Guild Wars 2

I don’t know what I’m missing, but so far, I haven’t seen a single disadvantage to choosing Tempest as an elementalist specialization as compared to going just vanilla elementalist.

Yeah, your attunements recharge longer IF you use an overload (if I’m understood that correctly) which means that if you don’t use overloads, your attunements will function normally but you will still have access to many other options.

For example, if you pick Reaper as a necro, you will lose your death shroud range options like life blast but gain good melee options instead. How does the tempest fit into that logic?

Definitely. It totally makes sense if stationary objects can also be critcally hit. I don’t know why they didn’t allow that in the first place.

:D
Sifting through my old screenshots, I also found this: lol

Everything wasn’t sunshine and bunnies before dhuumfire. The game had way more balance issues than just dhuumfire. Warriors, decap engis, mesmers, eles, all of these things have been very overpowered at some point.
To be honest, the game was at its most balanced state prior to this specialization patch but everybody expected a disequilibrium to happen to the balance after such drastic changes to everything.

But I do agree that a lot of PvP and WvW people are actually leaving due to frustration. I always think about it too when I get smashed by mesmers or other cheap stuff in this current meta. Unfortunately, balancing the current meta is not just about fixing a particular mesmer skill. The root of the problem is much deeper and I’m hoping that the reason they haven’t released a significant post-specialization balance update is because they’ve been taking their time looking for the actual issue.

The problem most people complain about when it comes to hot join (aka practice mode) is that most matches turn into an uneven fight within probably the first 5 minutes of the match, after which it all goes down hill.

This is mainly caused because new players who enter the game have the ability to make an even match uneven. Most of the times they pick the team that is already ahead and that makes comebacks even more difficult for the losing team which then results to players on the losing team to depart and force autobalance to trigger.

One possible way to make matches a bit more fair is to implement a reservation system like below:

• When a player tries to join a team, if the match is already balanced (2v2, 3v3, 4v4, etc), they wait in reserve for that particular team instead of entering the fight right away.
• When another player joins, they are only allowed to join the team with the least number of <players in match> + <reserve players>. When this happens, the first player in the reservation queue for the opposing team automatically joins the fight.

This forces teams to always start even.
Of course, this system can’t prevent uneven matches caused by players leaving, but there’s not much the game can do to remedy that in a hot join game mode, but it can at least remove part of the problem.

So what do you think?

How is having no MMR and matchmaking system any better than a an imperfect matchmaking system? Become some people prefer to just roll on randoms and newcomers in PvP instead of having competition from time to time?
Some of you speak as if GW1’s no-match-making monk arena was good! A team who won faced more and more randomly formed teams! Perfect system!

So, how’s this for a close match?

If it was an implementation limit, it would have also affected other professions. Currently only necromancer minions die when the necromancer transforms.

On flesh wurm, first and foremost, the teleport should be a teleport not a shadow-step and should not be hindered by obstacles. The teleportation range is already too short for it not to cause any balance issue. Currently, the only thing this shadow-stepping does is to create annoying and unexpected situations when you use the secondary skill.

This whole idea that changing forms should kill necromancer minions, and only necromancer minions is just a dumb, irrational and inconsistent decision made at release and nobody ever bothered to take another look at it.
Even if a minion master with all their minions turn into plague or lich form, they are locked out of their minion secondary skills. I don’t understand how anet deduced that it would be too imbalanced to keep the necromancer minions intact when they change form or get turned into a moa.

When we automatically assume that what the necros get is expected to be inferior to that of other classes, then that’s precisely what will happen.

Just how the hell do you guys deal with those mesmers? Now PvP is filled to the brim with mesmers that just lock you down and burst you into pulp from within stealth in just two seconds (5 seconds if I use all my dodges and all my life force).

I’m mostly talking about a team fight situation rather than 1v1. In a 1v1, I have a better chance because I can focus my attention on them.

Even if I supposedly catch them off guard, they just stealth or jump away and do their burst from out of stealth.

For reasons you all know, I’m not going to ask this in the mesmer forums of course. I am also not starting a “mesmer is op” thread. I want opinions of those who are able to deal with this.

If it was OP, all they needed to do was bring it back to the old version: 1 second chill instead of 2. They boost it, then nerf then crap out of it?

With this change, well of darkness only chills once and plague only chills 4 times.

They still haven’t addressed the 1 shotting lock down shatter mesmers.

Chilling Darkness now has an internal cooldown of 5 seconds.

What the hell was the rationale behind this change? Was this trait causing that much problem that justifies such a big nerf?

Yeah I actually noticed I’m getting more out of range messages on life blast than I should be getting on my dhuumfire condi build.

