Guild Wars 2

They will most likely come back. That said it might not happen for a while as we recently had a sale were they were available.

Roy Cronacher.1576:

Safari Tank.6238:

Just to clarify, you mention minions, spirits, and turrets, but this does NOT include Ranger pets, correct?

Ranger pets are included.

meow one twenty.4376:

I still think Plague could be made into an elite Well (if Warriors can have a mobile fire field because they light themselves on fire, we can use our bodies to channel a Well through).

If plague would become a well it would be a strong reset button. The lifesteal from the well trait, 3 stab and permablind(kind of). While this would be kind of exciting I think it’s too strong(but that might only be me being used to necro being weak for so long). I think turning plague into something like ventaris tablet and give it only one form would be a more likely change if plague ever gets one. It would make condi build more bursty instead of sacrificing condi output to transform. But that’s not really part of the discussion here I guess.

Anyway, I think it’s more likely we get a new elite well rather then making plague one. There’s probably a reason they “nerfed” it into a corruption.

Slashftw.6307:

so the weapon you have equipped before you enter shroud affects your damage? between staff and dagger which would be better?

It takes the stats from the weapon you have equipped but it only takes one of them depending on the skill used (I’m not sure if it use the dmg). And because a 2handed weapon has more stats than a 1handed or offhand you will be a bit more effective going into DS with a 2handed.

Edit: I was wrong. This is what I get from trusting people than doing my own research. Thanks for the update Spoj.

Gw2 is a large game with a lot of people playing it. Not everyone thinks the same things are fun. Whatever they would have done some people would think it was boring.

If elite specs will cost 170 hero points you don’t need world completion to unlock it. You only need to do the hero challenges. This is a lot faster then world completion. Might still not be fun but it’s way faster I personally I don’t think this is an issue. Elite specs shouldn’t come for free, but I can agree that this is probably not the best way to do it.

The only people that get kittened over are those that WvW, which they should do something about. There should be a way for people to unlock for WvW only.

Blaine Tog.8304:

This is true. The question remains, then: do we want the Conditions removed, or do we want the effects buffed? The former option would be easier but the latter would be more interesting.

I agree with Bhawb(I think it’s Bhawb atleast) on this. They should remove the the self harm from corruptions and use it for a future elite spec that’s built around that.

There is a problem with the self harm being conditions. Because it seems like anet don’t want to buff the skills as they seems to think the self harm as extra power rather then a burden. That and that we have endless transfers at will that don’t take up space at the bar or traits. This is what left corruptions with weak effects and weak self harm that’s not worth a transfer.
Or maybe it’s just that they mostly fix what’s op broken and leave the bad stuff on their enormous table to fix in the future.

we need a power,condi, ferocity stat combo

OlliX.1705:

Maybe they didn’t play BWE1. Anyone who played BWE1 should remember how clunky and awful that was when reduction wasn’t 100%.

I did play BWE1 and yes it was awkward that it wasn’t 100%. My point is that agains foes with high health gravedigger gravedigger becomes a second auto. and in those cases only pressing 2 ain’t more fun then only pressing one. Those fights happen quite often. In most other cases I like gravedigger.

there are 3 mastery points. 2 you start with and a third you can get in the cave to the bottom right. You need to bouncing shrooms to get it though

silvermember.8941:

I don’t get the logic behind both of guy’s comments and maybe it is best that way.

As it says, monsters with high healthpools make gravedigger feel very boring. You can basically end up using only gravedigger only for 2+min. As you can move while while activating and have decent stab uptime you can easily kite or ignore most things bosses do. This makes those fights dull.

