Guild Wars 2

Arekai.5698:

It’s funny how everyone not playing thief (obviously) agrees that Anet handles stealth the worst possible way someone can implement this mechanic into a game.
It’s so kitten bad they should just remove it completely already. Give thief another faceroll combo but at least make it so others can see them.

Here’s a funny video
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ei-d3-x-JRk&feature=player_embedded
Now count the people who are having fun. Then, after you counted, tell me why they aren’t having fun.
Did they also have this bullkitten in GW1? Wouldn’t surprise me if not because i never heard bad things about it while everyone on the internet is already kittenting on GW2.

Builds like this means we got to kill both T&M at once. If we kill just 1 of them (usually the mesmer), the thief can still come back and res the mesmer.

Subtle.4596:

I wonder if some thought could be put towards an up upgrade you can do to a fully upgraded keep/tower/SM that would show stealthed players.

That would be an interesting idea. Almost like a prison with searchlights.

I play it purely cause its fun. The rewards are very minimal when compared to dungeons and pve. I don’t even get much badges because support classes do not deal enough damage.

ViperWire.4261:

morrolan.9608:

ViperWire.4261:

You are referring to Anet 2.0

Anet that was active during Gw1 before 2006~ was the best customer service I have experienced to this day.

Yep its amazing how they’ve almost completely trashed their brand since those days.

Very sad really

And the fact that I am 1 infraction away from a permanent forum ban is just disgusting to say the least.

Offer feedback, get infracted :\

How many infractions does it take for a permanent forum ban? There were a few of my posts that got removed. Do those count as infractions?

Necro is not a roaming class because they cannot disengage a fight. In wvw you are often caught by a 3 thieves kill squad. As a necro you cannot survive. So stick with your zerg.

Here is how I think a necro boss should use DS. It would act as an extended arm for the boss, tearing foes around, while also acting as a defensive shield.

I envision the boss to have special abilities while it has DS on. For example, maybe the DS would swing its hands around, knocking back all nearby foes. At the same time the necromancer boss would still cast spells with his/her staff. It is almost like fighting 2 enemies in 1 person at once. It is like demonic possession.

Jae.9682:

Btw, AMD has released a beta driver that improves gw2 performance. It also broke ffsplit and bandicam so I’m back to fraps (grrr, need more hd space).

I’ve found the new culling better than the old. The only problem is when my guild is running tagless and we get more than 20 allies around our commander is extremely hard to follow unless he is in party.

As far as skill lag is concerned, it has always been there. However, I think the meta in t1/t2 has shifted towards “scooping.” Commanders will watch the map for one team to attack anothers keep/tower and then go crash the party. 3 way fights of 40+ teams will always lead to skill lag.

As far as people comparing old games and numbers of people on screen to this game. The amount of calculations that their servers need to make due to abilities, combo fields and 3 “factions” far exceed anything in any other game previous, imho. Dealing with combo fields can only be especially taxing on their servers when having 120+ players in a close battle.

I’m still hoping that they remove culling from wvw completely, sooner rather than later, but this new system is better than the old once you get used to it and understand how its working.

Yes the Catalyst 13.2 beta. I will give that a try tonight.

I think the best way to Esport is for servers to fight over random PvE maps, from one waypoint to another. For example Field of Ruins. Put a lord’s room in Fallen Angels and one in Rosko. One server would start in Fallen Angels, the other at Rosko. Whoever takes over the enemy’s waypoint wins.

Maps and waypoints should be randomized for each fight.

In a game with cloaking Wraiths you need Detectors. Right now GW2 is a game with cloaking Wraiths but no Detectors.

AprilRain.7649:

I’ve killed my fair share of thieves and mesmers in the past.. Even killed them while paired up. The thing people need to get through to their heads is that you’ll need beat a thief/mesmer while stuck in the warrior mindset. Learn what your enemy is capable of, figure out what animation does what.. And practice.

