Guild Wars 2

Kako.1930:

This is by far the worst season. It feels like it’s still the off season lol.

No it’s not. Season 1 was the worst season, and it’s gotten better every season since then.

People just being salty that rating is merit based now.

Evan Lesh.3295:

1. Escape was changed from only cleansing immobilize because it felt weak, but perhaps it could do something like only cleanse cripple/chill?

There is definitely a need for immobilize clear.

18sec cd sigil that applies 1/4th second of reveal on 240 radius.

It’s utter trash. The only thing it could ever be used for is negating stealth rezzes.

Please don’t get rid of all the chill sigils, necro needs those

With both sigil of Ice, sigil of Earth, and hydromancy removed condi necro is getting hit really hard by this, our ramp time for damage is going to be way too high.

Without sigil of ice or earth, scepter/x can only sustain <15 bleed and that requires completing the auto chain several times over.

Maybe if you make it per boon applied by others. Then at least you could try to avoid it instead of auto procing yourself into more damage.

it’s 1% per unique boon. The benefits of the boons themselves will significantly outweigh that 1% bonus.

Shaogin.2679:

If anyone, the reveal sigil is going to hurt Sneak Gyro more than anything else in the game.

No it won’t. The sigil as per dev post will only cause 1/4th sec or so reveal. Sneak Gyro pulses stealth.

Using the sigil on a Sgyro will just reveal the engi for a second before he disappears again. The class that the sigil will have the most use against is druid.

But honestly the sigil isn’t really worth taking because it’s such a niche pick. Most overhyped thing ever.

ApaWanka.2698:

This is why Epidemic was nerfed. A single skill with 13s CD should not be able to do this.

https://youtu.be/fuDNlqEHvzI

U cant do nothing against that. Almost no visual effect and 13s CD. Old necrobomb had 32s/40s CD and visual effect…. Epidemic was insane.

That guard had contemplation of purity and it was off cooldown, he could have lived.

Also what caused him to die so fast was the 25 stacks of burn, which certainly came from burn guards, and burn guardian happens to be the exact class that the QQ’ing guy in the video was playing.
The irony.

Ithilwen.1529:

Wait! You’re going to give conditions on-hit?

This means, for example, that a warrior can do a massive multi hit dps burst AND inflict stacked conditions at the same time? You’re talking about nuke level damage for War and ranger.

This will more or less turbo charge damage. That’s precisely the opposite of what we need.

I’m sure that 1 extra bleed stack is going to lead to a extinction event.

Somehow I doubt that Sigil of revelation is going to be used that much. It requires dropping a damage or cleanse sigil (which is useful against all opponents) for something that isn’t useful against all opponents.

Plastazote.7914:

No, life force generation is currently based on enemy deaths as far as I was aware.

All weapons (excluding offhand dagger) have LF generating skills. A slew of Utility skills do as well.

See link for list:
https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Life_force

LF from enemy deaths is literally the smallest and least relevant source of LF. For theory crafting purpose you basically ignore it completely.

No sigil of Ice?

That means necro no longer has ranged chill application outside of Staff. (or focus but who takes that thing?) Which indirectly nerfs Life Force generation b/c of chilling victory.

Feanor.2358:

Realistically, the vast majority of the eles sucked hard.
Realistically, in the current situation an average condi ranger outdps-es a decent ele by a fair margin. I’ve seen differences of 60%.
Realistically, all you get for playing a harder class is a dps loss. Great incentive to learn a new class or stick with the class you like, right?

Realistically you are better off kicking people that can’t play the optimal and finding people that can.

Plastazote.7914:

I agree it could solve HP balancing issues but I guess I’d personally prefer if Lf generation is internally controlled by the player and not controlled by the situation like incoming damage. That way you build it when you need it instead of relying on incoming damage.

LF generation already works exactly that way. At it’s crap.

Also scaling LF generation does not mean passive generation like some people here seem to think. It can be scaling LF gain attached to active cooldown usage. Such as a the aforementioned Spectral Armor and Spectral Walk changes.

Also I think necros don’t do enough damage compared to most classes and think using Lf as a health bar is a crutch to not give necro more DPS as a secondary reason for my suggestion to build LF each time a skill is used instead.