Pompeia.5483:

Third, Gravedigger… I know it has been mentioned but it needs something to handle not being spammed for bosses/mobs that have a large HP pool. Maybe, instead of reducing the cooldown 100%, only drop it down 75% or something… I get that it is a clean-up styled skill, but it really is silly and, with the trait to leech HP on the skill, you are not going to die in these cases…

Thank you. First one I see that feels the same as I. Gravedigger is nice but for mobs with large Healthpools it’s just silly(and quite boring). Personally I feel that the full CD reduction is pointless as it has quite low CD anyway. And everything else you can only really use it on once or twice. I would rather have something else on it. The lifesteal on the trait is pretty bad though. When gravedigger is such a slow skill the amount of life stolen should be higher.

Something ArenaColin said on reddit. here’s a link as well: https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/3na4rx/bwe3_open_world_pve_nerved/cvmqq66
“Hey folks,
Coming out of beta weekend two we were really happy with the over all open world difficulty. The only exceptions were that the wyvern was way too easy and didn’t scale well, and mushroom stompers were a little much. Thats all that should have changed for bwe3 – we will have to look into what the issue is here to find out why its being perceived kitten much easier. Simple version: we also liked bwe2 difficulty.”

edit:better format

I’m an average skilled player and the previous betas were fun and challenging. It wasn’t hard while running full zerk but you had to react to mobs and not just facetank everything. Now it’s like the core gw2 and I don’t have to pay attention. This is not as interesting and I’m less excited for HoT now.

Slowmelt.8547:

Really now?
Why is that?
Are they not allowed to show Human skulls or something?

Yup, that is why. Necro also have a different icon in China.

uhm dulfys “GW2 Twitchcon Skill Balance Update Preview” says this right below the “feel my wrath” changes.
Save Yourselves! – Was split between PvP and PvE version, now we are using the PvE version across all modes.
It seems you have missed that.

Just because the Druid is healing focused doesn’t mean rangers running druid will be healbots. They still have 2 other traitlines and can still use two weapons. You could easily go for a zealots Druid with staff/X weapons that still deal a good amount of dmg but can swap to heal when needed. Gw2 is still a very dynamic game.

I Like the greatsword but gravedigger is sooooo boring. It’s basically a second auto after 50% hp on foes with large healthpools(which tend to happen a lot in pve). Was fighting a champ frog in the latest BWE and it took atleast 3 min to kill it after it reached 50%hp. I just swapped the auto to gravedigger and I didn’t have to do anything.

mazut.4296:

All I said is that there are bigger problems and better solutions.

The fact that necro have other problems have nothing to do with this at all. This is why I responded in that way. IF that wasn’t your intent, sorry, but still seems like it the way it’s worded
About there being better solutions (to what I understand must be about necro lacking active defences, which is only half of this post is about), Then yes there most likely are as with all ideas there’s someone who had a better one. There is still the part that I think a reactive DS would encourage better reading of animations and patterns. If you don’t want that or think it’s good enough without it, it’s fine. It’s still something I would like to see in the future though.

While I do think it works in it’s current application I still think what it would be better for it to be more reactive. Also, so because Necro having other issues (which we are all aware of) we aren’t allowed to discuss changes someone wants or ideas for new things?

Then would you rather stay with the system we have now or balance it for no CD? Would adding a 10%LF cost to swap into DS without CD work or ruin it completely?

This have most likely been asked a long time ago but I couldn’t find anything.
As we are aware necros lack active defences which can make us weak. Our main defence is deathshroud. DS is a resource based which slowly drains while active and also takes dmg when we get hit. Does it really need to have a CD as well? Wouldn’t it be better if we could swap into it more like kits? That way we would have better control of the dmg we take. This would of course require some ICD of some traits to not be crazy.

Wouldn’t this allow us to have more reactive defence/utility? Personally I don’t see this as op as skills in DS skills still have CD’s. The only place I could see this be too good is in pvp where we could basically take all heavy hits with DS. But then again that require good reading of animations(aint this something good to encourage?) and it’s still a resource that have to be generated back. I guess with LF generation skills this could get a bit much in a 1v1.

I would really like this but I’m not really sure if it would if there is an aspect I’ve missed that would make this too good.