Come back after you’ve tried the above. If not tried, your opinion is invalid to begin with.

After a 40 vs 40 zerg fight in our garrison we beat the invaders. 10 of us spent 15 minutes looking for the T&M. We know they are somewhere but we cannot kill them. Then BAM the T&M portal their 40 men zerg back into the keep. We got our zerg back quick enough to defend, but it was close. The inner gate was down and we just barely held them off at the lord’s room.

The process was repeated many times that night. Once they even tried to portal straight into lords (maybe they got 2 T&Ms not sure). Basically if we do not pay attention for 2 minutes we would lose garrison.

We had to keep 10-15 guys in the garrison constantly just to wait for the T&M portal. It makes pushing out nearly impossible, since each time we attack a tower the T&M will portal their zerg inside our garrison. Just 2 foes keep every one of us on our toes.

And to those that said just swing your sword and AoE everywhere, garrison is huge. There are plenty of places to hide. We cannot be everywhere. Locating a good thief in a fight is already hard. Now try locating T&M that dedicate themselves to hide in a huge garrison.

Many people have this idea that tower to tower sieges somehow gives the smaller team an advantage. It allows them to siege the walls from far away.

However in higher tiers, the bigger team would “abuse” this much more. They would use tower to tower siege, while sending zergs to take out supply camps. So the smaller team have no chance of holding anything.

morrolan.9608:

CHIPS.6018:

For example, they said that they are

“Exploring ways to help get more people playing WvW, as well as dealing with queue issues that come with those inherent issues of player population and demand.”
Well cool that sounds great in a general sense. But what actual ideas are being considered and what is being implemented? Are they actually good ideas? We players should be informed of their plans, give our opinions, before Anet spent man-hours on these ideas.

That actually flies in the face of the recent queue issues seemingly to do with anet reducing the population on the maps.

That sucks. Queues are already pretty bad on Fridays.

Teamkiller.4315:

Deniara Devious.3948:

Doomdesire.9365:

Columba.9730:

random smoke aoes are nearly impossible to see and keeps are huge places.

Theres a big red circle to help point it out for you. If you can’t see it and your only argument is “the place is too big!”

Then it’s a L2P issue.

I love it when thief players defend their profession with most ridiculous comparisons and use the term “learn 2 play”.

Stealth is utterly broken, especially in WvWvW. Stealth = unfun for all those who are not using it. WvWvW would be better with the stealth and teleportation mechanisms completely removed or reworked.

GW2 has game mechanisms similar to FPS game. Now imagine a FPS game, where there are several professions. One profession, let’s call it infiltrator, can become invisible when he wants and no enemy action can reveal him from invisibility. Even if infiltrator walks into a cloud of smoke or enters water or enemy makes him bleed like hell, infiltrator is still invisible. And enemy with a rifle cannot even target him. While he is invisible the rifle bullets just don’t hit him even if you guess his exact location. He also does huge damage, his attacks are blindingly fast and he can teleport as well, move 50% faster while being invisible. Then we have another profession, let’s call it soldier, who has better armor, higher health, but his high damage attacks are slowly telegraphed and very easily dodged. Would this game be balanced? Hell NO.

Let’s give the soldier class grenades, rockets, and the ability to call in airstrikes (infiltrator obviously will not have this ability).

Oh and limit the infiltrator to melee, and give him a ranged option that offers far lower burst but better sustained damage.

I think that comparison works out better. But seriously, l2p. Backstab thief is a very gimmicky build, kind of like hundred blades warrior. Just AOE or Area CC the thief to death. Ground target abilities are also awesome.

And also all channeled skills follow thief in stealth. Just for example, volley from warriors. Certain other things follow thief into stealth as well, like binding blade. Also, you can burst down a glass cannon thief as quickly as he can burst you down.

This thread is about T&M portaling their whole zerg into a keep. Leave the discussion of fights elsewhere please.

Here is how it should be.

