Guild Wars 2

I am not sure how they are gonna do anything in a map that would punish stacking in big fights cause the whole stacking tactic was born from the 5 target aoe limits not map mechanics.

JonPeters.5630:

Even though we wont do it for Dec 10. I just wanted to throw out a wacky possible idea for Dhuumfire that we could discuss…

• Life Blast has a 100% chance to cause Burning on hit (2 seconds long). 6 seconds ICD.

I’m not sure if this is a very good idea for a Grandmaster Trait. At least it won’t be good enough for a condition necro to spend 30 points in spite just to get that.
And it won’t be very good for power builds either cause the burning won’t have as much potential.
Also, condition builds don’t have a tendency of using life blast much, as the precious seconds could be used to do something else in death shroud.
I’d say, if Dhuumfire’s functionality needs to stick to burning, then it shouldn’t be in the spite line at all. Instead, it should be in the curses line, competing with another good trait in the grandmaster tier.

I don’t understand Anet’s balancing mentality, at least when it comes to necromancers. For example, they correcly conclude that the meta dhuumfire build in pvp (30 20 0 0 20) is too powerful and has problems, but strangely, for whatever reason, their solution to fixing it ends up being a nerf to other aspects of the necromancer not the “Dhuumfire” itself!
Freaking hell?!
Back before the big update to necros, conditionmancers weren’t as good, but at least we had choices. There were a variety of condition builds for necromancers. Now there’s only one: 30 20 0 0 20 Terror Dhuumfire! You pick anything else, you’re just gimping yourself.
Now they might aim to bring this necromancer build down and make it balanced but what they are doing is to kitten the other non-meta condition builds even more!
If that build has a problem, then for god’s sake, remove the culprit not mess with things that can make the already underpowered non-meta condition builds even more underpowered!
Jon Peters concludes that “dhuumfire” is what brought conditionmancers into play, but how is that a good thing? The most fundamental aspect of this class now hinges on one freaking trait!

BTW, I somewhat agree with a change that involves bringing both Dhuumfire and Terror to curses GM (and maybe improve them if needed), bringing Lingering Curses to master tier and altering Withering Precision’s functionality and moving it to Spite line. I don’t think that would make conditionmancers more broken than they are now!

Earth XI – Diamond Skin. This trait has been redesigned. Conditions cannot be applied to you when your health is above the threshold. 90%.

What’s with all the immunity to condition stuff that are popping out here and there? If Anet wants to give something similar to Automated Response to Elementalists, this is the worst way to do it. Even though AR was quite strong against condition classes, the Engineer had to monitor their health really closely in order to make the best use of this trait not to mention that maintaining their health under the 25% threshold always puts them under the risk of dying from normal attacks.
Having to maintain your health above 90% in a vs condition fight is a whole different story. Probably the idea is for the elementalist to have to maintain their health above 90% but considering how little raw damage heavy-condition builds do, a bunker elementalist can easily heal through them and not ever drop under 90% without the help of raw damage classes.

If the current condition bursts are deemed too powerful, the solution is to reduce their burstiness (which I believe the update to the necro is a good step in that direction) not introduce more immunity to conditions and/or buff condition removals as that further destroys the non-burst condition builds.

What are you guys talking about? There is no Dire prefix in sPvP. That prefix (like many other non-standard prefixes) are PvE/WvW only.

Although I’m quite interested in this stat combination which results in an even harder to kill conditionmancer in PvE and WvW. I’m still sticking to my rabid set for now though.

Thanks for the responses. That’s exactly what I needed to know for both parts.

Does anybody know whether the +6% condition damage on the sigil of bursting applies to your base condition damage or to your final condition damage (after applying food and nourishment, might, corruption stacks and etc)?

I want to really figure out which one is better on a 50% crit chance full rabid gear necromancer:
Sigil of bursting (+6% condition damage) or sigil of earth (5 sec bleeds on 60% chance on crits, 2 sec cooldown)?

What I want to do on my necro in wvw and pve is to actually get another rabid offhand dagger (for my scepter/dagger set) and put corruption on it. Equip it to get 25 stacks of corruption then switch it out with my other dagger. Now my problem is trying to figure out whether have sigil of earth on my scepter and sigil of bursting on my other dagger or have sigil of bursting on my scepter and sigil of earth on my other dagger. Whichever sigil finds its way to my scepter will see more battle than the one on my dagger. That’s why I want to know if earth is better or bursting.