It’s obviously a bug and hopefully gets fixed.

Avipt.9632:

However ive read some pretty bad stuff about necro

You read wrong!
Starting a necro is the best kitten decision you can make!

The main reason why Anet is afraid to increase the duration of burning on this skill the way it’s working right now is because of the upcoming Reaper. AoE burning for more than 3 seconds each cleave is probably too strong, at least on paper.
Considering that Anet has introduced a new type of ICD, in my opinion the best way to improve dhuumfire for life blast is to utilize this.
So my suggestion:

Shroud #1 applies burning for 5 seconds. Cannot occur more than 5 times every 5 seconds.

This still means that life blast, normally, applies burning on every hit for a much longer duration and still allows a single swing of reaper’s shroud #1 to burn everybody caught in the cleave but with a small recharge to ensure it doesn’t get too overpowered. Same thing would apply to a piercing life blast.

I won’t be able to play in Dry Top anymore!

Mauvs.1605:

Anet’s master plan its transfer a lot of the necro community to the eng. We just dont get this yet.

The way I see it, Anet’s approach toward Engi is: “boost everything, then boost them some more!”. They probably want every class to switch to Engi.

Dirame.8521:

Try shattering the myth with proof rather than assumptions and conjecture.

Exactly.

I’m actually going to love playing around with a corruptionmancer. I’m going to pick the corruption skill that gives me the most hurting condition and locust swarm that in my enemy’s face.
I always cast locust swarm after Corrupt Boons anyway to transfer the poison to the poor bunker. Now if it gives me another condition on top of the 33% lower cooldown, then even better!

I’m just worried that the non-traited cooldown of consume conditions is going to greatly hurt builds that aren’t built around condi transfers (such as the regular powermancer).

The problem is that the only high range necro weapon is staff and it’s simply a utility weapon rather than an offensive weapon that you can use to go toe to toe against other ranged foes.
Life Blast (a high burst long range projectile) and Dark Path (a very good gap closer) on the other hand, are the main reasons why power necros can fight well against various ranged enemies, neither of which are available if you spec into the Reaper.
I think this mostly boils down to how far reaching the greatsword’s pull skill is, which is not much judging by the videos.

Oh, one more thing I need to point out, is that the change to dashes, will also benefit Reaper Shroud’s skill #2.

Just gonna go with the flow just for the giggles.

Just make Consume Conditions auto-stun yourself mid-cast. That ought to make it so interesting.

Master of Corruption should change too:
100% cooldown reduction on corruption skills but cast time on corruption skills are now a flat 5 seconds.
You immediately go to down state after using corruption skills and receive all known conditions to mankind, charrkind, asurakind, sylvarikind and nornkind.
Your down state skill #1 transfers all of your conditions to every enemy around you. (not mentioning the skill name cause of a future specialization called the “downed horror” with different downed skill names)
Damage in down state increased by 999%.

Now, anybody who doesn’t want to take this trait raise a hand!

O ye gods! Please give me INSIGHT too!

The only worth-taking healing skill for necro is Consume Conditions because the other skills are just terrible (Blood fiend is not bad for a minion master, but that’s all).

NeXeD.3042:

The passive procs are stronger. It’s been proven how effective passive procs are in this game. Ever since they removed original dhuumfire, nerfed our bleed procs and durations, nerfed our terror damage, nerfed our DS multiple times, condi necro has only been useful in certain comps and even then people figured out it wasn’t worth it when they could have another engi, or even a power necro instead.

You aren’t mentioning the buffs necros have received over the years, but I generally agree with you.
Anet seems to be more concerned with improving the Engineer than other classes. The class that has always been on the OP borders and most of the times beyond that.
They can’t use some very strong skills multiple times in one fight so let’s decrease their cooldown. Yeah, that’s their logic for balancing that class (watch Engi section of ready up 35). But when it comes to necro, 1 additional bleed for 2 seconds can be considered overpowered!
Ironically, I like how they approach balancing the necro. I don’t like how they seem to “balance” other classes.
A trait like the new Dhuumfire provides a lot of flexibility and let’s you as the player to think and decide when you want to use it. Cheese traits that give you passive effects randomly may be stronger for the passive player, but they lack intuition and creativity.

As another example, I like how the dev behind Master of Corruption thinks. Could he have been mistaken? Absolutely, but I admire him for taking the risk to make structural and unique changes instead of “hey, let’s decrease the recharge of all engineer skills to make them better!” type of mentality.

