Guild Wars 2

I will play as Grenth.

The lack of alts in GW2 is one of the leading factors of its current problems.

Background:

Now in GW2 most players just focus on one primary character. Its becoming like WoW. I will explain in a second.

The problem started when changes were introduced to make alts harder to equip. These includes ascended gears and time gated LS rewards. Crafting and gems are also costing more and more each day. All these combined makes its very difficult to make and equip an alt character to the same degree as your main.

Now we see earlier PvE zones dying. There is no one there. A lot of meta quests are abandoned because there is never enough players to do them.

1) Alt Characters

Let’s take a quick look at GW1. It was one of the most alt-friendly games around. It was very easy to equip alts. All the farming involves are for cosmetics. Back in GW1 I have 9 characters in total, all maxed and max equipped. I wasn’t elite in all the classes, but I did have at least a basic understanding of all classes.

In GW2, I am barely max equipping one character. With the up coming ascended armor crafting I would be behind again. I am a casual player now. But it is safe to say that I have no chance of having an alt, unless I am willing to accept that my alt wouldn’t be as well equipped as my main.

In GW1 players also wasn’t as crazy over class imbalances. Why? Because in GW1, if your main’s profession “sucks”, you can easily switch and play another profession until your main’s profession is fixed.

In GW2 your main character is all your got. You have already invested all your time and money into him or her. If your main character’s profession is underpowered, you are screwed. It is no wonder why players are super upset over class imbalances in GW2, much more so than in GW1.

GW1 kept players playing by having them create, and then max level and equip multiple alts. This is, imo, the right way to keep players playing.

WoW kept players playing by making it very difficult to max one character and his equipments. They do so by introducing artificial grinding that’s required. This is, imo, the wrong way to keep players playing.

I think GW2 should go back to its GW1 roots. They should focus on allowing players to have multiple alts, instead of having one “ultimate” character.

2) Side-Kick System

This is an idea I got for a while. But I saw no chance of it happening. But with the new Collaborative Development, I decided it is time to share this idea.

Here is the core idea:

When you do pve in the open world, you can pick one of your other character as a Side-Kick. That Side-Kick looks the same as and uses the same equipment and skills as your other character. He/she would follow you and assist you in battle. You cannot bring Side-Kicks into dungeons, spvp or wvw. The Side-Kick is scaled in level, to the map’s level just like a human player. If killed, Side-Kick would require armor repairs just like the player do. The Side-Kick do not take any loot from the player.

So let’s say you have 4 level 80 characters. After picking a main character, you can select a Side-Kick in game. That Side-Kick would be one of your other 3 characters.

This will further encourage players for having alt characters. This will fix the dead zone problem in low level pve. Those low level maps will become popular again as players level up their alts. When a new players buys and joins GW2, they will see a lot of players to team up with.

Side-Kicks are not allowed into dungeons, so dungeon balance is maintained.

Side-Kicks in a level 40 zone will be scaled to level 40.

Side-Kicks will require armor repairs. So they are not cannon folders. Use them wisely.

Side-Kicks do not take any of the player’s loots. The player will still get all of the loots he deserves.

Thoughts? :P

Bhawb.7408:

CHIPS.6018:

By pvp they mean spvp and wvw. If they only meant spvp they would have said so.

This nerf to Mark of Blood is going to hurt us a lot in wvw.

PvP = sPvP, they don’t call WvW PvP

Even if what you say is true, its still a move in the wrong direction. They are still nerfing Mark of Blood because of Dhuumfire. Next up they will nerf something else because of Dhuumfire.

And it is clear that nerfing Mark of Blood for WvW is on their mind. And this might happen in the next patch.

I am not against all nerfs. But nerfs need to be justified. They need to make sense.

Mad Queen Malafide.7512:

That actually gave me an interesting idea. What if the Krait’s deities are real, and they are actually Gods with good intentions? What if the Krait really are their chosen people, and are paramount in the battle against the Elder Dragons? That would be an interesting 180 twist.

The good twist would be their gods wants to kill the Elder Dragons and then enslave everyone else. So it ends up being a 3 way war. ^^

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

For one, that nerf is only in PvP, where most necros don’t care.

Two, while we agree the nerf is pointless, it just doesn’t seem that big a deal; not when there are other things that are honestly a higher priority to change,

By pvp they mean spvp and wvw. If they only meant spvp they would have said so.

This nerf to Mark of Blood is going to hurt us a lot in wvw.

Bhawb.7408:

CHIPS.6018:

Its been over 3 days and still no reply at all for the Mark of Blood nerf. Jon are you guys going to push though with this 33% nerf even with almost total rejection from the necro community?

Its not their job to make people happy when it comes to balance. We will kitten and moan at every nerf they do, regardless. If they honestly believe that it is a good decision for the game they will do it.

If they can convince us, by logic, that Mark of Blood needs a 33% nerf I would be very happy. But what we have here is that, time and time again, people asked them to nerf Dhuumfire and leave everything else alone. This is the logical thing to do. Yet they refuse.

This thread is an open invitation to Anet to explain their point of view to us. Yet they stay silent. I also asked like 3 times on the main necro thread and once on the main Dec 10 update thread about Mark of Blood. They stay quiet every single time.

I am getting very frustrated tbh.

It just seems that Anet knows nerfing Mark of Blood is a bad idea, and nerfing Dhuumfire is the way to go. But they don’t want to admit it so they just avoid any communications.

And this is the problem that has been going on in the necro forum since forever. Anet say they will do this. Every single necro say its a bad idea. Anet does not provide any additional logical explanation and push though with their changes.

Collaborative Development will not work if Anet continue to use selective hearing.

Until Anet shows us that they understand necromancer better than us, they should listen to us instead. Listen to Nemesis for example. Whisper him in game or on the forums to ask him for input, etc.

Konig I do appreciate your efforts. But from what I gathered from Anet, they realize that Scarlet is indeed a lore breaking villain. I think at this point, Anet just want to get rid of Scarlet asap to prevent further damage.