We are getting Halloween. This have been said in an interview with Massivly OP. It’s in the end of this article.
http://massivelyop.com/2015/08/31/pax-prime-2015-guild-wars-2-is-never-getting-a-raid-finder/

Content should never be easy to complete with all builds(viable? sure, but not easy). That would make the game quite boring. It’s easy enough to change builds to face different content.

That said, nothing is stopping you from inviting a friend or someone from your guild.

I think there are a lot of things you could do to WoD to make it interesting. This skill is quite niche and I think that keeping the skill fill a niche is good.
I like your idea but I wouldn’t mind if it negated all enemy fields inside. Not just stopping interaction. That would make it more useful in pve as well as pvp.

Yes! This needs to happen.

While I do agree that this killing downed foes might be a bit too good how different would it really be from other classes doing quickness stomping. Some classes have quite easy access to that.

It requires more then just recoding to implement this. There would be a need for a more and better hitboxes and most likely some changes to art assets as they were never made to be viewed from specific angles. There is also possible that gliding would allow us to see over the borders of a map into the void which also would have to be fixed. So I’m quite certain we’ll never see gliding in core tyria unless we get an overhaul of it (which it kind of does already in some aspects).

There are also not that many maps with enough height difference to make this really worth it to implement if they don’t change that as well. The only way I could see us getting gliding in core tyria is with living world updates were they overhaul old maps instead of giving us new ones.

abc.5790:

DTATL.9641:

Vapour.7348:

I’ve been playing this game for over 3 years (longest break 3mos) and I’m still a noob. fml.

Achievementpoints doesn’t show anything about skill. You might think that it does but it seriously doesn’t. You might be a good player but this is telling us nothing.

He was prolly trying to contradict the OP’s claims of being a “top player”

I know that’s what he was doing and it might not seem that way looking back at my post. All I’m saying is you can be a god at pvp with low AP and being crap at it while having 24k AP. There are a bunch of people that link AP with skill and I just want that to go away.

Khristophoros.7194:

Necro staff is so insanely good in WvW they can’t buff it. And reaper is adding another AoE chill to staff.

It’s also decent outside of WvW because every skill hits 5 targets, and it is good at kiting with the regen spam and CC.

If you’re confused about the role staff has, think deeper than power vs condi vs defense. Think gameplay. Staff is primarily for kiting and CC with some AoE damage. The AoE works well because it allows you to kite and CC multiple enemies while wearing them down.

I do agree with you that staff is quite good but the I do think the auto is quite bad. Sure it’s more of a utility weapon but the auto doesn’t even have good enough LF gain to fit that role or enough dmg for being our only long range weapon. Something needs to be done about it. Either give the auto utility like a very short cripple or better lf gain. Maybe make it a 100% proj. finisher. Honestly I would be fine with faster attack rate and a faster projectile. It feels weak for whatever purpose it was made for.

I would have loved to see “your equipped shouts now work in RS” as a GM trait for reaper. Would have been so much more interesting then 15% AS. All utilities might be op but having traits like this that focus on one skilltype would make RS&DS more interesting.

Vapour.7348:

I’ve been playing this game for over 3 years (longest break 3mos) and I’m still a noob. fml.

Achievementpoints doesn’t show anything about skill. You might think that it does but it seriously doesn’t. You might be a good player but this is telling us nothing.

I’ve been playing the reaper quite a bit on the last BWE and this one. I really liked it when I started playing last BWE even if it was clunky and under tuned. GS and RS felt good. And this BWE was the same at the start with the buffs and slight skillchanges.

But now when the first bit of excitement has gone away Reaper feels “meh” the more I play it. It’s not that it’s bad. It’s just that there is nothing really interesting about it. The main offender is the traits for me. They are mostly solid ideas though some still feel under tuned. I just can’t feel them having an impact on how I play or the builds I make.

RS sure has some good animations and it’s nice to have a few more finishers. The stab is great as we lack that otherwise. Can’t complain about it really.