Effect
+20% Magic find
+33% Experience
+33% Karma
-100% Repair costs

Hule.8794:

Well predator can be invisiblle all the time and Arnie killed him.

Even the predator would leave behind a blood trail when he is wounded. The thieves and mesmers don’t.

It seems that the thief and mesmer stealth duo (T&M for short) is becoming common tactic for high end wvw. Once the outer wall of a keep breaks down T&M enters and, leaving their main zerg, goes into hiding right away. So even if the defenders wipes the attackers, the attackers can come back inside any time.

T&M can pretty much keep each other stealthed 24/7. No one can find them ever.

When in the keep by themselves T&M can either remain dormant and undetected, or pick off afkers. And when the timing is right, they can teleport whole zergs into the keep to take it very quickly.

What I want to find out is, is this a legit part of the game? Is this the way that the game was intended to be played? Or is this going to be fixed/nerfed?

We had been AoEing “empty spaces” of where we “think” the enemies are nowadays. If we do not guess, we would be dead before the culling ends.

Often times the only way to tell an incoming enemy zerg ball is from the lag. When the game starts lagging you know the enemies are nearby.

If the devs don’t believe me, I encourage them to join any T1 or T2 server, and try to face an enemy tight zerg ball.

Please bring back body blocking from GW1 and prevent character overlapping.

I think it would really help if Anet would give us a heads up on the plans for the March PvP/WvW update. Right now everyone is in the dark and have no idea what Anet have in mind. And given their track record (WvW rating reset, dungeon way points, etc) a lot of us are worried about the huge differences, between what the players “want” and what the devs “think” are great ideas.

Communications are the key. The devs should give the players a head up on their ideas, and get the players approval/support/opinion, before they start spending actual man-hours on coding anything.

For example, they said that they are

“Exploring ways to help get more people playing WvW, as well as dealing with queue issues that come with those inherent issues of player population and demand.”

Well cool that sounds great in a general sense. But what actual ideas are being considered and what is being implemented? Are they actually good ideas? We players should be informed of their plans, give our opinions, before Anet spent man-hours on these ideas.

Do not waste man-hours on some idea, and then later found out that the players hate that idea, but that idea end up implementing anyways because of the man-hours already spent. Throwing good man-hour after bad man-hour will only disappoint the players.

I think it would really help if Anet would give us a heads up on the plans for the March PvP/WvW update. Right now everyone is in the dark and have no idea what Anet have in mind. And given their track record (WvW rating reset, dungeon way points, etc) a lot of us are worried about the huge differences, between what the players “want” and what the devs “think” are great ideas.

Communications are the key. The devs should give the players a head up on their ideas, and get the players approval/support/opinion, before they start spending actual man-hours on coding anything.

For example, they said that they are

“Exploring ways to help get more people playing WvW, as well as dealing with queue issues that come with those inherent issues of player population and demand.”

Well cool that sounds great in a general sense. But what actual ideas are being considered and what is being implemented? Are they actually good ideas? We players should be informed of their plans, give our opinions, before Anet spent man-hours on these ideas.

Do not waste man-hours on some idea, and then later found out that the players hate that idea, but that idea end up implementing anyways because of the man-hours already spent. Throwing good man-hour after bad man-hour will only disappoint the players.

Glad to be part of this. Whisper me for events any time. ^^

Bump. Any more opinions on this?

Flying castles. Golems. Hey wait a minute!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Castle_in_the_Sky

Without the elder dragons, the Charrs would have overran the humans already. Humans are a bunch of farmers and scholars. Charrs already got airships, tanks and modern gun batteries.

Elder Dragons “saved” humanity, in a twisted sort of way.

With how unforgiving some dungeons are and how long some may take, what did you expect?

I am just glad that I finished my dungeon armors before the way point update.

All logic goes out the window when “tight ball formation” is the norm of high tier wvw. Teams do it to take advantage of the AoE limit, culling and lag. WvW is probably the only place in human history where a “tight ball” army beats an enemy that flanks and surrounds. It is sad but players will always go the route of least resistant.