Chris Whiteside (paraphrasing): Desperate all the player’s objections, we have to finish the Scarlet Saga because everything for her is already done, both the story and the gameplays.

Anet so far only said “There is a story with Scarlet.” They never said “Scarlet is not what you guys think at all. It will all make sense at the end.” So I think most of our accusation against the Lore Slayer is valid.

Don’t get me wrong. If Anet managed to turn her story around I would be more than happy. But I am willing to pretend she never happened if required.

Become the Raven, nuff said.

Its been over 3 days and still no reply at all for the Mark of Blood nerf. Jon are you guys going to push though with this 33% nerf even with almost total rejection from the necro community?

Its been over 3 days and still no reply at all for the Mark of Blood nerf. Jon are you guys going to push though with this 33% nerf even with almost total rejection from the necro community?

Jon, other than game balance, I want to ask a conceptual question. What are those spirit hands in this image, around the necromancer?

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/File:Necromancer_05_concept_art.png

I understand that this is a conceptual image. But what was the original vision of the necromancer’s death shroud? I had been very curious about this since I saw this image.

Before GW2 was released, upon seeing that image, I always thought that Death Shroud would act as a Binding Ritual (from ritualists) that’s casted directly on the necromancer himself. The necromancer would fight together with that spirit, 2 persons in one body. The necromancer can summon different types of spirits onto himself as the need arises.

Examples:

I hate Scarlet Invasion because it was a wild goose chase. Players spent more time running around and around in circles than fighting. Most attempts were not organized at all. People just farm champions and do not care about failing the event.

I like Teq as an event, but was very unhappy about the queues and very slow spawn time.

I think in the future, it is better for World Events to spread out across the whole map in a battle line fashion. This will spread out the players to reduce the lag. At the same time each guild has a defined role so the unity of the guild is preserved.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Battle_of_Kosovo_plan.png

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.

Obviously the #s are ballpark and not necessarily final. The % chance, duration, and ICD are all subject to change.

Jon

Jon, if I play sPvP I would be happy with this. Finally there will be a way for condimancers to apply their condition damage onto foes while in DS.

However I am a pure WvWer. And in WvW, AoE is all that matters. This proposal will only buff a Necro’s single target damage. All single target skills are, by definition, underpowered in WvW.

You see, it isn’t just about the numbers. In WvW, there are many other factors like network lag, graphic lag and skill lag that reduce the effectiveness of single target skills. It is nearly impossible to pick out a single target to spike in a zerg fight.

And worst of all, single target skills requires you to turn and face the enemy that you are attacking. That slows your movement down, meaning you will not be able to follow your commander. That’s a big no no in tier 1 WvW.

Most professional WvW guilds bans all single target skills (except for a few good ones) in zerg fights preciously because of the above reasons.

Now, I am not against this buff. But here is my conclusion:

Even with the new Dhuumfire, it does not justify the nerf to Mark of Blood by 33%.

Jon, please read my post on page 8 and give me your opinion. Thanks. ^^

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/necromancer/Dec-10th-Balance-Preview-Necromancer/page/8

alanis.6094:

JonPeters.5630:

Stx.4857:

JonPeters.5630:

Siphoned Power description is wrong. What that trait does is give you Might for 5 seconds everytime you are struck when your health is below 25%. This includes going into DS at that point and then building up a bunch of might by getting attacked. I will get the text updated on that for sure.

Jon

And you feel 1 stack of might for 5 seconds.. while being in execute range is as useful as say +10% damage while target has a condition.. or even 2% to 8% damage increase based on how many conditions the target has? Or the newly improved Death GM minor.. 10% of toughness as bonus power(which for me will be 300 power.. nice!).

Is that the intended use for this trait? To actually want to remain at 25% HP and then perform a full deathshroud rotation while being hit to maybe add the burst from 8-10 extra might stacks? The power of this trait is so low, that the minor trait which adds might when casting Lifeblast probably doubles or triples its damage value.

The point is this thing is unbounded. You can be hit a bunch of times and it keeps stacking up the might. Maybe the duration is a bit low, but with no cooldown this is a good interesting trait.

If you are getting hit by enough people to get a high amount of might stacks, what good will it be that you live a handful of seconds when popping out of DS cause you are under 25%?

Well in a very closely matched one on one situation in sPvP, those stacks might come in handy. Those few extra stacks of might could be the deal breaker.

However in WvW and PvE, it should be obvious that it is useless. If I am already at 25% health or less I would be seconds away from dying from the enemy zerg. Even if I pop into DS, my goal would be to escape and survive somehow (remember, the whole enemy zerg wants me dead). The last thing I wanted to do at that point is to rush into the middle of the enemy zerg to make use of my might stacks.

We already dying and then rushing into the enemy zerg to deal damage is twisted. To balance, we should be dealing a flat rate of like 300% original damage or something. If you want us to take such high risk, our damage better be worth the trouble. It shouldn’t be relying on the number of times the enemies hits us.

Jon, can we please get something here that’s useful in all of WvW, PvE and sPvP? Maybe replace those might stacks with protection or retaliation?

Protection of Death - You gain one second of invulnerability when you enter Death Shroud.

I think it is very important for the story writers to keep one thing in mind: What exactly is at stake here?

To get a quick understanding, please listen to this song from Dragonforce called Heart Of The Storm. It summarize the requirements of an epic fantasy story very well.

So what are some themes here?

Past:
-Revenge for something long forgotten.
-Scars of the past.
-Thousands died in the past.
-Painful memories.
-Long way from victory.
-Fulfilling what the heroes of the past has failed to do.

Present:
-Endless destruction in our land.
-Legions of darkness killing everyone.
-We will fight though the whirlwind of doom.
-The price for victory would be heavy.

And it is these kind of things that drove heroes to fight. Everything is at stake.