I disagree. Not only dhuumfire isn’t a necessity for necromancers but nerfing Terror adversely affects many non-broken fearmancer builds, builds that have been around pre-patch and are not really OP now. Dhuumfire is the one trait causing all this stir and problem. Nerfing terror is the worst decision anet can make trying to balance the necro. Just remind yourself how terrible that trait was before it got a buff some months back.

There used to be a time when you needed to be really good to play a necro effectively in tournaments. Now everybody just grabs a necro, puts on a 30 30 10 0 0 build and kicks kitten . The effective difference between a long time necro player and a player who just grabbed a necro is now much less than before.

I will be more than happy if dhuumfire changes or even removed in favor of something more power-based. I will not be happy if they nerf terror cause that nerfs many conditionmancer builds that don’t rely on dhuumfire or aren’t even OP. Terror is no way OP on its own.

People are now complaining about everything the necro has. Even the abilities that have been around for such a long time. I remember I was holding a point in tournament, a warrior runs in, blows up all his bursts on my minions and eventually dies at the hand of a thief who collapses on him. When he’s dead, this is what he says: “kitten OP necros!”. I mean seriously?!! Necro minion masters are OP now?

Anet wants to balance the necro, hell yes please do it, but I’m afraid they’ll drop the nerf hammer on things that aren’t even a problem on their own (such as terror).

The melee minions just keep running around even when you’re in combat unless you stand still for afew seconds until they engage, then you can keep running around until they get bugged again and that’s when you have to stand still again and so on.
Pretty stupid I know.

I also don’t like Dhuumfire. What I really liked was something that boosts the power necros not something for condition necros. I don’t understand why people keep complaining about terror while the terrormancer builds are not that dominant in the current meta compared to the 30 30 10 0 0 build and terrormancers aren’t all that stronger from pre-patch.

That said, the current 30 30 10 build is extremely vulnerable. They are just the top of the burst necro builds. Necros never had any decent burst before and now that they do, they have really screwed the meta by completely tipping the balance between defense vs offense in tournaments. In fact, I don’t think the current meta favors damage because of necros alone as I’ve seen no-necro groups deal incredibly high bursts and CC locks quite often. People now die more often and that seem to make them frustrated.
I personally was above the 90% spectrum of the ladder as a necro player before the update. Now I’m barely hanging around 80%. It’s not because of the necros being OP it’s because the new meta is quite different.

Necros are OP. They are even as OP as mesmers, rangers, engineers, thieves, guardians, warriors and elementalists!!
People immediately judge “OP” after facing something they can’t beat. Some people don’t even bother to stop and ask the question: “How do I beat that thing?”. But instead this is what you hear: “Oh that thing is so OP!”
Warrior stun locks them, they are OP.
Ranger perma regens and evades them like crazy, they are OP.
Memsers pop out too many phantasms for them to handle, they are OP.
They can’t kill a guardian, guardian is OP.
Thief spams invisibility and manages to steal kill a forest creature, oh oh oh! thieves are so OP!
Necromancers burst them with conditions… Necromancers are OP!
They fight a mirror of their own build and they lose… Oh that guy’s build is so OP! (this one is just a joke).

I personally have had moments of frustration during which I’ve called out something as OP but you know, one’s judgement can be clouded in such moments.

Many of the necromancer’s weak points are still intact. Necromancers are just now able to pull off what they were always supposed to pull off.

That said, I am not gonna claim that there isn’t anything out of balance with necromancers (nor any other class for that matter) nor outright judge anything as OP.

Good observation Softspoken. Thanks for taking your time trying to figure out this bug.

I think I eventually fully figured this out (or have I?):
This is long and somewhat technical but I think it fully details the problem.

I am now perfectly sure that this bug is not directly related to doom at all, nor chilblains for that matter. In fact, this bug can occur on every class.
It’s all about the targeting system. When you’re casting a ground targeted skill, the system doesn’t take your selected target into account, well of course, because it’s a ground targeted skill.
What this bug involves is that while swapping weapons or changing skill bars (such as death shroud), there is a very short delay before you actually see your next bar during which you can make the skills on your first bar to activate if you press the related button fast enough (your client still thinks that you have the first bar). If the activated skill is a ground targeted skill, what the client does is to register the ground as your target not the selected enemy and the client sends this info to the server. When your next bar eventually appears, the server casts the skill bound to the same button on this new bar (because the server has already received the weapon swap/enter death shroud command) so the game activates that skill instead. However the server uses the info sent to it by the client which is the targeting info of the skill on the previous bar. That said, the server doesn’t have an enemy target, but it has the ground as its target. If the skill on the new bar is an enemy targeted skill, the skill is actually cast but it fails just as when you cast that skill with no enemy targeted (and no autotargeting enabled) at all.