The problem is the AoE limit of 5. More than that the damage distribute randomly. That means when you have 30 guys all in close spaces, everyone takes only 5/30=17% of the normal AoE damage. When you have 60 guys, that further reduces to 5/60=8%. So a “tight ball” of 60 players is pretty much immune to any AoE damage.

Another thing that makes zero sense is tower to tower sieges. People build treb inside a tower, so they can treb another tower.

I also agree with the lack of reward in WvW. It is very hard to keep the casual fanwagoners playing, specially when your server is losing. I was on SBI and our casuals just disappears and went back to fractal.

Not everyone is fanwagon. There are plenty of people that’s pointing out the problems in this game from many different aspects and prospective.

I think the key is to have a fun objective when you play. For example my main is a necromancer. Their damage sucks and they got no damage avoidance at all. So what do I do? I set an objective to just heal and debuff enemies, and forget about damage. My healing sucks and debuffs doesn’t always work (its bugged) but I don’t care. I set a goal and I try my best to do it.

They should make a new commander chat with a different color.

Bhawb.7408:

I’m not saying it isn’t extra HP, its not our actual HP bar. I can die with 100% life force bar, I cannot die by losing all my life force. There is a huge difference to taking it to my LF not my HP, with one combo with a dagger, that is 6% LF back; life gain equivalent of 1.2k HP in 2 seconds. I can’t refill my real HP bar that easily.

Please explain how this helps in your situation though. You haven’t answered how getting more dodge rolls would help escape zergs. I don’t disagree that it would help avoid damage; I’m just saying we don’t need that to. However your OWN situation does not work with your own solution. You want a way to get away from zergs, dodge rolling will not do that.

Dagger is hard to use in wvw zerg vs zerg. Necro do not have the tank ability of warriors, or the stealth of thieves, so it is very hard to fight on the front line. 1.2k hp worth of LF every 2 second sounds nice. But your hp will be pounced upon very quickly, which would force you to turn on DS. That stops your LF generation (while you DS you cannot attack with your dagger). So that 1.2k hp worth of LF over 2 seconds sounds very good on paper, but it is not sustainable.

Let’s say you are being chased by 5 enemies. If you take hits from all 5 of them you can easily take over 8k damage in a second. It is better that you evade, and only losing 2k LF/hp. So in this case, the key is timing you dodge so you can evade multiple attacks in one single dodge. You want to delay your death for as long as you can, so you can either get into a tower or allies arrive to help you out.

Bhawb.7408:

Your metaphor doesn’t work. Huge slow guns = burst damage, we don’t have burst damage. I could care less if no one is scared of me in PvP. They’ll die if they are scared or not, it makes no difference to me.

My metaphor worked. You just disagree with me that a huge and slow battleship with small tiny guns is useless. That’s fair.

Bhawb.7408:

Dodging is nothing even close to RTL. You go and talk about how vigor and chill can’t save you from 10 man zergs. Guess what? Dodge rolling won’t either, it will just let you dodge a few abilities until they lock you down.

We have the ability to do the same thing that dodging rolling would accomplish: not taking damage to our actual life bar. Dodging does not fix what you want.

If you cannot lose more than 5% LF per hit while in DS, then I would agree with you. That means damage taken is actually reduced. In fact if you trait for its 5 second recharge, you can learn to use DS as a shield, lowering the damage taken by timing it right.

But that aren’t how it is working now. You take 100% the damage while in DS. So yes DS LF is just a second hp bar. You cannot learn to time you DS right.

Think about it this way. You are full health. An incoming attack will hit you for 4k damage. What’s the difference between using DS before that attack or after it? Nothing! You will take 4k damage either way. Its just the difference of taking that 4k damage on your LF or on your hp. Your overall hp didn’t change. You might argue that if you used DS3 before then that attack won’t have happen. But that’s due to DS3, not LF. So yes LF is just extra hp.