If what you say is true about LF bar being a crutch, how does LF gain being based on skill usage change that? It doesn’t.
Also scaling LF gain would reduce shroud’s effectiveness in PvE (but increase it in PvP) reduced effectiveness in PvE would open Necro up for possible DPS buffs. (assuming that survivability is a factor in how Anet balances DPS)

Zintrothen.1056:

Power is more powerful than condi? Too bad the 2-4k burning ticks are covered by the 7 stacks of vulnerability or 5 stacks of confusion and all of those still tick through blocks and evades and immunities. If I’m hit with a 4k attack, I take 4k damage. If I’m hit with a something that does 2-4k burning per second, I’m going to take a lot more than 4k damage. And if I happen to be unable to cleanse them or if they can be instantly reapplied, there’s nothing I can do. Yes, the best thing to do is avoid being hit altogether, but that simply isn’t possible, and when you’re hit by a condition attack, the impact, in my experience, is far more impactful than from power attacks, even though power attacks are also OP.

It’s not possible to completely avoid being hit by a power user either, this game isn’t designed around being able to avoid all damage. (unless you’re a thief)

The only difference between power and condi is the psychological one.

coro.3176:

With power, you get hit, you react, you don’t die.

What? With power once you’re hit the damage is done and there is nothing else you can do about it. There are no further chances to “react” once the hit is landed.

Conventional wisdom says that Augury is only worth it for shout heavy builds.

Abelisk.4527:

I’ll weigh in my predictions….

Elementalist: D/F Mender’s Auramancer
Engineer: Scrapper Hammer bunker
Guardian: Symbolic / Meditation
Mesmer: Condi Chronophantasma
Necromancer: Power booncorrupt
Ranger: Bunker Druid
Revenant: Not meta as a class
Thief: D/P
Warrior: Condi Mace/LB

Where have we seen this before? It’s so familiar…

Warriors will be running power GS + m/Sh. Condi lost it’s meta status awhile ago, LB in particular.

Feanor.2358:

For PvE it’s completely fine for the higher skill cap class to be more rewarding in terms of performance.

Skill requirement is irrelevant. People will take what is most effective and will learn any necessary skill to do so. Any player than cared about optimizing DPS rerolled to ele and taught themselves the class.

The skill requirement card is only valid if the required skill is beyond what can be realistically expected of a human.

Mr Godlike.6098:

I also wonder why anybody talks about power mes…

Power Mesmer does have the highest Alpha in the game. It can’t point fight, but the damage is disgustingly good.

Ithilwen.1529:

So, Chronomancer doesn’t have a single thing it can call it’s own.. That’s depressing. I will consider carefully before I buy the next expac.

Does any spec have anything to call it’s own? Reaper is chill focused, which is abundant on other classes. Berserker is a burn condi spec, and burn builds already exist on engi and guardian. Dragonhunter is a trapper spec, and ranger and thief are already trappers. etc. etc.

Once you exclude class mechanics (since all class mechanics are unique) no class has anything “unique.”

But if we use a more common sense definition of “unique” we can say the following things are unique to mesmers:
-Clones/phantasms. (thief does not have clones, Thieves guild is a minion summon closer to necro minions than clones, and no thieves guild does not copy the appearance of the player like clones do.)
-Portal
-Pink colored things
-A ranged greatsword.
-Mantras
-Csplit
-AoE Invul (distortion)

Also Necros want their Torment and Wells back.

Xenon.4537:

• Necromancer gets confusion in their next elite spec at higher effectiveness than mesmer.

Necromancer can technically generate confusion by using a whirl finisher in Spectral Wall’s Ethereal field. (Why Spectral Wall is a Ethereal field is beyond anyone)

I highly doubt Necro (or anyone else) is going to get confusion access as a spec. There is no precedent for focusing a Espec around a previously-unavailable condi. Reaper uses chill but necro already had chill focused traits. Also confusion just doesn’t thematically work with Necro to begin with.

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

Murdock.6547:

I thank you all for your input on ST and BC, but lets stay on topic.
Crinn, that’s fantastic. I honestly didn’t think of that. The trait seems so much better now.
Does it trigger on down players too?

Mesmer Clones rarely exist with less than 25% health, so keep that in mind.