Example 1 (the topic of this thread): As a necromancer, you have staff, switch to death shroud and press 3 before your DS bar appears (you need to have your cursor somewhere chilblains can reach, and chilblains shouldn’t be in cooldown and if not using ground-targetting, you should actually double tab the skill. In short, you should fool the client into thinking that you’re casting chilblains). When your DS bar appears you cast doom, but the server doesn’t know of your target (as if there’s no target selected). Doom fails.

Example 2: Staff as one set, axe as the other. You swap weapon (from staff to axe) and press 2 before the axe skills appear. Ghastly Claws triggers but it has no target so it fails.

Example 3: On a guardian (yes this happens to all classes), stay within 600 range of your target but not too close. You have scepter. You swap to sword and press 2 (activate smite on your client) but when your sword bar appears you cast Flashing Blade, but you don’t teleport to your target because the game hasn’t registered your target. If you are too close to your target, the aoe blind of the skill triggers (that part doesn’t need a target) but you don’t teleport (that part needs a target).

I included a screenshot with combat log for the Flashing Blade example.
Remember, this bug occurs to skills that will fail, fully or partially if you don’t have a target. Projectile skills, AoE skills and the likes aren’t affected.

This apparently only happens when I’m on staff. Testing this further, this doesn’t occur to me when I’m on scepter, dagger or axe.

My opinion is: if you are more of a life force user who likes to spend points in SR, the spectrals are better in my opinion. If not, then go with wells. Also, wells are better for farming and I believe spectrals are better for more difficult encounters and less AoE oriented situations.

I do use spectrals more often in pve than wells. Although I have to say I somewhat run with utilities from various categories. Last time I remember running a power build in pve, I ran with spectral walk, spectral grasp and well of suffering. Spectral Wall is a good option for crowd control, specially in the Ascalon fractals. Spectral Armor, with its cooldown reduced, is now a very good defensive and LF generation skill.

What nemesis actually meant was a sarcasm, pointing out that if necros are to be nerfed because of x and y, then one might also cry to nerf eles and mesmers and etc.
And also I didn’t really see anything in gunnerCRO’s post that would suggest him believing necros to be that OP.
I don’t understand what are you two arguing about (other than how hard it is to play necro or ele).

I for one have an easier time playing necro conditionmancer than anything else BUT it’s mainly because of the fact that I’ve spent 98% of my GW2 play time on a necro and because of how DoT kiter builds match my play style. I’ll have as much trouble playing a bunker necro as I would playing a bunker guardian (ironically, I can play a bunker guardian better than a bunker necro)

Softspoken.2410:

Is it possible for anyone experiencing this to cause a false recharge on any of the other DS skills?

No, this only happens to doom. I explained when exactly it happens on my last post. The bug only occurs to me if I press 3 before my DS bar appears. I’m assuming this will not occur on low ping nets as the moment they press F1, their skill bar changes immediately but with my ping, when I press “enter death shroud”, there’s a very short delay before the DS bar appears, during which I have time to press 3 and cause the bug.
As I said, if your #3 skill on your weapon is in cooldown, this bug doesn’t happen.

Warriors still lose most of the times against a conditionmancer 1v1. But if the necro is caught off guard while focusing on something else, then only grenth help them lol.

People aren’t used to seeing necromancers at this level of strength.
Before: oh see! a necromancer! easy kill. Ctrl+T
Now: oh kitten! a necromancer… cast condition removal!
But the fact is, necromancers can be focus fired down almost as easy as before, and that is easier than almost all other classes. Before the update, necromancers weren’t viewed as that much of a threat. Now they are, hence the mentality that they are OP.

I kinda agree that some tweaks might be needed. Like for example, sigil of paralyzation no longer affecting fear is, in my opinion, a right move.

Oh and before I forget, an AR engineer is a hard counter to condition necromancers 1v1.

Yeah, the primary aspect of the juggermancer is the full soldier gear. The traits and utilities are optional and you can just change them around based on your needs as the primary difficulty of making a solider necromancer is getting the gear.
The thing is, with 30k+ health with kitten load of toughness and power, there is no doubt about the viability of a full soldier gear set. What build variety you want to come up with it, is up to you.

I managed to find more detail on how and when this happens.

