Guild Wars 2

Sadly, from the explanation of PAX there will be only one for each profession :/

spoj.9672:

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

Ummm…what? Weakness doesn’t affect how many crits you have. Procs are completely unaffected by Weakness.

Weakness effects crits since the weakness rework. So technically it does reduce the amount of crits you have. With weakness you will glance multiple times instead of critting. Its really evident when you use assassin gear with the dagger build and then get weakened. Its like hitting mobs with a wet sock. Goes from like a 3 second kill time on a vet to about 20 seconds.

Can confirm this, you feel REALLY helpless with weakness in a situation with no available condi cleanse.

Locust Swarm:

Change is good, cast time reduction is always welcome, especially on this skill i always felt the cast time or the animation was buggy, i interrupted it many times because i used the daze or a heal skill after it, a split second before the animation was finished even though from the visuals the cast was finished.

CPC

Its a start. They at least acknowledge this skill exists. They are pushing it into a direction, furthermore they explain us what that skill is meant to do, area denial. The problem here the ticks are so slow, 3 second in between ticks? Thats a LONG time the skill is active but does nothing. I do understand that lower durations but more frequent ticks would be too strong because of the kind of conditions applied, but i think it needs a persistent effect or a per second effect to become really viable. Projectile block is too strong regarding its uptime, but something like reduced boon duration on foes while standing in it or increased condition duration on foes while standing in it would do the trick.
Another idea would be a small per second damage tick a really low tick, just some of the possibilities this would open: sigil procs, on crit procs, vampiric procs, reapers precision procs…

Signet of the Locust

I love the intention behind the buffs, but i hate that the potency of the healing is depending so much on the enemy. The heal will still be crap if its just one enemy, it isnt based on my positioning but on the enemy positioning. A sustain skill should be more reliable.

Signet of Undeath

Its a buff.. the passive is still rather bad, it has to be bad because the active can be so strong, yet its stuck with a long cast time and the necros lack of on demand stability. Id rather change the active to something different. Necros team support should come from controlling and dominating the enemy, not rezzing or buffing or healing your allies.

Overall they tweak the right parts here, but not enough to make these skills good or viable in any game mode.

Passive is now a real siphon (deals damage)
Passive ICD per Attacker
Active ICD for yourself (and your minions) removed, only allies consume one of the 25 stacks if they hit the targeted enemy.

The changes where good. However its not enough to fix any of our problems. While theyre making adjustments here and there they also do this for other classes, the problem here is other classes weaponsets are much more reasonable, defined and more impactful.

Take hambow as a example, or s/d thief, these weaponsets are in a strong spots. They are reasonable, remarkable, impactfull. While they dont buff these in general, they want to bring all profession weaponsets into that power range. Making them a option and potent. That is generally a good thing, but necromancers weaponsets are just not impactfull and rather scattered. Better scaling on dagger #2 helps in sustain, sure, but is dagger really a sustain weapon? Its one of the best AAs dps wise, it now also gets a decent healing over time with the buff, but the weapon itself has nothing impactful. A defensive oriented build may profit from the better healing, but yet cant provide much more then this, a dps focused build will ignore the healing part completly because it costs dps, the tradeoff for more sustain is not worth it, as a single cc can stop it, costing you the initial cast time, further crippling your dps, and in a dps build time is a much bigger factor then for bunker / sustain builds. It basicly has 3 random skills with almost no interaction or synergy. You could swap dagger #3 and axe #3 and it would still feel random. While people can think oh crap, that warrior has a hammer, or that guardian has a GS, or that thief uses s/d, or that elementalist uses a staff or that Ranger uses a longbow – all these weaponsets have a rather impactfull effect, a clear line of thread and danger that inheritly comes from the weaponskills. Well, did you ever hear anybody say oh crap, that necromancer has a axe/focus? Or crap that necromancer has a scepter/dagger? The most remarkable and dangerous weapon a necromancer currently has is dagger – but only because of its potent AA, and this is rather sad.

Im not saying the buffs are underwhelming or unreasonable, in fact i like the direction – sustain and reliability are key points of atrittion – but number changes are no real solution until the profession mechanic gets synergy with the traits, the traits get a reasonable redesign / reorder, and the weapon sets get a clearer design.

It feels much like wasted resources at this point, as the big balance problem arent the numbers its the spells, the synergy the profession mechanic – at least imho.

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

Brujeria.7536:

So the best solution in the current state would be a ICD for the siphons, but a vastly improved effect.

I would argue that that’s the worst solution. Siphons cannot not be volatile. They have swings in effectiveness by their very nature, and an ICD doesn’t change that fact, only caps it. Instead of trying to fight the inherent volatility by adding an ICD, it should be embraced by actually letting it be awesome in those situations where it would be awesome.

Because you cannot siphon from someone you don’t hit, siphons can be negated. They can also explode in effectiveness with no ICD. All that adding an ICD would accomplish is preventing the explosion, so they are still volatile, but only in a downward direction. For a sustain mechanic, this is very bad.

Now, why it would be all right for siphons to scale with hits landed is because currently, a necro has no active defenses that scale with numbers of opponents. Spectral Armor is great against one, but the second, third, or fourth attackers see no difference between Spectral Armor and Protection (to be clear, I don’t want Spectral Armor changed, it’s great as is). Since we can’t really defend against multiple foes, we need instead to sustain against multiple foes. The way siphons already function is actually perfect for this, just the values need work (and interaction with death shroud). You can’t siphon from foes that aren’t there, so siphons won’t become OP for one opponent, but at the same time, they help sustain against multiple foes when multiple foes are actually there.

Now, if you were to try and improve siphons to an amount relevant to multi-foe sustain with an ICD, they would become a brick wall for a single attacker.

TLDR: Siphons are not comparable to other healing, both due to the “must hit” nature of siphons and the profession’s limitations.

I have to agree with the reasoning for multiple foes compared to a single foe regarding cooldown. A static ICD would be harmfull indeed, however a combination of a ICD that gets reduced by x for every hit you cause (a flexible ICD) would stay true to the volatility, more hits reward you with bigger effects, not instantly as it is right now, but by reducing the effective ICD against multiple foes to a fraction.

The bottom line is not to limit the “feel great” moment inherit to the volatility nature, when you can aggressively hit and pressure foes, but rather meant to help in those situations where you just can’t. Adding a little bit of reliability to the worst case scenario without limiting the the best case scenario.

For example, we are inherit weak against CC, stunlocks, multiple foes due to no easy access to stability. Now, if you are pressured by 2 or more foes, you most likely dont get much hits out due to stun, the need of evading aoes, dodging key skills, however, in certain situations you get a single AA or a tick of Locust swarm hits something, you then get at least the fixed amount to not be totally screwed over. The mentioned sustain against multiple foes is very good on paper and by design, however it are these moments when the siphons effect are the lowest, exactly the moment you would need to rely on them. The higher amount capped by a flexible ICD would at least help a little bit. Lets say its a 400 siphon with 5s ICD, you would get at least a 80 hp/s heal “reliable” sustain bottomline because one single hit every 5 seconds should be achieveable in every situation.