Other stun breaks can still function while you’re in the air. Now, Spectral Walk is going to be the first stun break that can’t actually do this.
You don’t have to touch ground before being able to use Spectral Armor for instance. Now I’m not sure if “Banish” or similar skills that actually toss you into the air or “launch” you, will still be breakable or not with Spectral Walk but if they can’t be, then it is going to be an unintended side-effect of this nerf which was completely unnecessary.
Fix a not-so-important “bug” just to create more problems.
I don’t understand the logic behind that.

So far, in all cases, adding a skill to a category has been a bonus. Necromancers seem to be the only exception with Plague and Consume Conditions!
Going into plague can kill you if you have high condition damage and duration! (exaggeration here, but you get my point). They argue that you can transfer them to the enemy forgetting the fact that all those condition transfers are very valuable assets with high recharges and the necromancer has to be careful using them. And the traits have long enough cooldowns for them to not necessarily proc when you need them.
Also this whole “transfer your conditions” argument fails to remember that this forces you into certain trait lines and builds specialized for condition transfers because they can be, and I quote, “devastating if you can’t get them off of you”.
So, in other words, if you take Master of Corruption, make sure you take enough condition transfers, otherwise you’re kittened!

That said, I admire the bold direction Anet has taken with some of these traits. To be honest, I prefer this types of designs over boring % increases.

Actually it doesn’t. You can’t compare traits across different classes in a vacuum.

I’m saying that this trait is not really worth taking an entire trait line for. Honestly, you don’t need it for PvE.

Did they also nerf the base damage of necros in down state too or did they just nerf death’s embrace?

Khristophoros.7194:

Actually they ruined my build for WvW. Before I took that break I was able to fit the trait to give wells casting range and I enjoyed it a lot in WvW. After the update I’ll be back in WvW for sure.

Well ground targeting is going to be baseline for necromancers, so you will have that just for free after the patch.

Khristophoros.7194:

I’m kinda timid to talk about my build though because I am afraid people automatically think everything that’s not full berserker is horrible.

Unfortunately, that’s how PvE functions in this game. But to be honest, I’m interested to know what your build is.

Soul Reaping is actually a very good diverse line that you can use both for survivability and damage. But 300hp worth of life force a second is hardly a good enough reason on its own to invest in Soul Reaping in PvE, since life force generation is so over the top in this game mode that you barely should have any problem managing your life force pool without this trait.

I’m kinda sad that I have to choose between Fear of Death and Vital Persistence in PvP.

Engineer:
Incendiary Powder
Your critical hits inflict 4s of burning. Burning you apply lasts 33% longer. This trait has a 10 second internal cooldown.

Read: Over 5 seconds of burning without any additional condition duration.

But who cares? I still prefer our new Dhuumfire to these cheesy traits or the cheesy original dhuumfire. Not only it’s stronger than these traits in my opinion (as long as it remains without any ICD), but it’s on demand and happens when I want it, not when the game desires so.

Actually, necro shines more in PvP and WvW than in PvE, so if you like it in PvE, you will surely love it in PvP and WvW. I have to say however, that I’ve been quite happy with my Necro in PvE also.

And don’t listen to the complaints. I’ve found most of the “we necros suck” type of complaints to be baseless. Play what you like. Necro is my first choice in every game mode and will stay that way no matter what.
Also, with DoT improvements and Reaper coming, we’re going to be a beast in PvE too.

If you wanna complain about a class’s down state, go complain about the ranger first. After it’s fixed, then you can come here and complain about the necro.

P.S. I don’t believe ranger’s down state needs any fixing either, but just saying.

Consider this situation when two necros who both run blood magic go down in pvp and an enemy player prevents them from rezzing by throwing an occasional auto attack their way.
Are they going to spend the rest of the match in downed state (exaggerating of course, but you get my point) or has this been thought of?

One possible fix to this possible issue is if last rites only works when the necromancer itself is not downed.

Oh those are good news.

Anyway, what’s the ICD on the new Dhuumfire?

And I’m so sad that Death Nova now has a 15 second ICD.

Lily.1935:

The Consume condition nerf is the biggest thing. This is the thing that everyone agrees on. Well… Except that ONE guy. So that should at least be addressed.

That kinda depends on how intense the conditions are that you receive if you trait it. In my opinion, 10 stacks of vulnerability is too much, add an additional chill or something on top of that and it could really hurt.

Also, a 4 second duration, even though it seems low on paper, it’s pretty high in practice. If you use it after a fight, it will keep you in combat for an additional 4 seconds which is high for fast paced collapses that you need in PvP.

But then, all the additional condi transfers and removals that we will get with the patch can change the equation. It’s hard to judge it on paper only. We have to play to find out.

