Guild Wars 2

I spend most of my time in PvP. Previously, I had no problem finishing my dailies just by playing enough matches.
Ever since the update to dailies, I’ve been forced to either skip some days or do some menial tasks in PvE or WvW (like capping a ruin in WvW or harvesting some node in some random location on the map) because I only like playing two or three classes in PvP.

If Anet’s aim has been to encourage players to play different contents, then it fails to do so because it doesn’t encourage me to play PvE or WvW! It just forces me to bother doing something that I don’t enjoy just to get the daily done.
If their aim has been to encourage players to play different classes, then it fails to do that as well. Because:
A. Playing a class that you don’t like is counter-productive
B. It usually causes an increased number of those classes in PvP matches.
C. It only favors those who play multiple classes.

To me, the new choice of dailies (at least for PvP) has been worsened compared to the previous model which never forced me to do something I didn’t enjoy.

While I agree that the Blood Magic line needs a big rework, I have to say that making the life leeching traits heal you in death shroud is a bit too much at their current rate. At the same time, the healing they do at their current state is simply not worth sacrificing points that could go in other areas into blood magic.

Terror is fine as it is. No need to screw the necro condi builds even more.
As for fear in general, I don’t think a necromancer fully specced for long fears has much more hard CC potential than a hammer warrior or an engineer.

No they didn’t change that.

Most classes can use their stomp secure abilities mid-stomp. Necro couldn’t and still can’t even with this change. This hardly encourages anyone to pick Foot in the Grave if they haven’t already been encouraged by other factors. You could already use Foot in the Grave for stomping as long as no CC comes your way after the 3 seconds is over. The change to death shroud hasn’t improved the situation at all.

For such a hyped up change, I expected more functionality.

edit: I just saw this thread that talks about the same stuff. Couldn’t find that before posting this new thread.

Necromancers are now able to interact with NPCs and players while in this form.

As I tested it, going into death shroud after interacting with something (going for a stomp for example) still interrupts the action.
This means that it does not allow you to gain stability mid-stomp from traits such as foot in the grave cause you can’t go for a stomp and hit death shroud when the downed player is about to use his/her CC whereas this is a possibility for some other classes when stomping.
I’m quite disappointed as this change barely has any significance.

No, the changes aren’t insignificant at all:

Golem charge nerf
Lich nerf

They are quite significant.

Transfusion is pretty strong already. Fully channeled, it heals all your allies for over 3k each with no healing power. With full healing power, it can heal for around 5k.

Deathly Invigoration however needs a huge boost. If it also triggered when you enter the death shroud (and actually healed you as well when it did) then it could see more use.

Azzer.8137:

I only have 1 question, regarding the Unholy Sanctuary, if we are in Death shroud and get 1 shotted (as we do a lot in PvE if hit) will Unholy Sanctuary still proc and make sure we survive or will we just die flat out?

If you get hit with something strong enough that can go through your health and your life force, then all the Unholy Sanctuary does is to make sure you start out with 0 life force after you get rezzed!
If that’s not the case however, it makes you survive that hit only to die with the next one. I see this mainly useful in dungeons as dying there is costly (you can’t waypoint or wait for a spawn while the fight is still ongoing) though who’d take a necro to a dungeon anyway?

The CD is fine in my opinion and matches most of the form elites in the game. The reduction of its duration is disappointing though specially since the damage output is greatly reduced.
Lich form is already a completely counterable elite and can only be used in certain situations. Anet keeps talking about avoiding drastic nerfs or buffs but they are doing exactly that to Lich Form.

It requires extremely high skilled play to use this to a good extent. It’s best for situations when you get low against a downed enemy and jump into death shroud.
On zerker builds, the health threshold is too low for it to be worth the risk though and for condi builds, the life force build up is abysmal at best.

Give 1 or 2 seconds of fury along with the might and we’ll talk!

Our focus for necromancers in this balance update has been on improving their survivability through utilities and traits as well as improving the overall effectiveness of their melee and skirmishing weapons. You’ll see that the dagger auto-attack will now hit two targets, while the axe’s animations have been tuned to be more fluid. Along with weapon skill updates, your utility skills have been updated to provide more survivability over time.

Am I over-interpreting this or do I have a feeling that there would be more changes?
To me, the phrase “utility skills have been updated” would translate to more than just a lower recharge on spectral armor and “traits” would mean more than just a functionality update on unholy sanctuary. Are there going to be more changes or is it just bad wording/interpretation?