In the best case scenario, against multiple foes the peak moments wouldnt be harmed much either, lets assume the ICD gets reduced by 0,3 seconds per hit (hitting multiple foes with one skill would be like 3 foes * 0,3 second reduced ICD) would essentially lower the ICD to anywhere between 3 and 1 second, based on how well you do, much like it is now.

Of course the numbers are just placeholders, but we wont get much stability so our sustain mechanic would always fail in the situations we would need them the most. The intention would not be to limit it, neither to make it idiot proof like healing signet is, but to push the volatile nature into a more reliable fashion in our bad moments. The reward would be shifted from a small reward on a per hit basis to a more frequent potent effect.

Id change it into a 1 target tether skill that siphons life for a certain amount of time. Second cast would be a shadow step / gapcloser to the target, ending the tether, this way it gives a purpose for the healing aspect and increases the ability to stick on a target on demand for dagger autos.

It can behave like a projectile, but it needs a longer range to make up the distance you or your enemy can create between cast and impact as well as better velocity. a 1500 range, as well as a 33% velocity increase should do wonders.

Siphons always requires you to hit something. Theres the first catch: we cant ensure that. We dont have access to stability so if we get stunlocked or even dazed we dont only suffer that damage and CC, we also loose the potential healing. Warriors or engineers dont have to rely on hitting the enemy to get this effect, they can block and still get their benefit. Its also the same for the ele healing signet, while using a blink or rtl to get out of sticky situations they also get their effect, even if they simply run away they can spam #1 into nothing and dont loose their healing.

DS naturally screws over this entire concept. I guess i dont need much explanation here.

Our siphon concepts are mostly based on a “per hit” basis. This indicates that their strenght is always between 100 and 500% Its rather hard to balance, a staff mark heals you for very little if you hit one target, its actually really decent if you hit 5. Best example is locust swarm, against a single target that kites you it does not help much, but if you are in the middle of an enemy team, hitting 5 people with all hits its the jackpot for pure hp/s measured on investment for siphon skills.

Weaponskills by themself strongly differ, scepter for example will never achieve many hits per second.

So the best solution in the current state would be a ICD for the siphons, but a vastly improved effect. This could be tweaked to “keep” the rewarding feeling to keep hitting enemys in quick sucession, lets say vampiric has kitten ICD, that gets reduced by 0,3 s per hit. It would require a change on DS, as well as the trait values, as well as a re-arrangement to the trait locations to fix it from the ground up. Synergy like siphon a bigger amount of life when you remove or corrupt a boon, or on condition application, or on any other aspect of the “atrittion” concept would be really neat.

It depends. Playing on EU servers I come across this issue sometimes, the funny thing is its most likely not insulting or bashing the direct way. People asking normal questions in spanish or french or whatever just because its easier for them usually isnt a problem, however if it gets “too much” the other languages start talking as well, not because they generally have to communicate or because they have a question, just for the sake of speaking in their language to show kinda “we are here”. Feels like a “cold war” situation to me.

I am usually against guild halls. They would have to bring a lot to the table to make me like them. A simple place to meet with a guild and having all kinds of merchants at hand and for prestige/money sink reasons wont justify this addition.

If they are being introduced id like it to be part of GvG style, where the fights actually are based in and around the guildhall you built. Id love to be able to craft traps, siege weapons or mechanics, walls, npcs or ghostly defenders, this all on a balanced table (set amount of max traps, max npcs). Id think about it as creating a tower defense game (like sanctum 2), time gated crafting of stuff to create your own playground. Part sandbox, the areas should be instanced and fixed, as well as the guildhall size, but you can define the inside and area around it to a certain degree.

It basicly should have a real meaning and purpose, it shouldnt become another “list argument” in mapchat like join: guild X we have TS, homepage, all upgrades, guildhall, weekly guild missions" just to show off that you are a big guild.

Warriors weapon skills in general are all between strong to overpowered, it just has to be this way since their class mechanic is rather static and simple, they have to compensate this somehow. It works and is balanced even though its a overload of everything in most cases, but the archaic simplicity of the class makes things very strong if they succeed without being countered.

MethaneGas.8357:

Dear Anet,

I honestly don’t know what you were thinking when you made this debuff. It is a debuff.
It is a debuff to the whole class. In PvE, in sPvP, in tPvP, in WvW. It is a debuff to the whole class. Why would you make such a change when you clearly said you would buff our sustain. Think for a second. You said you’d buff our sustain. You didn’t. You nerfed Deathshroud. I’m not some random player complaining. I’m a player that has played since beta…. and now you nerf our class mechanic.
All I can say is that I am deeply unhappy and I can’t understand why you did this. It was completely unwarranted. Mark my words, you will lose customers.

I second this so much. Being a rather small company with the need of focus on what they are working is all good and fine, but they should really spend more resources on the balancing team. More devs in balancing team, as well as some adding new skills or weapons for classes on a regular base would help so much, especially as they are trying so hard to promote spvp to be “the new best thing”, it sadly wont work like that.

I may be desperated alone in this opinion, but i would actually love to get rid of the on demand port part of the skill. Id love the idea of a long range “siege” kind minion, that follows you around with some kind of on demand big cast time AOE cc and damage spell, much like the giant icewurms in FGS.

We need some kind of support. Either in the form of “orders” like in GW1, lets say party members deal x% additional damage per hit for 5 seconds, every hit costs you 1% lifeforce.

Or a simple number buff like spotter. A trait that adds ferocity to yourself and allies while in DS for example, the numbers could be higher then all other group number buffs as ferocity does nothing on its own and is always tied to the crit%, giving a justifying argument for pvp balance, as well as a reliable buff for PVE as its trimmed on zerker gear anyway.

As weird as it sounds, for me axe doenst seem to be the “burst weapon”. If i look at its skill set id rather put it into the direction staff is, only on a power setup.

1 deals low damage and stacks vulnerability. It does have a rather fast animation and a good and reliable amount of hits per second, this could benefit any on crit or on hit sigils and runes, as well as any on hit effects like vampiric. If most of these effects wouldnt be so ICD gated this skill could serve a lot of support supposes.

2 deals good single target damage, its reliable as its no projectile, and it generates lifeforce, so providing sustain in a way, this paired with the good amount of hits can serve the same purpose as #1

3 is aoe damage with cripple, boon removal and a self buff, again it seems very supporting in nature to me. With some adjustments on the boon removal priorities this skill could force the enemys in a spot they dont want to be – lets say removing stability or protection while crippling – would be rather potent.

The only things i would adjust is #3 is a blast finisher. #1 getting a chain, the first two hits stay like they are now, the third one comes out slightly slower and dealing aoe damage and a effect around the target, or a “mark” or a “2 seconds mini well” It could even a summon minion mark with slight AOE damage of some sorts.

I think mark of blood fits the necro design rather well – it has a decent cooldown, giving regen and bleeding in an aoe, the entire concept of harming your enemies while sustaining and benefiting yourself in a rather “slow” and realiable fashion seems very very well designed.

Another element that seems very great to me is underwater DS#2, it applies rather low damage in an area, as well as a pulsing blind and poison. This skill alone feels so rewarding to use. Just pop DS for #2 and #5 in any build is a great concept to provide aggressive gameplay. Its always accessible and has a decent cooldown as well.