Anymras.5729:

Also, it’ll still require the Flamethrower, going by “Juggernaut: Gain a stack of might for 15s and a stack of stability for 3s every 3 seconds while using the Flamethrower,” a direct quote from Josh Davis’ thread announcing the changes (though the bolding’s mine).

Ok, that makes it logical.

Anymras.5729:

It’s one stack of Stability, that will last for three seconds, granted every three seconds. Not exactly ‘congratulations, you’re immune to CC,’ like you’re making it out to be. Necromancers could just wave and convert it into Fear.

Oh it only has to be total perma immunity to be imbalanced in your opinion?
Corrupt it on a 40 second cast time, to just have it re-applied after 3 seconds? “Just wave” you say? It’s like saying giving perma stability to all classes as a baseline is just fine, cause necros can just wave it off! It’s not total immunity after all!

But then if it’s only on Flame Thrower, then it’s a whole different story. The wording on the balance change list was misleading.

At first, when I read about the Master of Corruption changes, I thought that it would just give you additional stacks of the same condition.
Is it confirmed that it gives new conditions?
If so, do we have a list?

• Juggernaut: Gain a stack of might for 15s and a stack of stability for 3s every 3 seconds.

Am I reading this right? Perma stability? :O No requirements?
Really?
How many times they have to repeat the same mistake with effortless cheesy traits? Have they not learned nothing from their mistakes with Automated Response? No playing element to this? Just pick it and there you go, run around happy like a juggernaut?
How did this even get past the balancing team?

Thank god I see a post that is not all about crying!
I have sticked with Necromancer as my main since the open beta and always loved it.

And yes, Terrormancers and Powermancers are pretty solid builds, although like every necromancer build, they are susceptible to focus fire, which you can lower it with good positioning and good communication with your allies. An enemy who’s running for his/her life or panicking from your conditions is not attacking you!

I also love the fact that they are reworking the blood magic line which could potentially be a good 3rd trait line for the powermancer come the trait rework patch.

I have so much hope for the Reaper. Although it seems like a very PvE focused specialization, it has lots of PvP team fight potential as well.

Here are some possible new ways to make some traits more interesting and more powerful (this assumes that the traits stay where they are)

Terror:
In addition to its current functionality,
When you cast doom, you give a Terror buff to yourself and allies around you (maximum 5 targets) that lasts for 5 seconds (60 seconds ICD), if an enemy hits any of these allies, it will be feared for 1 second and the buff ends on all of these allies.

Reaper’s Precision:
When you deliver a critical hit to a foe that has a boon, you remove one boon from that foe and gain 10% life force. (20 sec ICD)

Unholy Martyr:
In addition to its current functionality,
Tainted shackles transfers 2 of your conditions to the enemies that are caught in the final blast.

Deathly Invigoration:
Draw Poison from your allies when you enter death shroud.
Heal in an area when you exit death shroud. The amount of poison damage you took while in death shroud is added to the area heal.

Vampiric Precision: Renamed to Order of the Vampire
You and allies around you (maximum 5) Siphon health on critical hits.

Transfusion:
Life Transfer heals nearby allies and steals 1% more life force with each pulse.

My aim here has been mainly to improve the blood magic line specially toward providing party support that falls within necromancer themes. And also to improve some traits to be able to compete better with their sibling traits.

flow.6043:

Burjis.3087:

As for terror, I don’t agree that Terror can be base-lined but it can very well replace Target the Week as a grandmaster minor trait. Too powerful? It’s just a damage trait, lower its number.
Now, the key point here is that this gives you the option of creating a major grandmaster trait by combining Target the Weak with the now-removed Withering Precision to create a trait that can be useful to all builds and synergizes well with itself:
2% critical chance for each unique condition on the enemy. Apply weakness on critical hits 5 seconds, 20 seconds cooldown.

This solution would only help condi necros though. Power builds would be in the exact same situation with the difference of weakness proc. And btw, Withering Precision is currently the worst trait in the entire Curses line, so adding that doesn’t help at all.
Also, I think the new Target the Weak is a good way to compensate for the loss of the trait line stat bonus.
So if not baseline just merge Terror with the 2% crit chance for each condi and make a new proper power trait in grandmaster.

You can’t expect Terror + Target the Weak to be merged into a minor trait slot. Putting Terror into a minor trait line is logical considering how many traits for other professions have become either baseline or minor because they were always used, and this is probably the only way to open up a grandmaster trait. Now, the best scenario would be a boosted Target the Weak to become a major grandmaster. If it’s purely power-based, then it makes it a no brainer for condimancers to not take it and it also feels a bit out of place, but if you make it something that increases critical chance and also add a debilitating condition (slow, weakness, etc), not only it benefits all types of builds, but it stays within the theme of the trait line as well.
This will give you a choice as a conditionmancer between 3 different approaches:
more damage and condition duration with scepter, more sustain, or more critical chance with debilitating conditions.
Of course, it doesn’t have to have that long an ICD but it’s just a matter of numerical balancing.