I actually don’t know about it working on downed players or not.

Depends on what you are hitting with. Using things like Axe#2, GS#3, RS#4 will usually get a proc on a clone simply because of the nature of the skills. That said specifically targeting stuff for Renewal procs isn’t something that I’d recommend, you should be able to get the thing to proc just through normal combat.

Idk if it works on downs, I expect that is does because every other “Target below X% Health” skill and trait seems to work on downs.

Renewal vs. Bitter Chill really depends on what you are trying to do with your build. Condi Necro in PvP should just go with vuln on chill because it’s a extra cover condition. Power necro is going by preference. PvE will never take Renewal.

Plastazote.7914:

I think that life force should be built each time a player uses a skill. It is controlled by the player ( not based off deaths or incoming damage).

But why? Basing it off incoming damage directly fixes the problem you just mentioned:

Like others have said 6K health means nothing when players have 30k DPS. But 6K health is huge when it comes to PVE.

Also, it shouldn’t be a extra health bar anymore because it’s too complicated to balance. It should be a window of time where the Necromancer does increased DPS.

But HP isn’t hard to balance at all. HP is literally the simplest of all mechanics. The only reason shroud has balance issues is because it doesn’t scale with incoming damage.

Terminsel.5728:

despite the likelihood that almost no Tempests could actually reach golem-like benchmark DPS levels in many boss encounters.

But most classes can’t reach golem-like DPS either. While some classes certainly lose less than others, it’s not going to make so big a difference as to close the massive performance gap that pre-nerf ele had over it’s peers.

A thing about Renewal is that it procs off of minions/clones/pets/gyros. So for example it’s very beneficial against Mesmer’s because you can get healing and a cleanse by wailing on one of their clones.

DeceiverX.8361:

@OP
It’d need to be very carefully balanced. Too much and you end up with necromancers just being immune to burst damage, too little and it ends up worse than now.

I was thinking changes like “Spectral Armor and Spectral Walk now convert 50% of incoming damage into Life Force. Spectral Armor no longer grants protection”

Or “Soul Comprehension: 5% of incoming damage is given back as Life Force”

Xenon.4537:

This sounds like a bad idea to me…

1. You get jumped by enemies
2. You gain a bunch of life force from the damage
3. You go into Death Shroud and eat more damage
4. You run out of LF and go back to normal mode
5. You heal and wait for more damage to fill your LF bar again
6. You go back to step 3 and repeat…

So like… any time you are low on life, you will be high on LF and can go into tank mode.

If our LF gain is scalar, and you are taking enough damage to refill shroud every 10 seconds, that means you taking practically all of your base health in damage every 10 seconds.
You’re going to be dead very fast if such where the case.

The only time scalar mitigation can make you invincible is if you have 100% mitigation 100% of the time. Anything less than that and you are eventually going to die.

Sins.4782:

How about adding some sigils with ‘on heal’ or ‘on elite’ effects similar to some current rune sets? Outside of stuff like that I don’t really see how you’re going to promote counterplay with sigils, as the vast majority of them are too passive by nature to play around. The only ones you can even hope to deny right now are some of the on-swap sigils with proper predictions, and leeching/intelligence which are the only ones with visual indicators for players to work with. All the on-hit/on-crit ones don’t go on cooldown when an attack that would have proced them is blocked/dodged/invulned, and there’s flat out nothing active anyone can do against the +duration ones. I suppose if you really wanted you could change on-swaps to have a wind-up animation and AoE ring before the effects are applied.

The effects of sigils are so relatively minor compared to actual skills that you would never bother to try and counter, so they don’t need counterplay.

Dadnir.5038:

I’m sorry crinn but for me you sure have a lot of experience in PvP (except perhaps the fact that you don’t understand that blinding your foes is the sae as a “block”) but your understanding necromancer’s survivability is to shallow in PvE.

In PvE you find a lot ore situation where your foes will hit extremely hard than in PvP. Except perhaps if you think that PvE is only open world PvE and even here, if you find yourself in a scaling event you’ll most likely die faster than other professions.

The only mob skills that hit hard are fight mechanics that are intentionally designed to kill you, and they all happen to be deterministically avoidable.

However in PvP you have heavy hitting damage that is not deterministically avoidable.