Bhawb.7408:

We don’t have low damage, I don’t know why everyone insists on this. Its sustained: it isn’t burst, it is over longer periods of time. We are perfectly tuned to being an attrition class.

Should a big and slow battleship carry small guns to wear down the enemy, or big guns to kill the enemy quick? Imagine that the Yamato carries a bunch of small guns instead of its 45 cal main gun battery. Will anyone fear it?

The only reason why anyone would build a big and slow battleship is to put huge guns on it, so it will scare the **** out of everyone so they run for their lives. Who want a 45 cal shell in their hull? When your battleship moves this slow, your guns better kill the enemy in just a few hits when you DO get near them.

Roysten.3456:

The thing is though DS is damage avoidance.
Some vigour would be nice, but on the flip side a chill does the same job.
A Bowl of Orrian Truffle and Meat Stew can keep the dodges flowing while stacking a bit of might.
This mechanic sounds fun but it would be a tad god mode.

DS is not damage avoidance. It is an extra hp bar that drains itself. Damage avoidance are skills and abilities that you can learn to use better and improve upon. You cannot learn to use your hp better. Hp is not a skill or ability that you can use. That’s the problem.

Are we really going to compare Vigor and Chill with the likes of RTL, stealth and immunity in terms of survivability? The latter can potential save you from a 10+ men zerg. The former won’t.

Consumables is not a part of class balance discussions. Because all other classes can eat the same thing.

It is not god mode because each dodge will cost the necro around 2k hp.

Bhawb.7408:

Dodging 22 times in a row isn’t going to increase our ability to escape zergs. It is nothing like being able to RTL away from people.

If you want to say that DS 2 should go back to a ground targetted blink, then I’d agree, because we could use a little mobility in that aspect, but escaping from a zerg has nothing to do with dodge rolling.

Learn to use your class properly. Necros don’t have escapes, so stop allowing yourself to be in situations that you need hard-escapes to get out of. Let some other noob distract them, let the ele’s and thieves stay in too long since they can afford to, and start running when you notice the flow is swinging against you.

If Anet want the necro to be a battleship class (can’t move at all, but have big guns), then they better give necro those big guns. Improve the necro’s damage output so we are a powerful and unyielding force on the battlefield until we are defeated. All out attack Yamato style.

If Anet want the necro to be an attrition class (survive so long that the enemy eventually burns out and dies), then they better give necro some form of damage avoidance. We have to survive long enough against blast classes to burn out their cooldowns and hp.

Right now the necromancer is this battleship with tiny guns and no way to avoid damage. This is the worst place to be in.

EzRemake.1860:

Imagine running from even a small zerg in WvW, you’re running dodging, and trying with all you have to make it out alive.

Whoops, you didn’t notice that you were out of stamina when you went to dodge, and because you’ve been taking damage from the enemy, you have just killed yourself.

No, not a good idea. Just give us a trait that adds vigor when you use BiP or something.

If that’s how you died, that mean the new change did its job. Why? Because you can improve! You can become a better player. You can learn to watch your stamina better next time. You can learn to avoid only high damage enemy attacks, while tanking smaller damage ones.

The current system of just throwing necros 40k hp and give them no method of damage avoidance. Defence wise you cannot learn from this. You cannot improve from this. You just fight until you die, that’s it.

Depends. For pve you can probably use anything u want. But for wvw yes staff is a must.

Necro is very good in regular PvE against mindless mobs. I don’t think many other classes can kill 15 mindless mobs with such ease as the necromancer.

It is when the going gets tough, like hardcore dungeons and wvw, where necro gets destroyed.

This might come off as a rant. But its been almost 6 months since the release of the game. And this “simple” bug still hasn’t gotten fixed. Now to be fair I don’t know how complicated the programming is. But this AoE indicator bug just seems like something they could have fixed in less than 6 hours of coding. It just “indicates” how much attention the necro community gets: Less than 6 hours in the past 6 months.