I do like minions a lot as well, im not really happy with their current implementation and their trait setup, but their guaranteed projectile finishers on a independent way is a great idea on paper.

Narkodx.1472:

HEY GUYS

There are actual Necromancers on top teams in PvP now

WAIT!

We are weak and useless

WTF?

Best part of this useless thread –
Ovid says that if you think Necro is useless and not strong or viable it is a L2P issue
Brujeria says that if you think Necro is completely fine you are not experienced enough and need to L2P

Second best part of this useless thread – Mesmer 3rd auto attack chain on the sword counts as a viable and more powerful boon removal than anything Necro has

I usually dont reply to posts like this since your post alone is enough proof that you have no idea about game designs, balance or archetypes, but as im in the mood right now i still do it.

Necromancer currently has one viable build that is mostly used and rather reliable in pvp. This build is based around terror, fear and spike damage. Most burst and a lot of potential danger is caused by 2 passive procs, traits and runes. Only because a class has one really viable build for pvp is not proof that a class is fine. GW2 is designed against “single purpose” professions, every profession should be able to fill any role in their own style – the key factors, how a certain profession deals DD, or supports might be completly different. The necromancer was often described as an aggressive attrition style, tanky fighter with good self sustain. The only viable meta build is neither attrition, neither tanky, neither sustain heavy. Its a simple condi burst build that works because of passive procs. The point is clear that necromancers are rather strong in this role, but thats the only role, and this role does not even meet the criteria the class should be constructed around.

Players can make most things work, the bigger question is, how are things designed and balanced, what classes does exceed in a situation, with a build style within the summary of all professions and available builds, and then add the challenge of staying true to the class design and philosopy.

Most necromancer skills that are really potent arent “weak” at all, they just are sitting duck style skills, rather unreliable and not aggressive, rather reactive – things like corrupt boon, putrid mark etc. are strong if they work well, but if they work well they dont do it in a way they should be supposed to based on the class description – the current meta is most likely burst, recover, burst recover, maybe disengage after big CDs are blown, then rinse and repeat. Necromancers dont fit into this meta since they have no reliable means to do their thing, they cant apply their intended playstyle aggressive enough so the only viable option is to burst down the enemy faster as they can burst down you – thats applied through mostly passive means, “random passive proc situations” in a terror build.

In the current pvp mindset this even favours the necromancer a bit, as its about contesting points, sizewise limited areas where the enemy is forced to get up close, giving the necromancer a possible place in teamfights with proper positioning, but once ANY other gamemode (deathmatch, arena, return a flag, etc.) Necromancers will fall off even more as it has no downside for other professions to disengage on will.

Foot in the Grave should be a stunbreak upon entering DS, as well as the 3s stability.

Another big problem are the general weapon skills, everything is just so unsteady, every weapon set seems to do a bit of everything, certain weapon sets are crippling our class mechanic, although that should be the core or a big part of every build. As a side effect of that we get buffed and shiny spectral skills. Yeah these skills can be a great and gameplay wise very strong move of ressource management for our class mechanic, but they SHOULDNT, a class mechanic should work on their own, to a certain degree. Every other class has a working class mechanic on its own, which either offers a great variety, a great costumization or a mechanic that works good on their own. Deathshroud on its own, sucks. Its defensive mechanic, with some borderline useless skills depending on build that feels clumsy, unrewarding, and hard to manage. Borderline, they try to compensate this by a huge amount of traits focusing around DS or life force generation, while most of them are useless, taking up trait slot, limiting our build variety even more.

We have to use our traits and our utility skills to make the most basic things work, these things are then dependant on our enemy, we cant force or sustain our supposed aggressive playstyle, neither can we sustain ourself, and even if we build everything around a certain concept, the other classes do these concepts, these supposed meaning much better, often with lesser effort.

Everyone saying necromancer is fine clearly has not enough insight or experience with the class. We have many flaws that we can try to work around, but even if the end product seems okay in certain game types, these flaws should not exist in the first place. A hole in the staircase should be fixed, not just a DIY woodplank and a pretty carpet on top and calling it a day, and then base the entire balance about that.

I have to agree with the most points mentioned by black moa. The big problem is we are supposed to be aggressive but big parts of our kit do the exact opposite. Being aggressive generally means applying pressure. Forcing a opponent to do what i want, forcing him onto the defensive side. Big parts of our kit dont work like that. Giving you a few examples:

Corrupt boon: this skill used to be really good, a real counter move to boon heavy classes. But then it got further and further crippled and limited. Increased CD. only 5 boons. Cast time. Boon removal priority. Playing a aggressive style class does not favor such a skill, we should be able to do these things upfront, a skill like that, only any effect of my target does X, does not fit into this playstyle. It can be counterable, its only based on the situation, in certain cases this skill can be next to useless. A aggressive skill like that should never be useless until my enemy follows a certain pattern, it should FORCE my enemy into a desired pattern through its aggressive side.

Lich Form: While this is being a rather strong skill damage wise, and seems “aggressive” in nature it isnt. It gives a strong AA, and thats it. We dont have any aggressive means to focus our enemy, we cant dictate the flow of the battle, we cant play our thing on our own, we are reliable on our enemy, if the enemy is stupid or bad its no problem, but any decent player can shadowstep / blink / whirl/ stealth away and thats it. We might be able to “force” our enemy to disengage, we waste our elite skill for nothing. Against decent players its not even neccessary, a skilled guardian can block/aegis/blind/dodge almost the entire duration while severly damaging us.

PoC: Actually turns this skill into a fairly strong attack. At least on paper. The thing is, the skill is cluncky in design, its a slow projectile that can be outrunned on max range, or easily dodged as it has a very very obvious tell, in the end it depends again on the skill of our enemy. If the skill misses we get nothing. No gapcloser, no pressure.

Staff #4, dagger #4: Again, these skills look very strong on paper, and if executed correctly it can be of great use – but using them can be rather difficult. especially dagger #4 can be countered easy. This again, same problem as with corrupt boon or PoC, it can be strong, but we have to react to a given situation (thats based on the enemy) and cant cause this situation ourselfes. We get no bang for our buck, suffer from very long cooldowns compared to the chance of success, leaving us as a sitting duck, we cant dictate the flow of a battle in the first place, we can desperatly try to react only,

Compare this to most guardian skills for example. Guardian is 400% more aggressive then a necromancer could ever dream of. Most of his skills dont care about the enemy. I want a full load of buffs? I press a button. There is nothing my enemy could do against it in the first place, this is my playstyle, the enemy has to react. The gapclosers on weapon skills are not related to actually hitting anything. No clunky projectile, if i wanna be in your face, i press this button, and I AM in your face, no matter if you blocked the skill itself, i still get my gapcloser, im near you and can do as i please, i also can use this the other way around – without limitations or difficults. Infact although most guardians are force-fed into the bunker or support role, if a guardian wants to play aggressive and dps styled, he is so much closer to the playstyle necromancers should be at, while this isnt even the main class focus. Guardians in GW2 feel much more like Necromancers did in GW1. Necromancers feel a lot more like Monks did in GW1. Im not talking about the skills, the animations or stuff like that, im talking about the gameplay. A necromancer has to react to the enemys, just like a monk did, a guardian can act as dominant as a necromancer could in GW1.