It is very important to establish a past and present to the story. In Scarlet’s case, her past is absolutely zero. She was only like 15 years old. And her past is almost non-existing. And there is no explanation as to why she is smarter than all Asura and why she is so powerful. There is no explanation as to why, with her show off and unyielding personality, everyone she met loved her and cannot wait to pass their knowledge to her.

A character without a past is a weak character. There is nothing at stake in her past. And since the heroes only recently found out about her, the heroes also have no stake in her.

Let’s talk about present. Why did Scarlet fail as a villain? Because from her, there is nothing at stake for us at all. Scarlet win her little Clockwork Invasion? Nothing happens to us or our loved ones. We heroes failed to take down her airship factory? Nothing happens to us or our loved ones.

A character without anything at stake in the present is a weak character. Scarlet isn’t worth our time because she isn’t doing anything anyways. And the people she harms are just no name civilians that we know nothing about.

Why was The Searing so powerful back in GW1? Because our characters met those NPCs. Those NPCs were alive! They were going about their own lives. Some were farming. Some were merchants. Some were getting bee honey. Some were taking down apples.

These NPCs that died were people that we once knew! That’s why it was powerful.

Moshari.8570:

I see a lot of people posting ‘persistent world’ ideas that would involve armies of enemies taking over areas if events fail.

Keep in mind that on low-population servers (I know, I know, I constantly bring this up) these events will fail more often than succeed. I saw one person who posted that if these events fail, it would make these areas more difficult content (more champions, harder fights, etc)…I think this is a bad idea for the same reason, the servers that will fail at these events are the ones that could not get enough people to do the events, if you then make areas harder after the events, you will further encourage this disparity.

The amount of players that simply “play the game” are far far more numerous than the amount of players “looking for a challenge”. This is evidenced by Tequatl. It is a ghost town on most of the servers. Those servers that have the players who are “looking for a challenge” are precisely the ones who will win the event and thus not trigger the challenging content…sure, you might have a few of those permanently switch servers to get the challenging one, but you will have far more people switching servers to go back to “easy mode”…particularly if “easy mode” has +% to mf as suggested by the OP. Why do you think most people run champs instead of fighting Teq or Karka queen.

Instead, any events or LS that changes areas for the better or worse should be done not as a single server, but as an average of servers, similar to the way the votes for Kiel were tallied. This also makes it easier on developers (single code-base to work from). So if all of the servers combined only succeeded in pushing back 40% of the advancing enemy, then yes, the area should now be filled with SCALABLE events to keep trying to push it back (if they succeed, then it will go back to normal).

Everything in LS (and in GW2 in general) should utilize the scaling abilities they already have in the game. You have no idea how difficult some of this content has been to complete on low-pop servers (my server is mid and I can see this). Believe it or not, there are actually people who cannot get achievements (like killing the lich in mad-king laby) because there simply are not enough people doing that event to succeed at it. This trend of introducing boss’s that are ridiculously over-powered even when there are only 5 people on the map has got to stop. I miss being able to do Tequatl on my own server, with my own server’s people rather than with TTS, or guesting to a high-pop server. I miss going to southsun to just roam around killing Karka’s without being annihilated in the camps which are constantly over-run by so many Karka’s that a solo player cannot even run through them without death. And like I said, Borlis Pass is considered a “mid” server….I cannot imaging how bad this is on a truly low-pop server.

SCALING must be used in LS content…and continue after the LS is over with whatever is permanently left behind. Currently the LS has made my world smaller (no longer go to southsun or SW sparkfly) because of the LS. I want a world that grows, not shrinks.

I agree. I don’t think Anet should have different stories for each server. I believe that the story must be universal across all servers. Let’s say 10/30 servers succeeds, and 20/30 servers fails, well too bad the story will go the “failure” route.

This will also encourage population balance during events. To succeed, the players have to guest (not transfer) to low population servers to help them succeed.

I also think World Events need to happen on a separate map, just like Mad King’s Labyrinth. For example Kraka Invasion of LA. Why not make a separate LA map that players have to talk to an NPC to enter? Inside that LA, the devs can make any change they want because its not the real LA. And players that have no interest in the event can still access LA just fine.

What is this thread in the LS discussion? Move to WvW please.

LOL at people comparing their own ignored forum with another ignored forum. It is like saying “You lost an arm? Well I lost 2 legs so I have it worst!”

Wouldn’t it make more sense to say “I agree with OP. I am an elementalist and we gets totally ignored too!”

Hi Jon. Thanks for dropping by. I can see Colibrative Development working already.

I think there are 4 questions that urgently need to be answered. Can you please elaborate on these 4 points?

1) Dhuumfire – This is an overpowered trait that almost no one wants, not even necros. We necros hate this trait just as much as other professions.

There has been mainly 2 suggestions. First is removing Dhuumfire totally. Second is changing Dhuumfire to Dhuumtorment, so replacing the burning condition with torment.

2) Mark of Blood – Pretty much all necro agree that this 33% nerf to Mark of Blood is due to the overpower-ness of Dhuumfire. This is the wrong way to balance the class. Nerfs and changes should apply to Dhuumfire directly, not Mark of Blood.

Mark of Blood is a very important skill in WvW. As you know, staff is the only useful weapons in a zerg fight for a necro. None of the other weapons have enough consistent AoE. I would say Mark of Blood make up for about 50% of a necro’s damage output in WvW. A 33% nerf to Mark of Blood will mean a 17% nerf to a necro’s WvW damage output.

Can Mark of Blood keep its 3 stacks of bleeding until further considerations?

3) Bleed Cap – 25 stacks of bleed isn’t enough, for either PvE or WvW. That cap gets reached way too quickly. This is a huge disadvantage for condition users when compared to power users.

A side note, conditions in WvW gets cleansed very quickly. When combined, this means that our conditions eithers gets cleansed, or doesn’t gets added onto a target that already have 25 stacks of bleeding.

Would you guys please consider increasing this cap to 100?