Tell me I am wrong.

Bhawb.7408:

Actually, I’ve already made a build that would completely break this mechanic. With just 20 traits invested, 10 in Death magic, 10 in blood magic, and using Shaman’s amulet, I can heal 1k HP on every dodge, and deal about 1.5k damage.

Meaning, with each dodge, I can actually stack bleeds and regen on myself, healing and dealing about half the damage I’m causing to myself, with only 20 points invested.

The amount of HP it costed to do this dodge roll would have to be so high that it just wouldn’t be worth it, because of the Mark of Blood on dodge roll.

Even assuming we removed that trait, I think it focuses too much on using LF outside of DS. I can pretty easily get another X% of life force, its really not that difficult to get it, and then I could dodge far too often. Its making a class that isn’t balanced for mobility, too mobile.

Mark of Evasion trait has a 10 second cool down, so Mark of Blood cannot be maintained that way. You can maintain the regeneration but it won’t be close to 1k a second.

And the numbers can be adjusted for balance. It doesn’t have to be so high that it won’t even be worth it. 10% is already around 2k hp per dodge. If it gets increased to let’s say 20%, that would be 4k hp per dodge.

Dodging improves evasion and damage avoidance. It doesn’t increase speed and mobility. Necro need a way to avoid incoming damage. All other classes have things like Ride the Lightning, stealth, blocks, immunity, etc. Necro got none of those. DS and LF generation aren’t nearly as good as those skills.

For example look at Signet of Undeath. It is famous for resurrecting allies. Its LF generation passive is mostly forgotten. Why? Well it generates 1% LF every 3 seconds while in combat. That is only around 200 hp every 3 seconds, even if you count LF as life. How is this even remotely comparable to RTL, stealth, blocks, immunity, etc? One stealth, one RTL or one immunity would easily help you avoid 10k damage in a zerg fight, which equals 150 seconds of Signet of Undeath regen in combat. One single block would easily help you avoid 2k damage, which equals 30 seconds of Signet of Undeath regen in combat. Seriously for necro things just doesn’t add up.

Well when you are in a T8 losing server, there is really no point in playing.

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

Red Falcon.8257:

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

Why would anyone choose a thief? They offer less group support, no group buffs, you spend more time reviving them than they spend dealing damage, so they cut your groups DPS to the point where they might as well not be there. What’s the point of playing a thief over these other medium armor classes? No one would choose a thief for their dungeon over a ranger or engineer.

See how easy this is? Reason why is because you are flat-out wrong on almost all of your points.

You’re kidding right?
Thief has access to stealthrez, anti-aggro with stealth, a wall that blocks projectiles on low CD, blind fields, blind spams, area weakness/poison… on top of high DPS.
You have either been playing with REALLY bad Thieves or you don’t know anything about Thieves if that’s what you know about them.

It’s called hyperbole. I know that thieves offer a lot to a party, but on paper, they don’t look that great for group support. Likewise, on paper, a necro doesn’t look that great for bringing stuff to a party, but in reality, they do.

Thieves’ AoE stealth is the best team support skill in wvw.

Bhawb.7408:

Actually, it gives us 12 dodges, before it dips into our HP bar. Theoretically speaking, you could do 22 dodges, in a row.

Let the devs fix what we already have before they add more stuff. Once every play-affecting bug is fixed, THEN they can truly evaluate necros for where we are. After that, I would much prefer then change some of our less used traits to more competitive options, and give minor buffs/changes to things that need it (like spectral wall). Necro mechanics are fine as is, we only need fixes/minor buffs/changes to be perfectly balanced.

Yes on theory the necro can dodge 22 times in a row. But if the necro spam dodge this way he/she would be dead in 22 seconds. Not to mention the necro would have dealt zero damage, because he/she cannot attack while dodging.