That’s here you are wrong. The LF bar is basically health, you do not mitigate, you take the damage, well, those damage seem to be reduced, but still you take those damage, you do not strictly mitigate them.

LF gain is healing to the shroud bar. Healing is mitigation, it’s just post-mitigation rather than preventative mitigation. It also doesn’t scale which is why it’s crap.

tomwjd.8172:

Hm, not sure how I would feel if they changed on crit sigils… which is like an indirect nerf to ammys w/ precision.

I’m pretty sure precision amulets are viable without needing “on-crit” sigils. However on-crit are one of the build limiters that create meaningful build choices. (like having to forgo torment sigil and bleeding sigil on carrion and sage builds)

On-hit sigils definitely need to be changed. Effects with 10% proc chance on top of a ICD is just stupid RNG. cough sigil of ice cough

Deli.1302:

Evan Lesh.3295:

Due to technical limitations, we will likely never be able to add a delayed observer mode to Gw2.

GW1 had it…………
I feel like we’re still playing catch up to a 12 years old game.

Never underestimate the random weird constraints that a game engine can pull.

I remember a conversation I had not to long ago about a game I was making as a side project.
“look at this”
“what”
“the snowspeeder’s geometry becomes distorted when 2 lambert textures are applied”
“Can’t be that, textures shouldn’t affect geometry, it’s obviously something else”
“but if I remove the second lambert the geometry is fine”
“what”
“….”
“Is this happening to all the models?”
“No just the speeders”
“try a completely different model for the speeders and see”
“I did and it was still distorted, but when I applied the model to a different object it was fine”
“…I think it hates you”
“probably”

OriOri.8724:

Evan Lesh.3295:

We also think automated tournaments would be neat. For viewership, we would have to re-implement the authorized shoutcaster program to allow certain people to stream the tournaments.

It appears that both the players and the devs liked automated tournaments. So what exactly is stopping them from coming back? Don’t have the time to implement it? Don’t have permission to do so?

He didn’t say they aren’t, and his comment implies that some thought has been put into it.

My guess is that it’s a “We are working on it but it’s not set in stone so we don’t want to tell the customers yet”

Kreweless.2196:

The top 1% fall in Legendary, the top 10% in Platinum, and so on. If you have fewer players, it becomes tougher to climb — because there are fewer slots. You can see it when you compare ratings between NA and EU. The reason they have more players in platinum is because 10% of more is… more.

There is no guarantee that 1% will always fall in Legendary. Rating value is relative, the only constant is that the average is 1200.

The system does not ensure that 1% land in legendary, rather the Division benchmarks where set by Anet to be where they expected the 1% to be based on past seasons.

Dadnir.5038:

That is not right… PvE solo display mostly feature skilled elementalist or warriors. After that would probably come thieves. Necromancers are, at best, middle tier when it come to solo PvE things.

From a survivability standpoint, Necro are still the best in PvE content, which in turns makes it best for soloing.

High level fractal is probably the only content where necromancer’s inner quality (resilience/condi corruption) can correctly be displayed in this game’s PvE. It’s a breather for necromancers but it’s a shame for the game as a whole.

Necromancer is valued in fractals for it’s ability to cheese fractals via LF outscaling damage. Necromancer has no other qualities that are valuable. If you are not running 5 necromancers, you are better off running a no-necro raid subsquad comp.

The difference with other professions in pvp is due to necromancer lacking way to nullify damage/attack. If I were to play the devil advocate and side with anet necromancer’s design, I’d say that players don’t rely enough on blind. Blind is supposed to be our “block”.

Do you know what blocks and evades are so good?
Because they are scaling mitigation. A block stops all of the damage regardless of how big the hit is. A block will stop a hit regardless of whether it’s a 1k hit or a 20k hit.

LF doesn’t do that, which is why LF doesn’t work in sPvP.

the issue is not sustain but the lack of way to nullify some incoming attacks. In reality necromancer’s sustain is high but it’s design that force him to endure attacks instead of warding them is responsible for this feeling of bad sustain.

Necro sustain is not high. Necro sustain is relative since LF gain is fixed you either have enough of it to trivialize the content (see PvE) or you don’t and you are completely incapable of sustaining (see PvP)

Stop fixating on blocks/evades. Block/evades are just details, at the abstract level they are just a form of scaling mitigation.

