honest…

LyricDawnhagen.7803:

The bonus Condition Damage you get from your gear and traits is shown on the Attributes panel.

Of course it is… 4 hours sleep, I seriously looked and couldn’t see it there… haha

lettucemode.3789:

Brew Pinch.5731:

So for those that don’t run dagger, Wells or waste locust on heals we’re looking at whatever we get from the heal skill and a negligible few hundo max from vampiric. That puts a more common Necro at less than half the healing of an Ele on average (range from 1/4 to 1/2).
Now I see a stronger argument for an increase in passive life steal.
“Attrition” with the same/weaker sustain to any other class, haha…

Well, they have about half our life, so it seems fair to me.

Oh, I agree, I just think the “attrition” label is ridiculous considering we have no sustained healing when not wielding a main dagger, if only DS wasn’t so terrible… The label is much more fitting of the Elementalist or Guardian.

We need condition damage and magic find to be shown on the attributes page. There is no reason not to include this value.

Any others missing?

So for those that don’t run dagger, Wells or waste locust on heals we’re looking at whatever we get from the heal skill and a negligible few hundo max from vampiric. That puts a more common Necro at less than half the healing of an Ele on average (range from 1/4 to 1/2).
Now I see a stronger argument for an increase in passive life steal.
“Attrition” with the same/weaker sustain to any other class, haha…

Bas.7406:

Brew Pinch.5731:

Just don’t bother with minions and you’re good to go.

If you mean in Fractal 10 and up you are correct. In every other instance Minions are just as good as any other utility.

For open world and clearing dungeon trash they are OK, only problem is the massive attack bug. For anything else they die in seconds to AoE, often before they’ve decided to attack.
After playing MM from launch through to Jan, changing spec has made the game so much less frustrating. No more PvP deaths entirely because every minion locked on passive? Yes please.

iCryptik.1496:

Don’t use them.

You can thank me later.

This is really solid advice and what I came here to say.

Andele.1306:

Minion rates now:
Attack what you attack – 85% of the time

Seems like a dream level of success to me, I’ve personally not seen improvements at all besides them not attacking distant targets.
I’m extremely jealous of your minion’s attack rate if this is true.

Disturbed.9305:

People saying they would just kick a Necro before doing a dungeon with them. When I have asked why someone would say this, the only response I get is.. “Well, they suck and are useless.”

Steer clear of running dungeons with those people, they tend to be the worst players.

Necro has a negative vibe due to the condition cap rendering much of their DPS during bosses moot. Besides that, we are a really solid class and I’ve had fractal runs with multiple conditionmancers that went faster than those without (dat AoE).

Just don’t bother with minions and you’re good to go.

I have noticed no change. They are still totally borked. Farming with my flesh golem summoned he will attack during 1 in 7 – 10 encounters. I have not personally seen any minion begin combat at the start of an encounter since the patch, only part way through.
Minions remain an abysmal joke.

DS should:

• provide the basis for Necro “attrition”
• include functionality viable to all builds

Thus I would:

1. remove the “downed state” UI
2. ensure DS is useful to all builds, not just power. (auto determined by weapon is a solid suggestion in my opinion)
3. utilities and healing available/working (including regen boon)

then maybe add a number 5 skill because that would be cool…

And what’s that per second with a dagger assuming 50% crit? About 750+ health a second… Annnddd the same increase in damage…

Yeah, I’d love this too! Along with heavy armour, permanent retaliation and immunity to conditions. /facepalm

A very big no to dark armour replacing reanimator. We want something that isn’t terrible and fits with all builds.
I’d prefer they fix the horror, it’s a billion times better than 2% reduced damage for a few seconds for an Axe/Dagger Necro. In fact, the horror is (when they fix AI) One of the best minor adept traits.

Thieves can be hit in stealth mate…

Sea of Sorrows
Experiencing:

• Skill lag
• Lag spikes
• Disconnects

So far this has happened on every map I’ve played on

• Orr – Cursed Shore and Malchor’s leap
• Lions Arch
• WvW – borderlands and Eternal BGs
• Snowden Drifts
• Diessa Plateau
• Fireheart Rise
• Citadel of Flame
• Fractals of the mist (allowing re-entry after DC has been a lifesaver here)
• Metrica Province
• Crucible of Eternity
• Mount Maelstrom
• Southsun Cove

Good luck!

More info.

• RAM
• OS

Are you running much in the background?

Rifting is cool and all, but we already have WAY better PvP systems in place, all rifting would do is irritate PvE players.

/thread

I agree, people who get upset by profanity yet turn off the filter are mind bogglingly stupid.

If you don’t like Guard sceptre auto, check out Necro staff auto. It’s an even slower projectile with triple the cast time… For the same damage, Haha

bear.3842:

Not modified, removed.

Given the amount of hate for that trait and yet it still persists to exist, it basically confirms no Anet devs play necro.

The Greater Marks radius issue is more what shows that.

Re-animator is actually pretty decent, have a look at every other classes trait in the same position, most of them are pretty basic. In reality, the horror doesn’t actually pull any aggro anymore and it IS very Necro. It’s only problem is it’s totally useless in PvP as it dies to any AoE or cleave and attacks and moves WAY too slowly to actually land a hit on a player.
I would love if they reduced the cooldown to 5s or something so you could have a swarm of them, but that would be OP for PvE as a minor adept trait.
Honestly they should improve it’s movement speed a bit and attack speed massively (whilst significantly reducing it’s damage to compensate (it is a tiny rat after all…)). Those changes would see it become useful in PvP (it will now land attacks) as well as PvE, whilst still remaining extremely weak (it dies in 1 hit) in line with all the other traits in the same position (except maybe rangers +50% endurance regen, that minor is excellent :P).

• I would hazard to guess they are considering/attempting 2 and 3.

• In all honesty, 4 could be cool, but I would want mounted combat in conjunction. We’re bored of the stupid “movement only” mounts from other MMOs. I feel like usually they are a measure to distract from large zones with minimal content, GW2 has so much packed into it’s areas that mounts are needed in that way. As long as mounts were an extension of combat, though, and didn’t take away from on-foot combat, they would be really nice.

• Honestly don’t believe 1 is a good idea in the slightest, however. Having an exorbitant, bloated leveling grind is what puts huge amounts of people off these types of games. I know for a fact that many of the friends I’ve gotten into this game would have given up and quit if leveling was as tedious and unending as in most other MMOs.

I also have a lot of praise for the developers on this game, it really is a brilliant achievement.

Yeah, the skill is still really bugged for the moment unfortunately.

Seems an odd thing to change, would add a nice bit of variety to the CoF clones… That, and it looks awesome!

Minions are borked, some traits are shonky and DS needs to be tweaked, but most classes have these types of teething issues. The class is fun though, and with a solid build you can melt faces like everyone else.

TheAngryLlama.7641:

Its not just for necromancers but male light armor norns stick out because you just never see them. Especially when you rock t1/t2 cultural gear.
I also use the malefactorum and deathwish cause both look awesome. Currently using the t1 cultural scepter skin (its bones on a stick!) until I can grind up enough to use lidless eye/eye of rodgort

Big fan of the look mate, one of the best looks I’ve seen, you’ve done really well with that one. I honestly don’t usually like the Norn Necro aesthetic, so much respect!

Condition manipulation is Necro’s forte, aside from conditions general issues (can’t hit objects and 25 stack limit) there’s a lot of fun to be had with the spec.
I recommend sceptre/dagger and staff.