4) Foot in the Grave – Necros are in dire need of stability. Right now it is inaccessible because this trait is located in the grandmaster trait tree.

Would you guys please consider moving this trait to a more accessible spot? Maybe move it to Death 5 to replace Reanimator.

Jon I look forward to your reply. ^^

Konig Des Todes.2086:

I don’t think the raid-designed content like Tequatl should be used as a means for this. It should be stuff capable of being completed by small groups or even solo and should be scaled to the server’s population.

It should be a combined effort of the whole server, but at the same time each guild makes a difference. I had been saying for ages that World Event shouldn’t just happen in one single spot. It should be in a battle line which a single human zerg should have no chance of winning. The players must spread across the whole map and fight and win their section/sector of the map.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/eb/Battle_of_Kosovo_plan.png

http://www.personal.psu.edu/users/j/a/jal5056/Gettysburg_Battle_Map_Day3.png

They can also make World Events zone by zone. Its similar to Company of Heroes. Let’s say the humans have to defend zones A,B, and C. Losing zone C might mean the collapse of the whole front. The battles would be street to street, house to house.

http://img254.imageshack.us/img254/9268/advancedtacmap.png

Please get rid of Dhuumfire and then balance everything else. >_>

NECROMANCER
We are no longer removing a Bleed from Signet of Spite.

Yay we get one bleed back from one skill!

……..

T_T

Chris can we talk about World Events for a second? I want to know your opinions on the following World Event types.

1) Random Spawning Events (e.g. Scarlet’s Clockwork invasion) – Mobs are randomly spawned all over the map. The players have to go around and around in circles to close down the spawn portals.

My personal opinion is this is a wild goose chase. Players often spent more time running around aimlessly than fighting. Organization is also very difficult without Teamspeak. Commanders often waypoint without letting the players following them know.

The worst part is the countdown timers. Players often fail when they run out of time. And the mobs after their victory simply disappears and doesn’t affect the world at all.

This event is great for champion train lovers who don’t care about event completion. Lots of loots for them. But for people who hates farming, don’t care about loots and actually want to finish events, these events offers them nothing.

Without major improvements to these types of events, I don’t like these events one bit.

2) Epic Boss Events (e.g. Teq) – These events focuses on one single boss in one single location.

I personally think these events are great if we can improve the queues and spawn time. I am sure you know that most of the complains are against the long queue times. I was on TC at the time, and tbh I never got into TC main map. TC was the best PvE server and so guests floods into TC to get it done there. I was always stuck on the overflow.

I was only able to kill Teq by joining a Teq killing guild that focus on killing Teq in the overflows.

Now let’s assume the queues (and lag) are fixed. The next problem people talk a lot about is the difficulty. TBH, I don’t found Teq that hard. It is a lot easier to complete than Scarlet’s invasion imo. And for most of the event players are at least trying to complete the event, instead of running around chase portals like Scarlet’s Invasion.

Of course, champion farmers won’t be happy with the likes of Teq. There isn’t enough champs to farm, unlike Scarlet’s Invasion.

I personally really enjoyed Epic Boss Events. You guys just got to look into the queue and lag problems.

3) Whole Map Invasion (e.g. Karka invades LA) – In these events an enemy force would be invading a map. The players have to defend it.

The problem with Karka was once again queues and lag. The mobs are also all in one spot, making the lag even worst.

What you guys should do is spread out of mob spawns, so the player base are forced to spread out. The mobs should come from multiple fixed spawn points, and attack the player in waves across the whole map.

e.g. pretend this is the whole map and each box is around 5 players and mobs
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/eb/Battle_of_Kosovo_plan.png

If any mob crosses to the other side and to the player’s base camp, the players losses. So the whole battle line must be held by the players. This will force them to spread out across the whole map and hence and reduce the lag.

4) Zone by Zone Invasion (no example in game right now) – The mobs will attack the map zone by zone (a zone is a part of the whole map). They would take over one zone, settle it, before moving onto the next.

This will once again spread out the players. They would need to spread out their one singular zerg into multiple smaller zergs and led by multiple commanders to defend/attack each zone.

Tactics and planning would be very important here. The mobs might cut off players in the front if they are not careful, which would cause their health to degen each second. If prolonged, this will force the players to retreat and a lost of the zone. Of course, the players can do the same to the mobs in return.

e.g. Company of Heroes
http://img254.imageshack.us/img254/9268/advancedtacmap.png

Chris, I look forward to your opinion on these different modes of World Events.

rfdarko.4639:

I think the reason we haven’t seen a dev response, for the pve points at least, is that the biggest problems necros face currently is defiant and the condition cap. These two things inhibit our class strengths. Unfortunently, changes to these systems will be months and months away, if they happen at all. These thing aren’t an issue in pvp, which is what balance is focused around. It would take some serious pve only changes to bring necros up to decent level, which anet is unwilling to do. Im 99% sure pve necros will be left to rot until they get around to adressing defiant/condi caps.

Then by the time these changes comes around, every necro would be playing another game. Do they really want that?

It is no excuse to just say that it will take too long.

I, and many other necro players, are getting really tired of having our voices ignored by Anet for the last 15 months. 15 freaking months!!! I would much rather that Anet would come debate with us and reject all our ideas, than being ignored like this.

Slightly off topic, but I made a thread on improving underwater combat earlier on. Almost no one posted in it, because let’s be honest no one cares about underwater combat. Silence is the worst rejection. It means no one cares.

Its the same thing with Anet’s view on necro. Silences is the worst rejection. Anet doesn’t seem to care, and its slowly becoming a concrete fact.

We paid cash just like every other player. We deserve the same level of commitment and respect from Anet as any other classes.

Jon, I really appreciate that you take your time to explain your point of view to us. I am certain that Collaborative Development will work if we can get more open discussions like this.

Now I will talk about your post.

Mark of Blood – And by extension, the staff as a weapon.