LF gain is mitigation, it’s reactive mitigation rather than hard mitigation yes, but it is still functionally mitigation. But since it doesn’t scale it’s crap in high damage environments like PvP.

Who? what? when? where?

Is this a PvP thing? Or a PvE mob things? Context please.

Also there are lots of stab sources and stunbreaks, you can also just dodge/block the CC.

battledrone.8315:

i know where this is going, i have seen it in other games before.
SWTOR , DCUO, wildstar…all big games that lost so much momentum, because they failed to connect with the casual crowd
1. casual players prefer character and account progression over player progression
2.we will play the content we like, and leave, BUT IF IT IS GOOD ENOUGH , WE WILL RETURN LATER FOR MORE
3. dont give me that “NCsoft is for gamers”, they blew that policy, when they started selling millions of boxes

SW:TOR is a good example of how not to appeal to casuals. The game has made a number of changes over the years that Bioware specifically stated where to make the game more casual friendly, yet the game has been consistently declining since it’s launch.
SW:TOR made the mistake of assuming that just making everything easier was how you attract casuals. Whether a game is casual friendly or not is determined by accessibility not difficulty.

fishball.7204:

There’s also the problem where less people playing = less rating to go around which can be seen NA vs EU in S5 where EU ratings were higher simply due to a far more active playerbase number. With less “non real PvP players” around to pad ratings, it will make the legend/plat climb a LOT harder imo.

That’s not how it works. The smaller the playerbase the higher the ratings.

Players climb rating up until they hit the point where they are consistently matched against players of equal or better skill. However skill isn’t equally distributed. Once your skill reaches a certain point the matchmaker can no longer consistently put you against equal or better players which means that once you reach that point your rating is only limited by how often you play. The less players there are the lower that critical point is.

There is no evidence that EU has a larger population.

It would be nice if Psig’s passive didn’t transfer immobs to us.

NotASmurf.1725:

Crinn.7864:

Cynz.9437:

- There will be more bunkering and less roamers due to

What meta are you playing in? There are no bunkers in this meta, and there has never been a better time to be a roamer.

What would you call a mender druid, paladin/mender scrapper, mender ele, sage chrono, rabid warrior? These are all bunkers.

Don’t want to be mean, but are you playing in NA bronze?

No I just have standards about what is defined as a “bunker” Bruiser != bunker, but it seems people don’t differentiate the two anymore.

Mender Sw/d + Staff Druid, and scrapper are the only things that are bunkers. Mender Ele is heavy support but that’s not a bunker.

Chrono and Warrior are not bunkers by any means, they don’t function in that role.

But yes my MMR is so low that I get put in matches with Nos, Paul, OE, misc PZ guys, etc.

Cynz.9437:

- There will be more bunkering and less roamers due to

What meta are you playing in? There are no bunkers in this meta, and there has never been a better time to be a roamer.

FrownyClown.8402:

Power reaper will be op

Somehow, I doubt it.

dukenukem.9072:

Honestly I don’t mind condi builds, but when almost every player is running it it kills pvp for me. Personally I prefer power over condi for big bursts but when a necromancer bombs you up with conditions you have 2 seconds to clear everything just for all of it to be reapplied instantly. Sad how condi bunker is the new meta because most of it is from passives. Don’t want this to sound like I’m just complaining but condition damage exceeds power damage at the moment. Conditions should not be able to do the same if not more damage in the same time as power damage

1)Necro is not a bunker
2)Necro condi bomb come from transfers, you can’t spam those
3)Reapplication is not instant, necro can only realistically reapply bleeding on short notice, the other condis require having certain cooldowns available.
4)Power builds are for every class except Mesmer, tankier than condi builds are.

Decrypter.1785:

Really Turned Off PvP every game is no skill condi bunkers with AI , i prefer the skill based power meta , no running around spamming condi and hoping the AI kills for you , Who agrees ?

Condi AI…..?

The only condi build with any kind of npc is condi ranger and condi Chrono. Condi Ranger is glass and typically a free kill. Condi Chrono is actually good and it’s the onlny condi build in the current meta.

Of the 9 classes, only 1 of them runs condi as the meta level.