10% hp is roughly 2k damage. That’s quite a lot of damage. And this number is not set in stone and can be adjusted for balance.

The key to success is chose when to dodge, when to tank hits, and when to attack.

Necro has the least damage evasion of all classes. I purpose the following changes:

Spiritual Traversal
A necromancer can temporarily enter the spirit realm to evade an attack. When the necromancer dodges while out of endurance, the dodge takes from life force instead. Each dodge would cost 10% life force. When endurance is out and life force is below 10%, the dodge takes from the necromancer’s health directly. Each dodge costs 10% health.

This gives the player the option to either use Life Force to tank (Death Shroud), or use Life Force to dodge. This will give necromancers that missing evasion “gadget” to avoid damage.

This will make necro a true attrition class. In the hand of an elite player he can dodge out of devastating attacks. However a noob player would dodge all the time and too often (e.g. attacks that would have dealt less than 10% LF or health, roughly 2k damage) and ends up killing himself/herself faster. The key to the longest survival is choosing which enemy skill to dodge from and which enemy skill to just take the hit.

At the same time necro would remain non-mobile. So a necro still must stand and fight, true to its class description.

Thoughts?

Simple. There is no honour in support. All support classes are dishonourable.

Nethod.7068:

/agree. WvW is terrible and i hate that I need it for a legenedary weapon. Support classes are IGNORED. No badges of honor for healing done, boons given, nothing. Nothing at all. Play support and your ignored by developers. Developers ignore support types. Ect. Where are all of the badges of honor for the damage I’ve prevented as a guardian? I Suppose i should have picked up those at the stupid jumping puzzles before I decided to help out all the overpowered mezmers and theifs get theirs…

I got to agree with this. Since necros are so horrible at damage I had to (not that I wanted to) switch over to a more support role. But there is no badges at all for buffing/healing allies or debuffing enemies.

I hope they either give more rewards for team support classes, or fix all these class imbalances so I can switch back to a damage role.

Because loaded wvw guilds has tons of money to waste? :P

ArtemusHunter.9521:

there is a trait, Idk if it works for fear, but it makes it so that anyone who cc’s you and is near you, becomes feared. It has a 90 second cd but it would deal with the skull fear. I believe its in death magic. Try it out and see if it works.

I agree with most of the comments in here, necro’s need some more utilities for gtfo of a bad situation.. sucks when everyone else can just blast though your DS and then proceed to kill you..

Yes that would be Reaper’s Protection under Death Magic. But when you trait into death magic you are probably going for staff traits or minion traits. When you invest into Reaper’s Protection you are giving up on those other very important traits.

For example if your mark isn’t 240 size you would have a much harder time hitting that stealth thief. If your staff marks doesn’t recharge 20% faster those long cooldowns would kill you. What that mean is, yes if you trait into Reaper’s Protection you could have stopped that Skull Fear combo. But that same thief can easily kill you in some other way because your character is much weaker overall.

Bas.7406:

hackks.3687:

That being said, Necro’s, if a thief fails to kill you in the first go, then you HAVE TO anticipate the stolen fear. Always keep something in reserve to mitigate that situation.

That’s all that needs to be said!

I agree that the fear is ridiculous, though the 1.5 second cast time is pretty funny since it can be interrupted. I don’t believe they can cast it in fear, but if they pop quickness to hit it than ugh.

Yes it can be interrupted. But thanks to stealth none of the single target interrupts would work. So you would need to rely on AoE intercepts with long cooldown. You also don’t know when he would use Skull Fear. That thief I fought didn’t use Skull Fear right away after he stealth. This was proven by the fact that one time my Fear mark actually hitted him (or some other stealthed thief not sure). But 10 or 15 seconds later he comes near me and used Skull Fear (e.g. My Fear Mark hit him but failed to interrupt his Skull Fear). Maybe he was recharging Initiative for the kill not sure. Either way it is an educated guessing game with lots of luck (not skills) involved.