It might surprise you, but the staff is the only viable weapon a necro have in WvW. We use it not because the staff is overpowered. We use it because a necro in WvW only have staff to get AoE damage.

Dagger is totally useless in a zerg fight. It is single target so it doesn’t have cleave. And between all the snares and a necro’s lack of stability, it is literally impossible to be close enough to a foe for long enough to kill that foe.

Axe is totally useless in a zerg fight. Its damage is way too low and once again it is single target.

Scepter is another single target weapon. Its skill 2 ’s 10s recharge is way too long for its low damage to be viable.

So necros are stuck with staff. It should be obvious that a nerf to Mark of Blood, the main damage source of the staff, by 33% will be devastating to a necro’s effectiveness in WvW.

I have never heard of anyone complaining about the damage of Mark of Blood in WvW. Between the bleed cap and the abundance of condition removals in WvW, Mark of Blood rarely deals its full damage. Even at full damage it does not hurt that much when compared to other classes.

I understand that you guys balance this whole game around spvp. But let’s be honest, almost no one plays spvp. There are a lot more necros playing WvW and pve dungeons.

Weakening Shroud – you guys are nerfing the weakness. Necro lose survivability here, the very thing that you guys said you want to promote.

Dhuumfire – It seems to me that you guys are balancing the whole necro profession around Dhuumfire, not the other way around. You guys are assuming that every single necromancer uses Dhuumfire, which is obviously far from the case. I personally do not use Dhuumfire.

Balancing the whole necro profession around one trait/skill is a flawed logic.

Reanimator – This trait doesn’t need fixing. It cannot be fixed. This trait needs removing and replacing it with something cool.

Death Shroud – Jon if you guys are going to keep the Death Shroud as it is (damage spills over to hp), can you please at least remove that 0.5s-1s cooldown on the skill bar when coming out of DS? We need to be able to use our skills right away if we are going to survive. I lost count how many times my LS ran out, so I was forced out of DS, and I died before I can even use my healing skill because I was stuck on that cooldown on my skill bar.

Jon, I also have a question that I asked many times but never got an answer. Since you are actively reading this thread, I would really appreciate it if you would answer this for me:

Have the development team considered reintroducing the idea of life sacrificing back to the necromancer? These skills costs can range from 5% life to 33% life usage. And once these are implemented it will be much easier to balance the necromancer. Any sort of overpowered skills can be justified by the high risks that they involves, so there is less need to nerf skills and traits. You can also buff necromancer healing abilities and life siphoning to match the necromancer’s health sacrifice usage.

Oulov.7913:

Not sure if someone already mentioned it or not but I really think necro’s Dhuumfire is too op (necro is my first and favourite char). I like to have burning on necro though, but it’s too op if you use it together with scepter to spam so many conditions.

I think that 1 possible and good solution would be to assign Dhuumfire to Axe only (as it is located in the Spite trait line together with axe boosting traits) without nerfing or buffing it.

Just totally remove Dumbfire already. No one wants it, not even necros. None of us ever asked for this. Dumbfire is the bane of necro balancing. We don’t want to see it ever again. Bad idea is bad. We tried it, it didn’t work. Just get rid of it forever.

WhedonGaming.8016:

Necromancer changes have most certainly not addressed the raw dps they do. descrease the damage fear does when feared by at least 50% and dont do PvP ONLY removals… they make no sense as PvP is widely regarded as the least fun thing to do and the lack of armor stats and buildability in PvP is harsh as it is. Just remove the bleed stack from both, its not going to nerf necro to unplayability. the class is way too powerful as it is. 70k hp, massive burst, insanely powerful downed state. i see barely any changes to its dps as you have stated it. most of those things are buffs, actually.

Tell me the class that you play the most. I will give very good reasons why it should be nerfed to the ground.

Jon if you guys are going to keep the Death Shroud as it is (damage spills over to hp), can you please at least remove that 0.5s-1s cooldown on the skill bar when coming out of DS? We need to be able to use our skills right away if we are going to survive. I lost count how many times my LS ran out, so I was forced out of DS, and I died before I can even use my healing skill because I was stuck on that cooldown on my skill bar.

Jon, I also have a question that I asked many times but never got an answer. Since you are actively reading this thread, I would really appreciate it if you would answer this for me:

Have the development team considered reintroducing the idea of life sacrificing back to the necromancer? These skills costs can range from 5% life to 33% life usage. And once these are implemented it will be much easier to balance the necromancer. Any sort of overpowered skills can be justified by the high risks that they involves, so there is less need to nerf skills and traits. You can also buff necromancer healing abilities and life siphoning to match the necromancer’s health sacrifice usage.

Jon, I really appreciate that you take your time to explain your point of view to us. I am certain that Collaborative Development will work if we can get more open discussions like this.

Now I will talk about your post.

Mark of Blood – And by extension, the staff as a weapon.

It might surprise you, but the staff is the only viable weapon a necro have in WvW. We use it not because the staff is overpowered. We use it because a necro in WvW only have staff to get AoE damage.

Dagger is totally useless in a zerg fight. It is single target so it doesn’t have cleave. And between all the snares and a necro’s lack of stability, it is literally impossible to be close enough to a foe for long enough to kill that foe.

Axe is totally useless in a zerg fight. Its damage is way too low and once again it is single target.

Scepter is another single target weapon. Its skill 2 ’s 10s recharge is way too long for its low damage to be viable.

So necros are stuck with staff. It should be obvious that a nerf to Mark of Blood, the main damage source of the staff, by 33% will be devastating to a necro’s effectiveness in WvW.

I have never heard of anyone complaining about the damage of Mark of Blood in WvW. Between the bleed cap and the abundance of condition removals in WvW, Mark of Blood rarely deals its full damage. Even at full damage it does not hurt that much when compared to other classes.

I understand that you guys balance this whole game around spvp. But let’s be honest, almost no one plays spvp. There are a lot more necros playing WvW and pve dungeons.