Coffietire.2783:

Crinn.7864:

Coffietire.2783:

How I’d fix the necromancer

Keep it how it is and change the Guild Wars 2 launcher to include the Merriam-Webster definition of the word, viable.

That doesn’t fix necro because necro isn’t viable. Viable implies there is a reason to take it. There are no reasons to take necromancers. Everything we do is done better by other classes.

That’s why I suggested the Merriam-Webster definition and not the tryhard “I can be qT/ESL too!” definition.

a : capable of working, functioning, or developing adequately viable alternatives
b : capable of existence and development as an independent unit The colony is now a viable state.
c (1) : having a reasonable chance of succeeding a viable candidate (2) : financially sustainable a viable enterprise

I’ve done well in raids, WvW, and pvp on a necromancer, and so can you.

Succeeding requires having a group willing to take you. Nobody is willing to take necromancers, which means we can’t succeed, which means we aren’t viable. I mean really, my own guild doesn’t take necromancers for guild things and we are extremely open about what we let our members run.

The only gametype that necro performs well in is WvW. (in zergs not roaming)

Coffietire.2783:

How I’d fix the necromancer

Keep it how it is and change the Guild Wars 2 launcher to include the Merriam-Webster definition of the word, viable.

That doesn’t fix necro because necro isn’t viable. Viable implies there is a reason to take it. There are no reasons to take necromancers. Everything we do is done better by other classes.

Divine.3279:

Vitality=Very good for reducing Condition Damage

No it doesn’t. Vitality doesn’t reduce anything, it’s just a buffer that has equal value regardless of power or condi.

LouWolfskin.3492:

If our sustain is too weak compared to any other class because of damage and relativity in sustain itself… shouldn’t… maybe… damage and sustain of other classes be looked at as well?

The sustain of other classes is fine though and works well for all game modes.

Necros have sustain problems because unlike everyone else’s sustain mechanics ours do not change with the content. Blocks and evades do not care if a incoming attack is 1k or 20k they negate it either way. Life Force however does care about the size of incoming attacks.

OriOri.8724:

Every other exclusive effect is still exclusive though, your comment doesn’t make sense. Warrior banners are exclusive. Ranger’s spotter, spirits and gotl is still exclusive. Engi got a new exclusive effect. Rev has assassin’s presence. Thief gets partywide unblockable attacks via basiliks venom. etc etc

Spotter, GoTL, Assassins Presence are traits not effects, all traits are unique. Effects are not unique.

Stealth, Superpeed, Auras, and yes Alacrity are effects and no they have never been unique however there has always been one class that identifies with certain effects more than other classes.

Utility skill types like banners are not guaranteed to be unique. For example Wells where Necro exclusive until Chrono happened. Physical skills where Warrior exclusive until Daredevel happened, Glyphs where Ele exclusive until Druid happened.

Jourdelune.7456:

I think about the 100 millions potential customer.

Fact check: WoW at it’s peak only had 10mil subs that’s just a sub count not a consistent login count which would be lower.

The only game to ever claim 100 million (and that’s singular 100 not plural) is league of legends. The next highest moba only claims 13 million, and most mainstream console games like Battlefield are less than that.

Assuming that making a standalone sPvP game is going to somehow be the next League is absurd, there simply is not that many rpg/moba gamers in existence to support games of such a size.

GW2’s problem is that it simply doesn’t have much advertising, and it’s also a mmorpg which is a declining genre as a whole.

Ithilwen.1529:

I’m seeing a pretty strong trend to homogenize classes in GW2. Most classes can do most everything with a slight repackaging.

That’s not what I meant by homogenization. I mean was how in SWTOR every single class has a 4 sec hard CC regardless of build, and every single class has a dedicated stunbreak regardless of build.
In WoW and SWTOR if you can play one build you can play them all because there isn’t much difference.

The diversity in role this game has I think the meta is actually rather forgiving compared to what it could be.

I mean sure games like WoW and SWTOR have lower power differences between specs, but those games also homogenize classes to the extreme.

Okami.7049:

“I’ve played all modes my opinion’s more valuable”

Having more experience does make your opinion more valuable than someone has no experience.
Stop trying to pass ignorance off as wisdom.