1) It was not a bug fix. Every transform skill currently in the game triggers the cooldown the moment you entet the transform. Lich Form has a CD of 180s, once it expires, the CD on the bar is at 160s. Same goes for Plague.

2) Why is DS the only transform skill to get all the restrictions of Transform skills (No access to utlility or heal skills, no weapon swaps) and yet gets further more on top (no healing), while not even getting the benefit of CD starting on enter? Tripple punishment for using class mechanics? YES PLEASE!

3) Gameplay wise it does make a huge impact. I Usually tended to let DS expire naturally, using lifeblast untill its empty, because i was able to use Axe #2 afterwards or any spectral skill and to be sure: I can use DS again right after, even if just for little, the 12% DS is enough for #5 or #3 or a well timed #1 if the enemy was out of our rather small damage range.

Furthermore it gives a huge window of opporturnity for a counter attack, the enemy now basicly always has a 10 second window to CC and burst us to death once we should ever leave DS. Before we had to make a choice, quit early, with CD, but save some Lifeforce, or let it run out, leaving us with no Lifeforce, but also no CD.

Thief for example is the same thing: they only get a revealed debuff if they attack from stealth. If they let it expire they can stealth again without punishment, they can freely choose this. This enables another way of playing and it does feel very rewarding.

Furthermore, facing our current sustain problems this was another nail to the grave. They push our entire sustain and defense mechanics into deathshroud, and now they keep on nerfing DS.

On #4 the best choice would be might, but then this skill would be a exact copy of the Mesmer GS bounce skill.
I would suggest this:

1. Reapers touch no longer applies Regen.
2. Reapers touch now applies 3s of Fury and 1s of quickness.

We have no means of getting fury untraited. The quickness actually gives you a choice, if you stand next to your target you get quicker burst, but you wont get benefit of the 3 seconds of quickness due to quickness gets overwritten with each bounce. If you stand at around 600 – 400 range you get slower burst but the full benefit of the 3s quickness.

1. Spinal Shivers:

- now unblockable
- reduce cast time by 0,5 sec
- increase basedamage by 17%, increase basedamage when removing boons gradually up to 33% when removing 3 boons-

Well what i was thinking is this signet does not fill the role of a group support skill all that great, well of blood makes for a much better group support skill. I would suggest a redesign of this skill more into this direction:

Signet of Vampirism:
Cooldown 30
Passive: Siphon health from foes attacking you (1s ICD per attacker)
Passive: Your siphons heal you while in DS
Active: Mark an enemy. You siphon life everytime you hit the target. This active effect benefits this signets passive effect. (No ICD, X stacks of “Vampirism”)

This would open up some more build options while increasing sustain over time.

Stand The Wall.6987:

Brujeria.7536:

the channel damage is VERY low compared to any other burst skill.

Uh no its actually decently strong if its on a zerk build. ~8-12k every 6 1/2 seconds with mastery at 600 range. If necros had higher burst along with lifeblast pewpew, well, they dont and wont so lets leave it at that.

Yeah you see a big 12k number. However its channeled over 2,5 secs, and after that youre stuck with the crappy AA, or you switch to lifeblast which is better but this forces you into DS in a situation you maybe dont want to, leaving you with a 10 second cooldown.

Big numbers do not mean great DPS at all.

Cam Ron.4170:

Brujeria.7536:

I think necros have 2 flawed designs that most people do oversee: The utlilities. More precise:

1) Our best burst comes from our wells. Utility skills should give options and utlility, The pure power / burst possibilities should not come from utility skills alone, it should be included into the baseline skillset of the weapons. Utility skills should enhance and support that in certain ways, but not being the only way to make it work. We need this power in baseline

2) Spectral skills. SWalk and SArmor. No other profession has to sacrifice utlility skills to manage their profession mechanic, we do if we want to get a decent use out of our profession mechanic. It changes the worth of our profession mechanic extreme, up to a point where its almost necessary. We should get a proper management trough weapon skills, at the moment SArmor make a lot of things and builds work, making a huge impact in most builds. I think this power should be included into our baseline weapons or traits, spectral skills should still give a bit of lifeforce management, but the main focus of these skills should be the utility / support aspect. So many power and traits are centered around deathshroud, the power to do so should be included into the baseline really.

I agree with point #2, but we can pull off some pretty decent burst without wells, and darned good DPS with Deathshroud + Dagger. as a power necro I feel my damage is fine, and I don’t run with wells. DS #5 -> DS #2 ->DS#1 -> dagger auto chain. Just make lich for last 30s or lower the cooldown to 150 please., ended up switching it for golem, which is lame as hell on power necro

This kinda is the problem here: dagger isnt a burst weapon, it does not have a burst skillset, it just happens to have a strong AA. Same with deathshroud, yeah, LB can hit like a truck, especially with lighting and fire procs. But after all its just the AA, no other skill in DS servers a purpose of bursting. LB does not feel responsive, the dps is also rather low compared to its cast time and aftercast. #4 gives nice numbers on 5 targets, but its also during a very long channel time. The point is our current weapons are just so torn apart, they do work to a certain degree sure, but we just got something of everything in each of those. We would need some real dedicated meele Power DPS weapon, as well as a dedicated long range Power DPS weapon imho.

Jim Hunter.6821:

Brujeria.7536:

Atherakhia.4086:

Brujeria.7536

Its the fact that the range is much higher, and the weapon set boasts even more tools to maintain that range. The OP doesnt come from this skill alone, its the weaponset in general. To balance rapid fire for this amount of power and survivability in the ranger longbow set you would need to reduce its damage by ~ 40% as well as increasing the cooldown by 40%.

And again I can’t help but question why?

What class are you playing where the Ranger has enough tools to maintain a range advantage against you? Because it can’t be Thief, Warrior, or Ele. It can’t be Engi, Mesmer or Ranger because they’re all ranged classes. This leaves Guardians, which should have very little difficulty against Rangers or Necromancer which were designed specifically to be the slowest class in the game.

We already know the damage isn’t the problem because Volley does the same damage and have similar vulnerability effectiveness despite the attacks being split. Both weapons also have a knockback which you’re now aledging is the problem, but instead of nerfing that to be 600 range instead of 900, you’re still harping on RF.

I’m just not seeing it, and I honestly feel RF is a bit much, but what everyone’s proposing in this thread is the absolutely destruction of a class that has been absolutely useless as a power build for 2 years and has only been barely functional (no where near competetive) for a week.

Want to be realistic?

Drop RF’s damage by about 5-10% so it is about equal to volley at that point.

Change SotW to only 10% for the Ranger instead of 25%.

Put the telegraph on PBS so it’s more easily recognized at a distance (someone mentioned the black arrow disappears with the EE trait, I’ve never tested?).

Change ALL projectiles (including Engineer grenades, Necro fields will now despawn/fade, traps etc) to be much closer to their identified max range.

And that’s it. The class will continue to be trash like you want it to be because it’s now a 1 trick pony for ranged burst and ANet can ignore all the remaining legitimate issues like they’ve done the past 2 years and we’ve now covered every legitimate argument that has been raised in this thread and every other over the past week.