I don’t understand why the engineer already being the most diverse class gets more builds with the patch and gets a nerf to only 1 trait and necromancer getting this many nerfs and close to nothing of note that would introduce new builds (life siphon builds, support builds, etc)

I also would have expected at least a minor fix to the kitten y minion AI after two years.

It’s easy to forget that the main OPness of the lich form was not from the deathly claw itself, but from what it activated alongside itself. 5.6k crit on chill of death (spinal shivers), 2k damage on flame blast added to the 5k damage on the skill itself caused a massive spike that caught the enemy off guard, not to mention the well bomb.
I’m happy that those are getting nerfed (fixed). I’m NOT happy that they are ALSO decreasing the duration. I think Anet is going overboard nerfing this elite.

It’s entirely as Bhawb said. The useless necromancer builds will still be useless after this patch.
I don’t mind some of the changes, but they hardly introduce much new playstyle to the necro and it also hardly helps the builds that are slowly falling out of favor.
It could improve the shroud tank but I doubt just being tanky is enough if you can’t add a reasonable amount of support or control to the team.

You can’t expect your power to expand the more enemies you are fighting. The cleave change to dagger could have broken many things if they also allowed the procs to trigger twice.
That’s one of the good changes we got.

I’m really confused about getting the ascended backpiece available in the most recent LS episode and dulfy, the wiki and what people say have added to my confusion.
Assuming that I start out with the mysterious seed (the very first one), the way I understood it, I should go through these steps:
1. Make the first exotic (mysterious vine) and get a cultivated seed in the process.
2. Use the cultivated seed to make the second exotic (cultivated vine) and get a pet seed in the process.
3. Use the pet seed to craft the Mawdrey.

If that’s correct, then do I need a total of 144 foxfire clusters (48+48+48) to get the Mawdrey? And do I need to consume the exotics in the process or do I end up having 3 backpieces at the end?

Can someone verify this please?

It’s impossible to bring RP to 5 seconds in sPvP. You can bring RP to 4 seconds if you go 6 0 4 0 4 with necromancer runes:
30% + 50% + 20% = 100% * 2sec = 4 sec.
And in this case, you have the most ridiculous necro build. Congratulations, you screw up your build to get just tha…..! … Oh sorry, I got interrupted by a Berserker Stance Earthshaker!

Condimancers might be a counter to some very specific specs, but they have so many hard counters and those hard counters are quite popular in the current meta.

Haven’t they introduced a new trait called Phalanx Strength to the necromancer to make it more desirable in dungeons? … oh wait! …

I just came to this sub-forum to ask if anybody else has the search issue, then to my surprise, I saw this thread on the top!

It might just be the condi necros, but as one, I can kill most decap engies (turret or otherwise) reliably enough that it will discourage them to attack our home again.
Specially, if I’m standing on the point, and manage to put a signet of spite on them followed by fear as they are moving toward me.
That said, dealing with AR engis who take Melandru runes is a bit harder but still not impossible.

So, I queue solo in team arena, get 10 points and remain AFK for the rest of the match. What’s my punishment?

Yeah, the reason I’m posting this is because I’m surprised at the number of people who still think that armor has no effect on you.
A person today told me to “go back to pve” for saying that your chest piece does affect your armor!

Ralkuth.1456:

As something a bit off topic… I’d like to mention that for a small amount of karma, you can buy WvW karma vendor blues that come with shoulders, gloves and helmets for the level 2. You can then get the look you’ve always wanted…

Actually, that’s really good to know. I’ll check it out.

Recently since the April 15th update, I’ve witnessed an increased number of players who believe that the armor you equip has no effect on your final attributes.
I’ve even seen naked players not wearing their chest piece in solo queue believing that it doesn’t make a difference.
I’m strictly talking about defense (and consequently the armor attribute) as the armor you wear never had any effect on anything else in sPvP since the beginning.
I’m not sure if this has already been discussed on the forums or not and since the forum’s search feature doesn’t seem to work for me, there’s no way for me to find out.
So here’s the result of my testing:

I’ve attached 5 screenshots from the PvP build panel on top of the equipment panel. Needless to say, this test has been done on light armor and the different armor classes can yield different results.

In the first screenshot, I have all my armor pieces. The “armor” attribute being the combination of toughness and defense which is what is considered in the damage formula, sits at 2447.

In the second screenshot, removing the head gear, the shoulders and the gloves have no effect on the final armor.

However, in the third screenshot, when I put everything back on and remove my chest piece, it brings my armor down to 2144 (a decrease of 303).

Further removing the pants, bring the armor attribute down to 1957 (4th screenshot) and when removing the boots, my armor goes as low as 1828 for a total reduction of 619 armor.