Weakening Shroud – you guys are nerfing the weakness. Necro lose survivability here, the very thing that you guys said you want to promote.

Dhuumfire – It seems to me that you guys are balancing the whole necro profession around Dhuumfire, not the other way around. You guys are assuming that every single necromancer uses Dhuumfire, which is obviously far from the case. I personally do not use Dhuumfire.

Balancing the whole necro profession around one trait/skill is a flawed logic.

Reanimator – This trait doesn’t need fixing. It cannot be fixed. This trait needs removing and replacing it with something cool.

ZudetGambeous.9573:

According to the devs the reason it is OP is because it can do 2000 damage in an AOE!!!

I mean no one can fight the amazing power that is our 2k cleansable slowly applied damage!

*Note: please ignore the fact that warriors can do 20k damage on a similar CD and also in an AOE, that is not relevant to the discussion.

Yeah, I am still trying to figure out what response I want to give them. I am literally speechless man.

If Anet ever read the necro forums we wouldn’t even need to talk about this.. >_>

I made 2 proposals to encourage new WvWers on a tier 1 server to transfer to a lower tier server. Please read.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/wuv/wuv/Queue-Priority-Based-on-WvW-Rank/

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/wuv/wuv/Queue-Priority-on-Total-Time-in-WvW/28

IMO, new WvWers should be moved before veteran WvWers.

Victory.2879:

Any system based on wvw ‘experience’ is a totally flawed idea, as you are trying to restrict access to part of the game based on a meaningless number, and it will also be biased against newer players (who are more likely to spend money in the gem shop).

They need to spend some money and seriously upgrade the servers, and then have multiple ‘entrance to mists’ areas that give wexp, drops and count in some small way towards the overall score, so there is never a q for the overall area.

The ‘entrance to mists’ areas can automatically scale so outnumbered teams gain bonuses to stats making them harder to kill, and will make waiting for the q to pop fun, instead of the absolute bore it is now.

Its not fair to a new WvWer if they decided to stay in a T1 server yes. But they will have no problem if they move to a lower tier server. That’s what Anet wanted. They want population balancing which, let’s be honest, everyone knows is needed.

The only question is should veteran WvWers move or should new WvWers move.

I made a new thread on a related idea. This time the queue is based on total time spend in WvW. I agree with Vortigern.1987 that time spent in wvw is a much better indicator than WvW rank. Please continue this discussion here. ^^

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/wuv/wuv/Queue-Priority-on-Total-Time-in-WvW/

This is a follow up thread of the other thread I made. Before posting here, please read the first post in my other thread to understand my original idea.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/wuv/wuv/Queue-Priority-Based-on-WvW-Rank/

My original idea was to have queue priority based on WvW rank. But many players pointed out correctly that WvW is not a good indicator. A better indicator would be total time (e.g. in seconds) spent in WvW.

So once again, three things will have to happen at the same time.

1) WvW total time is the sum across all the characters in an account. It is not separated per character.
2) World transfer gem costs will be based on the player’s total time spent in WvW. Players who have spent very little time in WvW will actually receive free gems for transferring server. They get additional bonus gems for transferring to a lower ranking server.
3) Queue priority will be based on a player total time spent inside WvW.

Now I will get into each in detail.

1) Let’s say your character 1 played WvW for 10,000 seconds and character 2 played for 2,000 seconds. Your total WvW time is 12,000 seconds on your account.

2) The more time you spent in WvW, the more expensive it is to transfer your characters. I am not sure how to scale this. But you get the idea. Veteran players should stay with their existing server. At the same time WvW new players should be tempted to move.

My idea is actually to give free gems to new WvWers for transferring server. They get even more gems when they transfer to a very low ranking WvW server. This will eventually even out the server populations.

This isn’t a punishment for veteran players and guilds. It is actually protection for veterans.

Ok I don’t want this to come out in a bad way, but listen to this:

Anet has bring into question the issue of server population imbalance. The obvious answer is for guilds in tier 1 to be moved to lower tier servers.

But hey wait a minute here! Why should veteran players and guilds, who had fought for the same server for ages, be forced to transfer to make room for new players who had done relatively nothing for their server on the WvW side of things?

Why should these veterans move? If anyone should be moving, it should be those new WvW players. A new player transfer to a low tier server won’t matter to them as much as a veteran player. A new player also doesn’t have much personal bond with anyone, while a veteran player is already bonded with the local WvW population.

This new system would help these new WvWers to move. They will be given free gems to move. I think it is very fair.

3) This should be done by some kind of random chance system.

Example. Let’s say there are 2 guy waiting in queue for a borderland. Player 1 was the first to join the queue. Player 2 join after.

Player 1: 67k seconds
Player 2: 100k seconds

The combined time of player 1 and player 2 is 167k. Since 100/167=60%, there is a 60% chance that player 2 will overtake player 1 in the queue, when player 2 press the join button.

Now let’s say there is already 5 players in a queue, when player 6 joins in. Player 6 is level 120.

Player 1: 67k
Player 2: 100k
Player 3: 23k
Player 4: 45k
Player 5: 12k

Player 6 will first fight player 5 for the queue. Since 120/132=91%, there is a 91% chance that player 6 will overtake player 5 in the queue.

Assume that player 6 successfully take over player 5’s spot. He will be fighting against player 4 next. Since 120/165=73%, there is a 73% chance that player 6 will overtake player 4 in the queue.

Assume that player 6 got bad luck and he didn’t take over player 4, his spot will stop there. Here will be the new queue.

Player 1: 67k
Player 2: 100k
Player 3: 23k
Player 4: 45k
Player 6: 120k
Player 5: 12k

Player 6 have no idea how many players he beat in the queue. So re-queuing is meaningless. A high level player cannot abuse this by keep re-queuing. But having a higher WvW level does improve his chances of having a shorter queue.

Flic.6938:

Better idea, base priority on total amount of days spent on that server.