Necromancer for example. You cant get close enough to do much if the ranger is smart. It doenst matter if condi or power.

Warrior to a degree – if hes not using GS. Lets say a Rifle and Axe/Axe warrior for example. Would have a very hard time getting close, he still can have his immunities regardless of his weapons, but the ranger can easily stealth and then switching to GS and leap away, waiting till the stances are over and resetting the fight. The warrior has no real counterplay to that, he can safe his blocks and stances untill he can fully engage but the ranger easily keeps the range and killing the warrior with RF as well as AA, both hit very very hard in a power build. Even IF the ranger should do a mistake he still has a 6 sec invulnerability or lighting reflexes to get out if he pleases.

Guardian actualy has the kinda same problems, but can block / aegis the CC effects a little better, basicly can handle the pressure better, + has some really good gapclosers at hand that dont rely on a projectile.

Any mesmer without PU / stealth centric has the same problem.

These are just examples, but basicly ANY class that doesnt have a gapcloser or stealth built in the used build can only loose in a open field fight if the ranger is of equal skill. These is not a factor of “outplaying”, this is simply a complete lack of reasonable counterplay. Nobody would complain about loosing against a good ranger, nobody would complain about getting outplayed by skill, but people will always complain about something they simply cant do anything in the first place. If a fight is basicly GG before it started because i play a necromancer and happen to see a longbow ranger something is terrible wrong.

So your argument is if players using these professions decided not to use any of the weapons, traits, or utility skills that would help them beat a ranger the fight is unfair.

That is like me saying that I decided not to wear armor so it is unfair that the other players are hitting me so hard. I demand everyone gets a nerf to damage so I can run around in WvW naked!

You over exaggarate this point. I mean a warrior should not be forced to pick a GS to have any chance against a ranger. A mesmer should not be forced to use offhand torch and stealth traits to have a chance.

I think necros have 2 flawed designs that most people do oversee: The utlilities. More precise:

1) Our best burst comes from our wells. Utility skills should give options and utlility, The pure power / burst possibilities should not come from utility skills alone, it should be included into the baseline skillset of the weapons. Utility skills should enhance and support that in certain ways, but not being the only way to make it work. We need this power in baseline

2) Spectral skills. SWalk and SArmor. No other profession has to sacrifice utlility skills to manage their profession mechanic, we do if we want to get a decent use out of our profession mechanic. It changes the worth of our profession mechanic extreme, up to a point where its almost necessary. We should get a proper management trough weapon skills, at the moment SArmor make a lot of things and builds work, making a huge impact in most builds. I think this power should be included into our baseline weapons or traits, spectral skills should still give a bit of lifeforce management, but the main focus of these skills should be the utility / support aspect. So many power and traits are centered around deathshroud, the power to do so should be included into the baseline really.

Atherakhia.4086:

Brujeria.7536

Its the fact that the range is much higher, and the weapon set boasts even more tools to maintain that range. The OP doesnt come from this skill alone, its the weaponset in general. To balance rapid fire for this amount of power and survivability in the ranger longbow set you would need to reduce its damage by ~ 40% as well as increasing the cooldown by 40%.

And again I can’t help but question why?

What class are you playing where the Ranger has enough tools to maintain a range advantage against you? Because it can’t be Thief, Warrior, or Ele. It can’t be Engi, Mesmer or Ranger because they’re all ranged classes. This leaves Guardians, which should have very little difficulty against Rangers or Necromancer which were designed specifically to be the slowest class in the game.

We already know the damage isn’t the problem because Volley does the same damage and have similar vulnerability effectiveness despite the attacks being split. Both weapons also have a knockback which you’re now aledging is the problem, but instead of nerfing that to be 600 range instead of 900, you’re still harping on RF.

I’m just not seeing it, and I honestly feel RF is a bit much, but what everyone’s proposing in this thread is the absolutely destruction of a class that has been absolutely useless as a power build for 2 years and has only been barely functional (no where near competetive) for a week.

Want to be realistic?

Drop RF’s damage by about 5-10% so it is about equal to volley at that point.

Change SotW to only 10% for the Ranger instead of 25%.

Put the telegraph on PBS so it’s more easily recognized at a distance (someone mentioned the black arrow disappears with the EE trait, I’ve never tested?).

Change ALL projectiles (including Engineer grenades, Necro fields will now despawn/fade, traps etc) to be much closer to their identified max range.

And that’s it. The class will continue to be trash like you want it to be because it’s now a 1 trick pony for ranged burst and ANet can ignore all the remaining legitimate issues like they’ve done the past 2 years and we’ve now covered every legitimate argument that has been raised in this thread and every other over the past week.

Necromancer for example. You cant get close enough to do much if the ranger is smart. It doenst matter if condi or power.

Warrior to a degree – if hes not using GS. Lets say a Rifle and Axe/Axe warrior for example. Would have a very hard time getting close, he still can have his immunities regardless of his weapons, but the ranger can easily stealth and then switching to GS and leap away, waiting till the stances are over and resetting the fight. The warrior has no real counterplay to that, he can safe his blocks and stances untill he can fully engage but the ranger easily keeps the range and killing the warrior with RF as well as AA, both hit very very hard in a power build. Even IF the ranger should do a mistake he still has a 6 sec invulnerability or lighting reflexes to get out if he pleases.

Guardian actualy has the kinda same problems, but can block / aegis the CC effects a little better, basicly can handle the pressure better, + has some really good gapclosers at hand that dont rely on a projectile.

Any mesmer without PU / stealth centric has the same problem.

These are just examples, but basicly ANY class that doesnt have a gapcloser or stealth built in the used build can only loose in a open field fight if the ranger is of equal skill. These is not a factor of “outplaying”, this is simply a complete lack of reasonable counterplay. Nobody would complain about loosing against a good ranger, nobody would complain about getting outplayed by skill, but people will always complain about something they simply cant do anything in the first place. If a fight is basicly GG before it started because i play a necromancer and happen to see a longbow ranger something is terrible wrong.

Problem here is the game is based around these passives. Every single rune is passive to a certain degree. The amount of traits is high compared to the amounts of skills. GM Traits that affect only a single weapon are basicly a no go for the balance team, there simply is no other way to add traits and functions to the game other then passive. If the amount of weapons, utlility skill types, utility skills and so on would be higher, you would have a much broader spectrum of things to implement more active traits upon. Now where stuck with a lot of filler traits or passive stuff, but not much could be changed either. I’d love traits that entirely change some skills, and not adding something useless of passive or minor to them or my character.

Atherakhia.4086:

MightyMicah.7451:

Atherakhia.4086:

Brujeria.7536:

Atherakhia.4086:

How can it be ‘everything else’ when everything else existed before this change and Rangers were undeniably a free kill to every class in the game? The change to RF is just that good that it was the tipping point the class needs? And if so, why haven’t we seen Rangers dominating anything since the update?

The only thing Rangers really got, other than the RF change, is the change to signets. Only one of which reallly has any impact on damage.

As to the ‘not every class’ argument, the only class that’s truly at a significant disadvantage when it comes to being able to counter the power Ranger’s playstyle is Necromancers. But they also have great access to conditions which the spec is notoriously weak against. Plus they’re ranged.