I mentioned DS3 before. Keep in mind though that DS3 only works by interrupting his damage combo (e.g. those 3 Heartseekers). It won’t work on interrupting Skull Fear itself because he was stealthed.

Kyskythyn.6471:

If you’re getting killed by 3 hits with 12k health then the thief is hitting you for 4k a HS, no? In that case either:

1. You have close to base toughness, in which case you don’t have much right to complain about getting hit hard.

2. The thief is completely glass cannon spec, giving up all survivability for that burst. If his little combo fails, he’s dead meat.

Not every build is meant to be able to counter every possible situation. If you’re damage spec, you can’t complain about not being able to tank. If you’re tank spec, you can’t complain about not being able to damage.

My defence is around 2,800. I don’t know what’s that thief’s exact build. But since:
-He was attacking my flank for all attacks (I was feared for 3 seconds)
-I got at least 1 condition (I was feared for 3 seconds)
-I was around 50% hp when the combo happens (10-12k)

I imagine that a combination the following traits played a part:

Flanking Strikes
Side Strike
Exposed Weakness
Furious Retaliation
Executioner

Those are on top of Heartseeker dealing more and more damage as I got less and less hp.

BTW once he got Skull Fear from me he could use this combo against anyone, not just me. For example an ele can’t use Ride the Lightning when she is feared for 3 second. Of course in her case she probably will die with just 2 Heartseekers, no need for the 3rd one.

I had posted this before, but the problem with the “winner move up loser move down” system is that server might “chose” to “lose on purpose”. They would go to a lower tier just to collect more total annual points by pwning easy servers.

e.g. A server will get more total annual points by playing in Tier 4 than Tier 1. So when playoff/championship comes around a T4 server will get in, while a T1 server will miss the playoffs.

For this system to work, there need to be certain “punishment” or “disadvantages” for going to a lower tier. And there have to some kind of reward for being in a higher tier.

So the best system (in my view) is a system of the combination of the following:

1) Bi-Daily match score tally. So every 2 days servers might move up or down a tier. This also gives a weekend rotation every 2 weeks. (2 days / 7 days a week)

2) Winner server moves up a tier. Loser server moves down a tier.

3) Your servers get bonus annual points for winning in a higher tier than a lower tier every 2 days (e.g. 30k for tier 1, 15k for tier 2, 7.5k for tier 3). You get a smaller bonus for being 2nd place in a tier(e.g. 10k for tier 1, 5k for tier2, 2.5k for tier 3). No bonus for the loser. This means you cannot lose on purpose to pick on smaller servers. You also want to stay in a higher tier for the higher bonuses.

4) For playoffs/championships, total annual scores are rallied up. The playoff/championship ranking is determined by annual total score, not current rank. So the top 9 teams with the highest annual scores enter the playoffs for 2 rounds. (1vs8v9, 2vs6vs7, 3vs4vs5). The 3 winners of 1st round moves to 2nd round. Each round lasts 2 weeks, for a total of 4 weeks of playoff/championship a year. My recommanded month is December, since most people will be home.

-This means that everyday in wvw is important. Tiers might be changed very quickly. This keeps people playing everyday (e.g. even Wednesday and Thursday people will play, since those 2 days still matters). This also means the current score doesn’t matter as much. The emphasis is on the annual score.
-Server will no longer be stuck in the wrong tier (either too high or too low) for weeks.
-Servers will face new opponents all the time. This makes wvw more interesting.
-There is no longer any incentive to lose on purpose to get to a lower tier. Teams will always want to do their best.
-When playoff/championship happens, it is determined by the total annual score. What that means is that you always want to get as many points as possible. But at the same time as you win, you will face harder and harder opponents. So the only way to get ahead is to beat the opponents of your level.

I true feel bad for those in EU. Your coverage of prime time is only like 6 hours long a day.

In NA it is slightly better. We got EST, PST and Oceanic. So that’s roughly 12 hours of prime time. But yes this problem also exist for us.