Since I no longer have access to steady weapons I couldn’t reliably test it in practice but still, with no armor on, testing against the elementalist NPC in heart of the mists, I noticed an average of ~1620 damage on her non-crit auto attack (vapor blade) as opposed to a rough average of ~1210 damage with that same skill when I’m wearing my full armor set.

My conclusion so far is that the chest piece, pants and boots affect your defense where as the head gear, the gloves and the shoulders don’t affect it at all.

Necros…

• are the only class that have access to it without having to meet a prior condition
• can lengthen their fear
• can turn fear into the highest damage condition in the game
• have the most number of ways to cause fear
• can apply fear in a much higher frequency than any other class

I run spectral grasp quite often in sPvP and I have a lot of issues with it. The skill is pretty good but unfortunately it’s very unreliable at times.
It just sometimes randomly gets cast toward a peculiar direction far from the target if the target just moves so much as an inch! Also sometimes, the skill just gets obstructed by a slight bump on the ground which is surprising how this skill has a high arc and can pull players off walls and ledges and yet fails so much on a slightly rough terrain.

Compared to other pulls in the game, this one has good additional functionality (life force + a nice chill) but it’s the slowest and least reliable.

GW2 Structured PvP is far from ideal but it’s by far the most enjoyable PvP in any game I’ve played before.

Lordrosicky.5813:

You really need to learn how to stack life force.

Shush! Don’t let them know! Anet might nerf it!!! :p

In my opinion, conditions are not OP at all when I’m playing condition builds and conditions are OP as hell when I am on something else being targeted by condition builds!!!

Shinzan.2908:

Burjis.3087:

So, it would be best if I level them to 80 and give them some good gear worth transmuting?

It doesn’t matter, PvE gear appearance will be used in PvP but your stats will be determined by the PvP Amulet.

I actually meant for the stats in PvE unless you have no intention of ever leveling or playing that class in PvE.

So, it would be best if I level them to 80 and give them some good gear worth transmuting?

I have several characters that I currently haven’t leveled up and only use in PvP. But I have outfitted them all with the skins available in PvP.
The way I understood it from the feature build blogs, when April 15th patch is released, the level 2 characters that I PvP with, will no longer have their current outfits and will be downgraded to their PvE looks… which are just their default PvE gear when I create a character.
Am I correct in this? If so, do I have to equip some level 2 armor and weapons and then use transmutation charges to make those characters look like what they do now? Also, what about armor pieces that are not available to level 2 characters?
Can someone explain the mechanics please?

John Corpening.9847:

Do you feel that Solo Arena has any benefit to a player for learning how to play as a team?

No matter how much negativity I hear about Solo Arena, in my personal opinion, this game mode teaches you quite a bit on the competitive scene. I’ve improved a lot playing Solo Arena on various areas including but not limited to map awareness, tactical movements, battle skill and reading enemy animations and it’s completely obvious to me that the experience helps me when I’m playing with my team in tournaments.
That said, I’m not necessarily a proponent of separating Team Arena from Solo Arena and I definitely hate the existence of Skyhammer in Solo Arena.

Such glorious rank ups!

PvP Legendaries? Hell no! Some battles are chaotic enough as it is, we don’t need more random useless special effects thrown into the mix.
Sorry but legendaries have no place in structured PvP.

All skyhammer needs is a cheese engi build and 0 skill.

A condition necro is best used in small groups or solo. They can blow most things up!
Go with a dhuumfire build and eat veggie pizzas on top of it!
That build, although mainly used for havoc teams, can also serve most of the functionalities that are required of a necro in a zerg, in case you need to help a zerg from time to time. But if you’re always zerging, you may consider quicker burst damage options rather than pure DoT.
If you’re building your necro from the ground up, you might wanna wait for the feature build before committing to a full rabid gear though as they are introducing a drastic change to dhuumfire.

I think Lordrosicky is right about that. The cooldown, although long, is not as bad as the cast time or the intensity of the skill.

I agree with the OP that the range between full damage and full defense is a bit too much right now, but I do not agree that it’s the root issue (I also do not agree that this game has a worse balance than most other MMOs but that’s a different topic).

The defensive or offensive capability of builds don’t come only through their stats, but also through their skills and abilities. A guardian has a lower base health than a warrior, but a guardian built for bunker roles has as much survivability as a warrior built for the same role. It’s because a guardian has skills that completely negate damage or control effects. If you’re doing 0 damage, it doesn’t matter what the stat variance is.
A trait like AR, negates ALL incoming condition damage, at which point it doesn’t matter if the condition attacker deals 1 damage per tick or 1k damage per tick. Like-wise, an instant fear or an instant push off the point followed by immobilize can affect a game’s outcome more than raw numbers of toughness or power. A build capable of dodging or evading in high frequencies is more survivable than a build that has too much toughness without defensive skills.
Stats matter, but not necessarily as much as skills. Lowering the damage variance or defense variance numbers might help the balance a bit, but won’t completely solve the balance issue.