Do you have an example of a class that doesn’t have enough tools at their disposal to close the gap initially and reclose it once every 10 seconds for however long it takes to deal with a glass ranger?

What does “long range” conditions or damage help at all, if the rangers “long range” is just 800 units bigger then the max range of other classes? Glass rangers are easy to kill when you get close and keep at it, its the sheer amount of tools the ranger kit offers to create distance, both regarding CCing the enemy and movement skills.

Necromancers currently have no reliable means of getting close. Mesmers (unless some PU cheesy thing) may have gap closers and some reliable long range damage, but rangers just have flat out more damage and more range as well as more tools to creating distance.

In the end it was the many small things that all caused a power increase to the longbow ranger to create this powercreep.

Again, you’re grossly inflating the values of these tools. Aside from easy access to signets, the Ranger gained no utility/defense skills in this patch. All they gained was burst on RF that’s only slightly more powerful than volley is for a rifle warrior.

If Ranger survivability was even a fraction of what you’re trying to convince us it is, the class wouldn’t be (and still is) the laughing stock of WvW, GvGs, and Guild groups. Even in PvP people are mentioning they’re seeing no new Rangers in higher ranked matches.

What you’re trying to sell us doesn’t mesh with what people are actually seeing in game.

Straight up lies. Rangers have always been a very good option, at least for roaming. Case in point: Gladomer. Just because not many people play Ranger doesn’t mean it’s under powered. There were many very skilled rangers I came into contact with on a daily basis. Even in Tpvp I would occasionally find excellent rangers. Among “top tier” Tpvp There has been a humongous influx of rangers. Unless you’re referring to sub 100, you’re flat out lying. For the most part I Tpvp every day (Team arena or solo queue depending on the day) and I generally sit around 200-300 rank in team arena and 500-600 in solo arena. Just yesterday I played two matches while queued up for Archeage. The first match there were three rangers on my team, and two on the enemy team. The second match there were two rangers on my team and two on the enemy team. This has been my experience ever since the patch.

You’ve seen this with power builds?

And in WvW, GvGs, or GvZ?

Now who’s lying…

And no, a 30 second cooldown isn’t suitable. Again, we can draw a direct comparison between RF and Volley. They are nearly identical skills now and it’s impossible for one to be as overpowered as people alledge and the other to be perfectly fine.

Especially when you consider the power Ranger’s standing before the update. From total obscurity to a top tier wrecking ball?

IF the damage is a problem, it’s more likely a result of SotW and not the skill itself.

Its the fact that the range is much higher, and the weapon set boasts even more tools to maintain that range. The OP doesnt come from this skill alone, its the weaponset in general. To balance rapid fire for this amount of power and survivability in the ranger longbow set you would need to reduce its damage by ~ 40% as well as increasing the cooldown by 40%.

sminkiottone.6972:

Brujeria.7536:

but once they add another game more, or for general wvw roaming these balance is toxic and vastly overpowered.

If LB ranger are OP what about perplexity engineer, PU mesmer, perplexity thief, fearmancer and all those condi bunker specs ?

I sometimes play a fearmance with signet of spike in 1v1 and people die in few seconds, should we nerf necro ? I mean, it has best Hp in game, many sources of fear, death shroud, it can cast more condition than most classes can clean, there’s no counterplay, it’s OP.

These builds are strong as well, but still they have counter play. EVERY class has access to both stunbreaks and condition clears. There is no counterplay if you cant even REACH your enemy, WHILE hes doing stupidly high damage. The range indicated on Longbow traited is 1500, but its actually much more, this combined with the high speed and velocity of the shots makes it very reliable. Sure you can dodge, but so can the ranger dodge any CC or Gapcloser you aim at them, and even if you keep your dodges for the rapid fire, the AA damage alone is enough to wither you down until the next Rapid Fire is up, all while you have a pet next to you fearing rooting and knocking you down while even doing damage on top.

Atherakhia.4086:

Again, you’re grossly inflating the values of these tools. Aside from easy access to signets, the Ranger gained no utility/defense skills in this patch. All they gained was burst on RF that’s only slightly more powerful than volley is for a rifle warrior.

If Ranger survivability was even a fraction of what you’re trying to convince us it is, the class wouldn’t be (and still is) the laughing stock of WvW, GvGs, and Guild groups. Even in PvP people are mentioning they’re seeing no new Rangers in higher ranked matches.

What you’re trying to sell us doesn’t mesh with what people are actually seeing in game.

They did not get more means of defense, but the means they already got are much more valueable due to the increased damage potential.

WvW is very much about survivability, ranger in its current state does this with his range. Its easily to get separated from the zerg if you maintain your range, thus you loose on the might stacks, healing, the overall hp buffer of many clustered people.

Also these things take time to evolve into spvp. I remember minion master has been there since launch, it took this game years to actually consider this build for pvp – even though cheesy it does work. It is also very limited here because its about capture and holding points – from a pvp perspective the rangers tools dont help all that much because creating space meaning further off point, but once they add another game more, or for general wvw roaming these balance is toxic and vastly overpowered.

Jim Hunter.6821:

Brujeria.7536:

Jim Hunter.6821:

Brujeria.7536:

The problem is not rapid fire alone.

Its everything else as well. Knockback, stealth, heavy damage AA on longbow, 2 pets with individual CC, second weapon sets with 2 different weapon options to quickly create distance, invulnerability signet, easy accessible CC or more utlility skills to create gaps easy.

None of this is new. Why weren’t these a problem for you 2 weeks ago?

Brujeria.7536:

Its not that you cant kill an ranger if you get close and CC him, its the amount of tools he has to maintain his comfortable range. Rapid fire deals the highest burst damage currently on the game, from a extreme range with a short cooldown.

Wait.. what? It’s the highest burst in game now? I’ll just add that to the list of ridiculous things people have said about rangers lately.

It has no real counter. Not every class has access to reflect or blocks. Not every class has reliable gap closers. Not every class has stealth or escape skills. Not every class has reliable ranged damage.

The counters have been listed many times over. You just listed several of them in that quote. Each class doesn’t have access to all of the counters but they each have access to at least 1. The choice is use them and laugh at how fast the glass rangers die or cry on the forums. 1 of these choices will make you a better player, the other involves crying, choose wisely.

They werent a problem because the damage was rather justified for the range and amount of defensive measures the longbow delivered. All it needed was a slight channel reduction and thats it. Along with the trait changes and signet changes this made it vastly overpowered.

And yes, rangers currently have the highest burst, at the biggest range with a very short cooldown, furthermore many flat % damage increase modifiers, on demand quickness, stability and a 25% damage increase from signets if they wish to, in any gamemode but PVE their burst it by far the most reliable, constistend and safest to use. These are no exaggerations, these are facts. Look at the base damage, look at the modifiers, look at the uptimes, look at the general damage increase via traits and skills.

There is currently no counter option for necromancers against any halfway decent ranger. Regardless of condi or power necro. Stop bullkittenting, youre obviously a ranger player.