But this doesn’t really separate the veteran WvWers from the new WvWers. So this system won’t help much.

shizo.5698:

CHIPS.6018:

The more of those useless minions you spawn, the more free rally for the enemies in a zerg fight in WvW.

5 useless minions=5 free rally for the enemies.

This is actually a nerf to Reanimator, if that make any sense.

Except they cant be used as rallybots. Was changed a long time ago.

Sorry didn’t know. Must have changed during my few month break away from the game.

Anet, if you guys really want to talk about necro, then talk on the necro forums. Prove to all of us that Mark of Blood requires a 33% nerf. Here:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/necromancer/Anet-prove-to-me-MoB-needs-a-33-Nerf

Many of us necro players are getting very very frustrated with you right now.

Mark of Blood is about to be hit by a 33% nerf bat. So keep quitting. :P

SrebX.6498:

Ascii.9726:

• Soul Reaping II. Vital Persistence. Increased reduction of life force drain from 25% to 50%.

This has made me rejoice …

kitten , I don’t know why are you people whining about
There are barely any nerfs [1 less Bleed stack, oh lord!] and it’s mostly buffs
This is really good for us.
Yes, it’s dumb that they want us to use health siphoning while it’s completely useless right now and I’d really like to see a real buff [not the last “buff” …] But kitten , these are pretty nice buffs

I really don’t get these negative responses

Not sure if serious.

Mark of Blood just got a 33% damage nerf.

If you were serious, let me know so I can yell at you.

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

On the Reanimator change, I think you might change your mind about it being so bad when you can get a small horde from just that trait. I can already get three up at a time often in PvE after the health buff and I am really noticing a difference in effectiveness (because I actually pay attention to it instead of whine). Getting six of the buggers up without healing them or using a skill slot is actually a pretty big deal, since that’s as many minions as you can get from filling your bar with minion skills.

The more of those useless minions you spawn, the more free rally for the enemies in a zerg fight in WvW.

5 useless minions=5 free rally for the enemies.

This is actually a nerf to Reanimator, if that make any sense.

Alright I am all ears, Anet. You asked for Collaborative Development. Ok let’s talk.

If you guys spent any time at all reading the necro forum, you will notice one thing that everyone has been asking for.

“The 25 bleed cap is way too low. This need to be increased.”

This is an universally agreed point by pretty much every single necromancer player.

And now you guys went ahead and nerfed Mark of Blood by 33%.

Saying I am disappointed would be a very very understatement.

Now, I don’t want to hear any words of comfort. I do not need the usual:

“We understand that many of you are frustrated with the upcoming changes. But you players have no idea what we want for the necromancer.”

Nope. None of this.

I want facts. I want straight up logical facts.

Prove to me, in clear writing, why Mark of Blood need to be nerfed by 33%.

If no one from Anet reply to this post, then I am sorry to say that what we necros fears for months has been proven true.

So give me the facts. Why are you guys nerfing Mark of Blood by 33%. Convince me and all of us. I am all ears. If you truly wants Collaborative Development then talk with us.

With all due respect,

A very frustrated necromancer and GW1 beta player.

Everyone have been crying for an increase in the breed cap from 25 to 50 or more.

And then Anet nerfed Mark of Blood by decreasing its bleed stack from 3 to 2. This is a 33% damage nerf.

Sense, this makes none.

The dumbfire argument is invalid because this is assuming EVERY SINGLE necromancer uses dumbfire. This is obviously far from the case.

On the other hand, I can almost guarantee that every single necromancer in WvW uses staff.

Vortigern.1987:

It’s a bad idea because not everyone gets the WvW levels at the same rate. A zergling who run in karma-trains mostly will always have more levels than a roamer, a scout or a defender.

Jobs like scouting and defending are already not very rewarding, your system would ensure that players who care for their server would be punished even more by having a lesser chance to get into WvW, while zerglings with a rank of 400 or more would get instant invites.

Good point. Instead of WvW rank, maybe we should instead use total WvW minute played. This way everyone is on equal footing for each minute that they WvW. You get my idea.

TheAmpca.1753:

1) As much as I and everyone sane would like, this wont happen, Devon has already said no
2)No, you shouldn’t be punished for being better. If anything keep what we had right before season where the lower pop servers had cheaper transfers
3)No, this would create too much elitism and would stop new players from entering WvW as well as non hardcore WvW players. Not everyone wants to wait in Q to get into WvW only to grind some ranks just to wait in Q less next time.

1) The devs are opening up for collaborative development. So nothing is off the table if enough players supports the idea.

2) This isn’t a punishment for veteran players and guilds. It is actually protection for veterans.

Ok I don’t want this to come out in a bad way, but listen to this:

Anet has bring into question the issue of server population imbalance. The obvious answer is for guilds in tier 1 to be moved to lower tier servers.

But hey wait a minute here! Why should veteran players and guilds, who had fought for the same server for ages, be forced to transfer to make room for new players who had done relatively nothing for their server on the WvW side of things?

Why should these veterans move? If anyone should be moving, it should be those new WvW players. A new player transfer to a low tier server won’t matter to them as much as a veteran player. A new player also doesn’t have much personal bond with anyone, while a veteran player is already bonded with the local WvW population.

This new system would help these new WvWers to move. They will be given free gems to move. I think it is very fair.

3) New players should have no problem playing on a lower tier server. These low tier servers need players to grow, and these new players are eager to learn. These low tier servers got no queue, and new players don’t want to deal with the queue. It is a win-win for everyone.

Ok this sounds really selfish. But I am sure some of you are also thinking about this. So let’s talk about it.

It is a fact that the queue has gotten much worst after the introduction of WvW achievements. I am not blaming anyone. But this is a fact.

So I propose the following 3 items. It is very important to note that these 3 things MUST happen at exactly the same time.

1) WvW rank is now account bound. It is no longer character bound. The sum of all WvW experience across all characters will be the player’s WvW rank.
2) World transfer gem costs will be based on the player’s WvW rank.
3) Queue priority will be based on a player’s WvW rank .