There’s one fix to this map:
Remove it from solo queue rotation!

That’s the only fix.

Allie Murdock.8152:

• We’re adding PvP specific back pieces to the reward glory vendor (guild tabards)
  • We’re switching them from rank vendors to glory vendors, and are keeping rank vendors.

Hold on a second! Adding them to “glory vendors”? Does it mean they will cost glory? So should we start saving glory for when they are made available?

Let’s not forget that the skill used to tick every second and Anet found the need to nerf it. Probably because for 12 seconds, the bunkers couldn’t effectively remove the poison and weakness off of themselves if they decided to stay on the point and both of these conditions are devastating to bunkers.
I doubt Anet would revert the skill back to its 1 tick per second.

Thanks for the responses.
Yeah, this skill is not bad; it’s just overshadowed by the other skills that a necromancer could pick in the current meta. It just needs a small edge to be able to compete with other skills of its class.
The reason I suggested an extra condition was because it would be a great AoE skill that helps cover other necro conditions and still serves its current purpose. Alternatively, increasing its duration or reducing its recharge and cast time can probably give it the extra edge it needs.

This skill has been discussed before, but I felt the need to revive the topic again.

On paper, this skill sounds like a useful skill for necromancers in structured PvP.
- It has the radius of a capture point (except for those in legacy of foe fire).
- It causes poison and weakness which are both great debilitating conditions in PvP.
- You can blast it for even more AoE weakness.
- You can transfer back the weakness you get to apply more weakness to the enemy.
- The duration of this skill is relatively long compared to some other AoE circles.

When Anet improved weakness, they reduced the weakness duration on many skills and yet they left the duration of the weakness applied by this skill intact.

All this sounds well and good, and yet, a skill designed for PvP almost never sees the light of day in the tournament matches on the higher slice of the leaderboard.
So what’s wrong? Is this skill really bad in practice? Or is it because the necromancer has so many great utility skills that this skill doesn’t even have a chance of competing with them?

To me, it seems like there are ways to improve that skill to bring it on par with some nasty competitors like signet of spite, epidemic or corrupt boon:

- Add 2 stacks of vulnerability per pulse on top of the weakness and poison to help cover the conditions and add another layer of functionality to the skill. It matches with the “corrosive” theme of the skill too.
- Alternatively, add 1 stack of torment per pulse for 4 seconds each, again on top of the weakness and poison.
- Alternatively, just increase the duration of the skill even more and let it tick 7 times instead of 5 times.

Not saying that the above suggestions are all good. I’m just throwing out some ideas. I mainly want to know other people’s opinions.
So, what do you think? Does the skill even need any change? If you already use the skill in PvP, I very much like to hear the situations that this skill might work better than its competitors.

TL&DR: Corrosive poison cloud, even though sounds like a good skill, is still not used often in competitive tournaments. Do you even agree with this statement? Do you use it yourself? Do you think it should be improved, and how? Discuss!

Why don’t we start a poll about it?
If anet isn’t removing skyhammer from the rotation, at least make the chance of getting it a bit lower than this! gokitten

he reason why skyhammer should be in the rotation is because when I want to play conquest, I want to play conquest! Skyhammer’s game type would be categorized as cheese match!

Actually, that was how the game worked in earlier betas. They had a reason to change it.

Guys, I made my peace with my RIP conditionmancer long ago. This was just the final nail in the coffin.
Conditionmancers, even with their current Dhuumfire, were brought down to be just on par with many other builds currently in the meta. I would say that they were inferior to some others actually such as the minion master. How did that happen? By anet nerfing the “wrong” stuff. This change to dhuumfire would have been totally OK if they haven’t already brought down many of the things that are common to all necromancer condition builds.

It won’t prove that he was AFK, but if you go to a police station and say that you killed someone, the police just won’t kick you out saying “hey man, that’s no proof”. At least they investigate.
At least, there should be an option to report an AFKer! Although I won’t personally report someone who goes AFK in a skyhammer map! :P

Don’t worry OP, you will get used to this. It was also confusing to me during the beta and early release, but after a while it becomes natural enough that you won’t confuse team colors with player name colors.

Yeah, great idea! Cause PvP really needs more afkers, leavers and gold spammers with free accounts that anet won’t even be able to ban effectively or anything.