I have every profession leveled to 80 primarily through WvW roaming. I actually have 2 rangers, 1 condi and 1 power. What I don’t have is a problem killing glass rangers with any of my characters, even my necro.

necro’s can use minions to LoS, use either of their 1200 range teleports to close the gap (I know the teleports are lackluster but they do exist) or just dodge roll/face tank the damage in DS to get in 1200 range and then melt then with conditions. I’ve killed dozens of rangers with my necro since the patch.

If you really want to complain about a hard counter try playing as an engi vs a necro.

I do know its possible to beat them, but only if the ranger does not know what to do. You can trick them with spectral walk, or with a wurm teleport, but any smart ranger can see it easily coming and waiting for it to wear of and simply knocking you back after the wurm port, wurm has a 40 second cooldown, the knockback has much less.

I am not talking about the rangers that just stand still and press 2 and then use 5 and call it a day, im talking about rangers that know their skillset and play it to the most efficient point.

Even if you should manage to facetank with DS to get close they can always switch to GS and leap away, leaving you in DS wasting your lifeforce by decay as well as reseting the fight – and the rangers cooldowns for creating space are much shorter then any means a necromancer could bring to close the gap.

Atherakhia.4086:

How can it be ‘everything else’ when everything else existed before this change and Rangers were undeniably a free kill to every class in the game? The change to RF is just that good that it was the tipping point the class needs? And if so, why haven’t we seen Rangers dominating anything since the update?

The only thing Rangers really got, other than the RF change, is the change to signets. Only one of which reallly has any impact on damage.

As to the ‘not every class’ argument, the only class that’s truly at a significant disadvantage when it comes to being able to counter the power Ranger’s playstyle is Necromancers. But they also have great access to conditions which the spec is notoriously weak against. Plus they’re ranged.

Do you have an example of a class that doesn’t have enough tools at their disposal to close the gap initially and reclose it once every 10 seconds for however long it takes to deal with a glass ranger?

What does “long range” conditions or damage help at all, if the rangers “long range” is just 800 units bigger then the max range of other classes? Glass rangers are easy to kill when you get close and keep at it, its the sheer amount of tools the ranger kit offers to create distance, both regarding CCing the enemy and movement skills.

Necromancers currently have no reliable means of getting close. Mesmers (unless some PU cheesy thing) may have gap closers and some reliable long range damage, but rangers just have flat out more damage and more range as well as more tools to creating distance.

In the end it was the many small things that all caused a power increase to the longbow ranger to create this powercreep.

Jim Hunter.6821:

Brujeria.7536:

The problem is not rapid fire alone.

Its everything else as well. Knockback, stealth, heavy damage AA on longbow, 2 pets with individual CC, second weapon sets with 2 different weapon options to quickly create distance, invulnerability signet, easy accessible CC or more utlility skills to create gaps easy.

None of this is new. Why weren’t these a problem for you 2 weeks ago?

Brujeria.7536:

Its not that you cant kill an ranger if you get close and CC him, its the amount of tools he has to maintain his comfortable range. Rapid fire deals the highest burst damage currently on the game, from a extreme range with a short cooldown.

Wait.. what? It’s the highest burst in game now? I’ll just add that to the list of ridiculous things people have said about rangers lately.

It has no real counter. Not every class has access to reflect or blocks. Not every class has reliable gap closers. Not every class has stealth or escape skills. Not every class has reliable ranged damage.

The counters have been listed many times over. You just listed several of them in that quote. Each class doesn’t have access to all of the counters but they each have access to at least 1. The choice is use them and laugh at how fast the glass rangers die or cry on the forums. 1 of these choices will make you a better player, the other involves crying, choose wisely.

They werent a problem because the damage was rather justified for the range and amount of defensive measures the longbow delivered. All it needed was a slight channel reduction and thats it. Along with the trait changes and signet changes this made it vastly overpowered.

And yes, rangers currently have the highest burst, at the biggest range with a very short cooldown, furthermore many flat % damage increase modifiers, on demand quickness, stability and a 25% damage increase from signets if they wish to, in any gamemode but PVE their burst it by far the most reliable, constistend and safest to use. These are no exaggerations, these are facts. Look at the base damage, look at the modifiers, look at the uptimes, look at the general damage increase via traits and skills.

There is currently no counter option for necromancers against any halfway decent ranger. Regardless of condi or power necro. Stop bullkittenting, youre obviously a ranger player.

The problem is not rapid fire alone.

Its everything else as well. Knockback, stealth, heavy damage AA on longbow, 2 pets with individual CC, second weapon sets with 2 different weapon options to quickly create distance, invulnerability signet, easy accessible CC or more utlility skills to create gaps easy.

Its not that you cant kill an ranger if you get close and CC him, its the amount of tools he has to maintain his comfortable range. Rapid fire deals the highest burst damage currently on the game, from a extreme range with a short cooldown.

It has no real counter. Not every class has access to reflect or blocks. Not every class has reliable gap closers. Not every class has stealth or escape skills. Not every class has reliable ranged damage.

It should have a stability per pulse really. It might have very strong potential with the condi → boon part, however this is purely based on the situation.

Every skill should have a reliable use for EVERY situation, a skill that just feels useless on the bar unless used in the perfect situation is bad.

I would compare this to “Save Yourselves!” from the guards, even if its used with no allies around, you get a benefit. The skill really shines when taking condis from allies, but it does not feel useless at any point because you get an ensured benefit from using it.

Well axe in a vacuum is fine. It feels good to play with the recent aftercast fix, the cooldowns are nice as well getting a overall “nice to use” feeling.

However, compared to any other dps and burst weapon (ranger longbow, greatsword warrior, greatsword guardian, greatsword mesmer) its just very lackluster. The AA sucks damage wise, the channel damage is VERY low compared to any other burst skill, not even taking in consideration that its only single target. The #3 goes more into the lines of support / utility skill.

The weapon is stuck with a utlility mindset, but should serve the purpose of a burst / damage weapon, thus making it lackluster in both aspects.

Xae.7204:

The problem is that siege is too important, because players are spending more time attacking doors than players.

The defend keep is rare, the defended objective is almost unheard of.

The entire WvW system is based on players attacking doors, not players.

Until you address that issue you will continue to see players troll or abuse the system. You can not design a system that is fun, intuitive and immune to trolls.

You can only fix the ‘siege troll problem’ by addressing the larger issues in WvW.

Defending T3 towers as well as T3 keeps is usually top priority. The best Zerg fights are based around a objective. I have no idea where you got these experiences from.

Nokaru.7831:

On Golems:

• One thing to keep in mind when making these rules is that Siege Golems can be exempt from most of them. They are expensive and don’t count towards the local or map-wide siege cap, and building them en mass is usually the way they are deployed.

One flaw here: if your keep has 5 omegas for defense purposes trolls sometimes destroy them on purpose by jumping of the keep walls.

I strongly disagree with any fully automatic system based on supply spent or siege placed, this hinders zerg commanders as well as small roaming groups that focus on getting towers for points.

From my experience, there are not many trolls, most people are very reasonable and mature. The trolls are however very sturdy. We have a common trollsetup on our server in EU that goes into the Eternal Battlegrounds, empties all 1700 supply of the keep, then going onto the homelands and do the same thing.