Now I will get into each in detail.

1) This is self explanatory. Now all your characters will have the same WvW rank. So you can allocate WvW skill points as you see fit.

2) The higher your WvW rank, the more expensive it is to transfer your character. I am not sure how to scale this. But you get the idea. Veteran players should stay with their existing server. At the same time WvW new players should be tempted to move.

My idea is actually to give free gem to new WvWers (low ranking) for transferring server. They get even more gems when they transfer to a very low ranking WvW server. This will eventually even out the server populations.

3)
Give players with higher WvW levels a priority in queues. A level 150 WvW player should have a chance to get into the map faster than someone only leveled 23. That means you better play if you don’t want to suffer from queues.

This should be done by some kind of random chance system.

Example. Let’s say there are 2 guy waiting in queue for a borderland. Player 1 was the first to join the queue. Player 2 join after.

Player 1: Level 67
Player 2: Level 100

The combined level of player 1 and player 2 is 167. Since 100/167=60%, there is a 60% chance that player 2 will overtake player 1 in the queue, when player 2 press the join button.

Now let’s say there is already 5 players in a queue, when player 6 joins in. Player 6 is level 120.

Player 1: Level 67
Player 2: Level 100
Player 3: Level 23
Player 4: Level 45
Player 5: Level 12

Player 6 will first fight player 5 for the queue. Since 120/132=91%, there is a 91% chance that player 6 will overtake player 5 in the queue.

Assume that player 6 successfully take over player 5’s spot. He will be fighting against player 4 next. Since 120/165=73%, there is a 73% chance that player 6 will overtake player 4 in the queue.

Assume that player 6 got bad luck and he didn’t take over player 4, his spot will stop there. Here will be the new queue.

Player 1: Level 67
Player 2: Level 100
Player 3: Level 23
Player 4: Level 45
Player 6: Level 120
Player 5: Level 12

Player 6 have no idea how many players he beat in the queue. So re-queuing is meaningless. A high level player cannot abuse this by keep re-queuing. But having a higher WvW level does improve his chances of having a shorter queue.

To implement this system, the WvW ranking must be shared for all characters in a player’s account.

A newbie WvWer on a high population server will be stuck in hours long queues. This, combined with discounts for going into a low population server (or even free gems), will tempt many players to move to a low population server. This will eventually achieve server balance.

@ Wallace

You guys already have enough dungeons and champion farming trains. Let those of us that enjoy World Events have our fun too will you?

Dungeons will not save GW2. People play these once and never do it again. Neither will champion farming trains save GW2. Farmers are from WoW and will move on to the next MMO. The only thing that can save GW2 are well made world events. And that’s why I am talking about it.

The way I see it, the life and death of GW2 hinges on the success or failure of World Events.

I spread out the events over 1 or 2 weeks preciously to cover the different timezones. Everyone should have a chance to complete at least one session of the World Event, and that’s enough to get the reward. A World Event is a collaborative effort by everyone across all time zones. No one person can do everything, but neither are you supposed to.

Sorry but saying you hate my idea ISN’T good enough. If you don’t like my ideas, you better post your own idea on what World Events should be.

Tobias Valin.5893:

The only problem with that, timmyf, is that if you kill a dragon and his minions disappear how is someone who comes along 2 years from now going to experience killing that dragon? What you are suggesting is that the devs make content aimed at current players with no thought of future players or how to catch them up.

That’s currently one of the biggest problems with the Living World; the inability of brand new players to experience the stories. They play through the personal story, kill Zhaitan, and then are thrust into Nightmare Tower with no way of knowing who Scarlett is, where she came from, why she’s the villian, what she has done previously to make her a threat, etc… it’s like coming in to a TV show half-way through the season. Do you watch the remainder, or wait for it to hit Netflix so you can start from the beginning? Problem is, there is no Netflix for old content, so new players are simply out of luck.

I will counter argue: How can a child born in 1946 live though WW2?

He can’t. He is born after WW2.

Same thing with the Living Story.

A new player is born after certain events. So he can only read up on it and watch old videos (e.g. re-live though it by playing the mission, knowing full well it happened in the past) on it. He cannot experience it anymore in real time.

The world must change for this whole Living Story concept to work.

Allow me to say one thing that isn’t aimed at anyone in particular.

“I believe that Anet hired a lot people who worked on other MMOs. They have no idea what Guild Wars is all about. And so they are stirring the GW2 ship in a very wrong direction.”

I believe that this is a really good educated guess. We can tell by how grind-ly the LS has become. They are all about farming 1,000,000s of candies for a mini. Farming 1,000,000s of apples for a back item. etc. This is very classical MMO design; Keep the players playing by forcing them to grind.

However little did they know, Guild Wars was designed to remove all grinding. It was designed to be a story and gameplay driven MMO. GW1 is, imo, the best MMO ever made because of that.

When game play and story is good, you don’t need to make the players grind. They will play the content, and then play it again with an alt character.

Alt friendliness, another thing that’s killing GW2. All these ascended gear is doing so much more harm than good.

You see, other MMOs focus on making one primary character. The players is supposed to throw everything into this one character. That’s all the player got. Guild Wars is not like that at all. GW1 is about trying all professions and see which one you like the best. It was one of the most alt friendly MMOs on the market.

Back in GW1 I was a primary Necro. But I also understand every other profession because I tried them all. I know all about ranger interrupts. I know all about front line warriors. etc. In conclusion, I know GW1 the game.

I cannot do the same in GW2 at all.

Based on how grind-ly and alt-unfriendly GW2 is, I can safely assume that Anet hired way too many people who worked on other MMOs and have no idea what Guild Wars is about.

If I speak the truth, these people better change their point of view and get with the program quick. Or they should be removed from Anet to prevent further hindrance to the masterpiece of the Guild War franchise. I played this game since GW1 beta for good reasons.