When you press F1 (or whatever key you bound DS to), if you have a very good ping, you’ll see the DS bar immediately. If you don’t have a very good ping, there might be a split-second delay until you see the DS bar. In this very short interval, while you still see your main bar (after pressing F1), if you press 3, your skill on the main hand (for example chillblains) starts flashing, but when the bar eventually changes to DS, it’s actually doom that goes into recharge and nothing happens. Remember, this all happens in less than a second.
If I wait until I see doom on my screen and then press 3, this bug won’t trigger.
I have also tested that if your skill #3 on your weapon is on cooldown, this bug doesn’t happen either and your doom successfully triggers.

/skip this part if you want as it’s not that important/
It’s also good to point out that this bug doesn’t happen to other DS skills (probably because of doom being the only instant skill in that bar).
Also, for just a bit more detail, I tested a similar situation with staff #2 of mesmer (an instant skill). I stay on sword for example, press swap weapon to swap to staff and start pressing 2 while my bar still shows the sword skills. Sword #2 starts flashing but when my weapon swap finally happens, staff #2 successfully triggers, so I can say this bug only happens with DS and Doom.

I’ve found carrion to be good for a hybrid or condition MM build. If you’re not doing a lot of bleeds, soldier is better. A condition MM is very effective in some situations as it’s less in danger than an MM with dagger main hand but soldier offers much more survivability.

A full soldier gear set makes the necromancer very hard to kill and still allows it to hit like a truck with dagger main hand!
Plus, it can be used on many different builds: Spectral and MM being my favorites on this gear set.

Spectral Walk also allows necromancers to jump from high places without dying or even taking a hit on their life force.
Just jump, when you get close to the ground, use spectral walk and spectral recall immediately after it. You’ll reach the ground as if you’ve fallen from where you triggered spectral walk.
You’ll feel like a vampire jumping from high places

Has anybody had this bug before:
Link

It’s a bug I recently started having with Doom.

The weird thing is, I never had this problem until one or two days ago.

My ping is sub-optimal, I admit, but this has never been an issue before.
Also with the case of bad ping, the skill should either not trigger at all or trigger late, not go into cooldown with no effect!
To cope with command lag, everytime I want to doom someone, I press the DS button and start pressing 3 multiple times until it triggers. Before the most recent update, it worked. After the most recent update, the skill goes into cooldown with no effect.
Bottom line is, it is clear now that it has something to do with ping although this is a new problem.

I don’t know. It sucks if it’s just me. My screenshots clearly show the bug. As I corrected myself, the problem is not the stacking. If I wait some time after I enter DS and then cast doom, it successfully triggers. It’s that if I cast doom immediately after I enter death shroud, this bug occurs. I never had this problem before the very most recent update (yesterday or a day before).

Good idea with the combat log.
And here’s a screenshot with combat log. As you see, there’s nothing in the combat log for Doom.

Here’s a screenshot of the bug I’m having.
I have Path of Midnight (SR III) so my doom is 17 seconds recharge.
I stand right next to a golem. Go to death shroud and cast doom right after I enter death shroud. My skill triggers and starts the cooldown but the skill doesn’t do anything on the target. As you see in the screenshot, the skill has just entered cooldown but the target has no fear on him or anything.

I’ve tested it multiple times on the golems. My staff #5 fears, then I immediately go to DS, cast doom on the target, absolutely nothing happens, that said, the duration of the fear doesn’t get stacked.
There’s something amiss here.

Edit: I just realized the problem is not with the stacking but with the fact that when I cast doom immediately after going to death shroud, the skill does nothing and goes into cooldown!

Edit: This is not really a doom bug nor a chilblains bug. In fact, it’s not even a necromancer bug. Check this post for my latest findings on this bug.

Original OP:
Today, in the new tournament map, I realized I’m unable to cast room right after I fear someone with staff #5. I thought I’m having a bad luck and my doom is failing but I kept seeing nothing when I cast doom. No immune, block, invulnerable, miss, nothing.
So I went back to the HotM and tried it on the golems and to my dismay, if the target has fear on him already, your doom won’t do anything.
Has anybody else observed this? Such a change was not mentioned in the change log but it greatly affects terror builds.

“Run us out of 2 health bars” is not a very precise way to put it. Life force generation on a condition build is pathetic enough for necros to not have much life force in most encounters.

Necros can really shut down some players. I have to say it takes much more effort to fight against a necro now than before the patch.
Although this level of strength is not strange in this game, I think it’s been a bit foreign to the necro community and that’s what has made necros (including me) so excited about the new changes.
Even though necros really deserved some buffs, I won’t make any comment against the “necro became OP” arguments as only time will tell, but I certainly acknowledge a huge increase in our effectiveness.
Remember though, necros still have their primary weaknesses: lack of hard defense (blocks/evasion/invulnerability/etc), lack of a reliable way to disengage and so on which can be used against them.