I suggest 2 things:

1) Under each siege buildsite and built up siege there is the name of the owner. This helps to identify the trolls as well as honouring the guys more that actually build meaningful siege, to defend a keep and tower. Two birds one stone here.

2) Give the people a option “flag for trolling”. If you right click any player of your team in WvW you have this option. If at least 15% (10 players required at least at all times) of the players on this map are flagging a player for this they get flagged as a “troll” resulting in:

Commander tag cant be put up
No siege can be placed
Maybe reduced event rewards

This all for X hours or minutes. You can shuffle the numbers around, shuffle the restrictions around to make it work, maybe even make a progression system, increasing the malus duration based on the # of flags. The trolls are few in numbers, but very impactfull, so i guess such a system cant get abused easily (its close to impossible to get 10 or more trolls on a single map) and the overall playerbase is really mature and wont flag people just for fun in my experience.

Excuse the mediocre english, i guess you can get my idea anyways.

I cant agree with everything you suggested. Going the direction you are intenting will push DS more into a third weapon set, limited with bonus health. This makes the profession mechanic rather dull. The only things needed in my opinion:

- We benefit to 100% from all self heals, siphons, traits, heal over time, etc. that is done directly by us.
- We can see the cooldowns of all skills on our bar while in DS, we cant use utilities, healing or elite skills though. Passive signet effects would still work.
- We are able to swap weapons while in DS. This will help especially for damage rotations, and sigils.

I think these things should be done as a standard fix for the profession mechanic, before they balance all the skills and traits. It opens up different build options. DS would feel better, and more suitable for all kind of builds. I think these are the changes we could realisticly expect, if the devs would start to listen.

Now, for utopia i would wish:

- Lifeblast is altered based on your mainhand weapon.
- Life Transfer is altered based on your offhand weapon.

This would give us a little bit more customizations for our profession mechanic, right now everything is done by traits, we have so many traits affecting only lifeblast, one skill. Some trait spots would be empty, making room for more interesting traits.

This is completly wrong. With a build you pointed out you can have at max 2 points in spite. You loose at least 20% damage from Close to death. We have exactly 2 options to get protection, not counting runes. These are rather long durations, but also long cooldowns, so if any of those are stolen corrupted etc. you dont have that uptime. Also when going 3 in curses, and 6 in DM you cant go 6 into Soul reaping. You miss on 50% extra crit while in DS. If you use zerker gear to still do damage and shrouddancing you will die, your spectral skills wont be of much use, as the lf generation either overflows, or you stay in DS and loose you 100% fury uptime, and cripple your potential dps as you simply dont have the amount of damage from 6 in SR and 6 in Spite. Also leaving you even more vulnerable when you exit DS. Also, this announced changes did NOTHING to improve our lockdown or chasing potential. Everything you can do now, you can do after the patch in that regard.

RlyOsim.2497:

just to clarify, we got something that should have been in the game since release and nothing else of substance?

i have to laugh, as a wvw and a necro main why the kitten am i playing this game?

#welistentothecommunity

but they did listen! we said signet of vampirism does suck, and look, we got a buff!

It wont. Even if we ignore siphons 3/4 of our heal skills are based on heal over time, crippling any healing power investment as soon as we use our profession mechanic. All traits in this line affect our allies more then they affect us. We generally get too little out of healing power, to make it usefull, so this trait line should shine by the traits themself, which just isnt the case. Every change they do is aimed to push our only possible sustain into DS.

Let me put it that way:

Last Gasp in the Soul Reaping Line – I consider this a bug fix, or at the very best a QoL change.
Spectral Armor – Yeah. A buff to a already good skill. Lets just ignore the useless utilities and rather focus on making something good better. Who needs diversity anyway?
Unholy Sanctuary in the Death Magic Line : Yeah give a sustained healing skill in a traitline that has nothing to do with healing a secondary mechanic that is tied to DS. Did i mention this line also doenst give much to DS anyway? Did i mention that the ICD is pointless as well because if this trait really procs, you will be dead as soon as DS ends?

Corrupt Boon – gives counterplay. Great, everything we do can be counterplayed, yet we can counterplay nothing as we have dont have on demand blocks, blinds, invulnerability, you name it.

Signet of Vampirism – Umm? i take this as i simple sign of “yes guys, we know this skill still exists, take that and now be quiet for another 4 months”

Rending Claws – yeah its more fluid. it is a small dps increase. you shouldnt be AA much either. you can stack a bit more vulnerability. this is our chance to get dungeon spots!

Ghastly Claws – its a buff. Some damage rotations use this skill, so its a nice thing

Necrotic Slash – a buff. it wont change very much. We get a bit more damage in dungeons, we dont have to choose to attack the downed guy, or the guy rezzing. we get DOUBLE the sustain of our vampiric traits (got the hint?). Its okay though.

Locus Swarm – our calls for more mobility has been heard! Seriously, it helps a little bit. The Skill still puts us into combat mode if we hit randomly invisible objects. Id rather trade this for a finisher, or more damage or something else any day.

Lich Form – ok, i get the nerf sigil instagib part, it was way too strong. But why on earth the duration change? isnt it enough that you can barely use every skill besides #1 only once? isnt it enough that #1 can be evaded by simple strafing? It is currently possible for some classes to completly block every damage this ability does with blinds, blocks evades, stealth, movement skills and strafing.

It would be really easy:

DS#1 removed after cast, reduce cast time to 3/4, base damage reduced by 25%, now applies one stack of torment for 4-6 seconds based on distance.

SoV : Added a second passive effect: Your siphons and self healing traits now benefit while in Deathshroud, this passive lingers for 6 seconds after active use

Corrosive Poison Cloud: Now blocks projectiles.

3 changes that would help a lot of builds and game situations.

The sad thing arent the underwhelming changes, but that the direction they take things makes no sense. They buff traits and add functionality, although they needs to get changed entirely, because they make no sense where they are.

Bhawb.7408:

These are not all the changes, just the ones they thought were relevant for feedback. It is very important to note that they do not preview every single number change, only some of them. The changes were fine. Were they great? Will we suddenly be top tier everywhere? No, but they were entirely reasonable changes. Frankly my only disappointment was that (as far as I saw) they didn’t nerf reaper’s prot/nightmare runes.

The glorious buff to SoV was great? I thought it would be a joke at first sight.

The buff to unholy sanctuary is also so very pointless, we dont get much for either healing power or lifeforce gain trough deathmagic. Yet the only non Minion-related GM trait is based on these 2 things.

They are shoving more and more power and sustain into deathshroud, completly ignoring siphons or heals. The only sustain option for the necro is DS, if condi builds want to sustain well, they have to DS. Which cripples their DPS a lot if they use it to reduce damage, up to a point where the enemy can simply outheal it. Our DPS flattens out while we “sustain”.

I think thats rather dramatic and holding the necro back in so many ways. I cant build a defensive sustainish condi build, my main defense cripples my DPS, i cant build a tanky build unless i go for minions, because if i invest my traits for the defensive, i dont do reasonable damage or group support. I can either go full burst condi, or a lifeforce heavy power crit build. Following this direction further limits our viable builds, because the other classes keep on getting more options, that work based on the class design.

I might be wrong on some points, but the direction they are taking this is not good at all from a calm point of view.