Gates! I never expected to see you in the necromancer forum!

Terror and Curses grandmasters:
Problem 1: Curses has no grandmaster that is even remotely useful for non-condition builds.
Problem 2: Terror vs the new Lingering Curses? Terror loses with its face in the dirt.

Terror, has always been a must-choose trait for condition builds not because it has been grandmaster worthy but because the added damage is crucial for condition builds. Beside some added damage however, this trait doesn’t bring any more functionality to the table and it just outright loses vs 100% condition duration “while holding a scepter” which equals double duration Signet of Spite and pretty much everything else in the utility slot.
50% duration increase on the scepter conditions is enough. Also, it shouldn’t affect conditions that the necromancer applies while in death shroud (I’m guessing that’s how it’s going to be though) and it will prevent any awkward balance situation that might arise with dhuumfire or doom.
As for terror, I don’t agree that Terror can be base-lined but it can very well replace Target the Week as a grandmaster minor trait. Too powerful? It’s just a damage trait, lower its number.
Now, the key point here is that this gives you the option of creating a major grandmaster trait by combining Target the Weak with the now-removed Withering Precision to create a trait that can be useful to all builds and synergizes well with itself:
2% critical chance for each unique condition on the enemy. Apply weakness on critical hits 5 seconds, 20 seconds cooldown.

Death Magic only offers one useless grandmaster for non-minion builds:
It takes 25 seconds for it to heal you for ~3k hp if you enter death shroud with full life force and go through all of it without taking any additional damage (who would ever waste their life force for that is another question). It’s understandable for this lonely non-minion grandmaster to be a defensive one in this trait line but at least, it has to be worth taking.

Deathly Invigoration:
This trait should heal when exiting death shroud not when entering. Add around 300 more health gain (a total of ~800 health) and we’re golden!
This adds many layers to this trait.
First, it also heals the necro.
Second, it can be a life saver.
Third, it is possible for the enemy to negate this trait by trying to apply a lethal damage to the necro when in death shroud so that it goes to downed state before this trait triggers.

Dhuumfire:
I’m not sure where people got the idea that Dhuumfire is gonna apply only 1 second of burning, but if that’s the case, it’s not worth a grandmaster slot. I hope they keep it the same as it is, although the move to soul reaping is great.

Some of the trait changes give me a “what the hell” moment:
My judgement here is mostly PvP related, and I’m also not running comparisons between these traits and those of other classes.

1. Curses line: Reaper’s Precision can’t ever compete with Path of Corruption! Hell, it can’t even compete with Weakening Shroud and Chilling Darkness at its current magnitude.
2. So, I can now have dhuumfire, reaper’s protection, path of corruption and terror in one condition build? Really? I haven’t read enough on other profession traits but this looks very powerful.
3. Blood Magic still sounds lackluster. The traits are good on paper but (with the exception of Transfusion) they don’t seem to have a significant intensity and I don’t see that huge a change here. Although it would be a good choice for a power build (Vampiric Rituals + Transfusion/Quickening Thirst) because you now have a full third trait line but that’s only true if it can compete with the upcoming elite specialization.
4. Deathly Invigoration now a grandmaster?! Is this a joke or am I right to assume that they will significantly increase the health gain and/or make it heal you as well before entering death shroud?

Tom Gore.4035:

truthishly.9513:

Tom Gore.4035:

It’s not a bug. No player skill in the game prevents condition damage. You’ll have to cleanse them or wear them off. It’s a simple rule so no need to bloat all tooltips with that information.

Warrior berserker stance prevents condition damage. Not sure if that’s the only one.

No it doesn’t. It only reduces condition duration by 100%. If the opponent is running +Condition Duration buffs you are still affected.

It actually makes the warrior immune to newly applied conditions. Conditions that are already on you when you activate berserker stance will last to their full duration unless you do something else about them. Same thing applies to invulnerability.

Random Weird Guy.3528:

And if getting the 10AP is what matters to you, AP means nothing to pure PvPers anyway…

Actually it does. It progresses you toward achievement rewards which in turn give you gold, gems and skins.
Being a PvPer doesn’t mean that you don’t care at all about gold and rewards, otherwise, the reward tracks would be totally useless.

That said, my argument was mostly about what the dailies encourage/fail to encourage rather than the magnitude of its rewards.