I personally think the gem prices for these items are fine. But whey would you delete a server after a while when it runs out of charge? Even in a subscription game, a person just needs to recharge their account to resume playing. I don’t understand why the servers aren’t just hidden from the list when their grace period expires instead of being completely deleted!!!

This is kinda stupid to remove a server after just two weeks of inactivity. If they are worried about ghost servers, why don’t they just hide those servers from the list instead of forcing the owner to spend another 1600 gems for a new server?!
What if a guild wants to run tournaments among its members only once every month? What’s Anet’s alternative for that? This whole custom arena payment system sounds more EA than ANet!

JoopFOX.9510:

Lol, I just asked this a few hours ago: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/pvp/pvp/How-long-is-grace-period-for-Custom-Arenas

Weird, cause I did search for grace period and nothing showed up.

I kinda don’t have a problem with the price of the custom arena starter kit, nor the price on the time tokens, I just have a problem with the grace period before the arena you’ve paid so much on is deleted!!!!! :O
Can’t they just hide it from the server list after a certain period of time after it runs out of charge? Why delete it? I don’t want to buy another arena just because, let’s say we didn’t play in that arena for a month!

How long is this supposed grace period for the custom arenas before they are deleted after they are out of charge?
1600 gems is too much to create an arena (I don’t have a problem with the starter price) just to lose it after not using/charging it for a while.
Does anyone have any info on this?

Oh now you can go and rock tyria unless you face a thief who’s gonna rock your kitten with 17 second steal cooldown, 3.5 sec aoe fear! They’ll have more fear than necros! When you’re fighting in a team fight, just pray to whatever god you worship that a thief doesn’t join the fray on the opposing side.

You guys speak as if necros are the only buffed profession.

This is the best necro patch and the worst necro nerf (other than beta) ever!
Best necro patch because it has now opened a lot of new possibilities and boosted many things that needed some love.
The worst nerf for the nerf to corrupt boon! Our signature in tournaments, why?! WHY?!

Yes, go away! We don’t want profession bandwagoners!
(I’m just kidding, you’re welcome to try)

You are right in that regard. But in an offensive situation, the weakness (which I favored for its anti-endurance effect) is severely reduced in effectiveness due to its harder application and reduced duration.

I would NEVER take that trait over 20% damage to under 50%, unless I’m a rampager 30spite/30curse build.

They just added another broken grandmaster trait to necromancer’s plethora of useless traits.
The question would be, which of the pvp amulets truely supports a power+condition damage+precision build? Carrion? That amulet doesn’t have any precision for that trait to matter. Rampager? The amount of power on that amulet is underwhelming.

Swapping Dhuumfire with Withering Precision would have been a better idea as people who needed burning, could just spend on their correct trait line: curses, and weakness is a much better condition for the spite line and power builds than burning!

What was ANet really thinking?

:O No buff to death nova? And the useless Death Shiver trait will remain as useless as it was before?

25% fumble chance will make weakness even worse than what it is right now considering most durations have been cut in half.
I’m very dubious about the result.

Even with the update, weakness has a 50% chance for attacks to deal 50% damage. That’s on average a 25% damage reduction that you have to sustain on enemies and considering that removing conditions is much more prevalent than removing boons, I’d say weakness is inferior to protection (33% damage mitigation) in terms of damage reduction.
However, weakness isn’t just good for its damage reduction. It denies the enemy the endurance they need to maintain their dodges during combat as well.

I can’t really say if a build focused on weakness would work well in tournaments considering the abundance of condition removals and the short duration (or long cooldowns) of weakness, but I sure would like to try a weakness build in tournaments regardless after the patch.

One can’t dodge through a line of warding. It doesn’t make sense to me for stability to bypass the line. It’s like someone with stability being able to walk through solid walls!!!

During flame and frost I actually spent more time in hoelbrak than lion’s arch. However, I do miss other cities. It’s almost a pity that all the nice work gone to the development of Divinity’s Reach for example is not appreciated enough.
The main reason I think most people travel to LA to trade and do other such activities is because it’s free to go there from anywhere on the map (through HotM).
If Anet was to allow people to teleport to other major cities without charge (without having to go through LA first) and they added LA services to all those major cities, there will be a boost in population of the other major cities as well and people could just go to the cities they wanted.

Considering this only affects your crit chance while in DS, I wouldn’t be surprised with a flat increase. However for this trait to multiply your current crit chance by 1.5 sounds a bit more logical to me.