GS I thought was amazing at start but now it feels a bit lacklustre. The auto feels like slow motion compared to the rest of the combat. Too many time have I reach a foe raised my sword and seen it die before I swing. Gravedigger while a nice concept and probably works better in pvp but is quite boring in pve. I was fighting a champ at an event and after 50%health I made it my auto and that was the only skill I needed to use for the remaining 3 min of the fight. I mean sure I can use the other skills but why when the game incentives me to use it. The rest is fine but they don’t really feel that impactful (With impactful I mean that they affect the flow of the combat in a way that is noticeable which I think higher CD skills should do). It kind of feels like my necro runs at a slower pace than the game using the GS(this is based on Verdant Brink combat). The more I use GS the more I wished it worked like spear as I think the spear is the best designed weapon for the necro when it comes to skill functionality(not really how it’s balanced atm though).

The shouts follows the same theme as the traits. They are solid skills but they don’t really feel impactful. And the only truly interesting one is “Rise” after the recent changes even though it still uses the same model as boneminions.

So when I now look at other Elite specs, their skills and traits are a lot more interesting then the Reaper(not necessarily better or more useful). And looking at what Reaper brings to necro now when I’ve played it I feel it’s not that much. The only “new” thing we’re really got (according to me) that we didn’t really have before is a straight up power weapon with burst potential. While that is fine I feel like RS is made to fill that roll as well which makes Reaper feel less versatile.

So after running around in VB feeling reaper is loosing my interest I swapped back to D/W & staff with the usual spite, soul reaping and blood magic with wells. Sadly I felt way more flexible and useful. The encounters became easier as well. So I guess Reaper is not for me any more, which is a shame as I was really looking forward to it. I’m going to miss RS but I can’t sacrifice a whole traitline for it as it is now. Looking forward to axe and scepter changes though.

TL;DR
After playing Reaper in the previous and current BWE I feel that Reaper lacks depth and it covers it up with a nice theme and animations. Which is a shame as I really looked forward to play it in HoT.

Well necros farting locusts was not the direction I though Anet would go

I don’t know thief too well. They have a kind of spammable blast finisher on shorbow 2 that helps stacking might, swiftness or stealth. Having Aoe stealth to run past mobs you don’t want to deal with and pretty good single target dmg(which most dungeons are anyway). Probably a few more things that I don’t know about.

If you want to support your team thief is generally more useful. At least if you are planning on using LFG. Necro is the worst class for dungeons as they don’t offer anything unique and they things they can do other classes do better. It’s not that they are useless only that there are no reason to actually use one.

But if it’s just you and friends/guildies and you don’t care for most optimal speed runs necro is fine. you can help to stack might Blood is power and boosting dmg and survivability slightly with vamapric presence.

I agree that spear could use a bit more dmg and is bad at generating LF. That said I really like the design of the spear. A 3 hit AA were the 3rd hit is aoe. A burstdmg whirl finisher that apply vuln. A bit of mobility with a bunch of small hits that heals which is great for catching up with foes and counters blind. And the last 2 skills being pulls with decent CD, one that apply cripple and one with bleeds.
It’s a shame we can’t have this out of water.

Don’t expect skills to change in a major way or be replaced any time soon. It’s still possible they will if things are complete garbage or underused but I wouldn’t expect it to happen before all Elite specs are out. It’s clear that they don’t have the ability to do that atm which is a shame but the reality of it. Putting other Elite spec on hold because ele is not happy with theirs and want a total revamp would only kitten off a lot more people and give them less time for testing. Until all are out don’t expect major changes.

This is a problem for a lot of classes in pvp. Warriors want fast hands etc. I do agree that things like these should be baseline to open up for more interesting quirks. A lot of traits after trait system update have become take this or the skilltype is bad. It’s mostly 10%dmg or 20% recharge. Some of them are good like removing condis on shouts. If I would design the traits I remove all dmg and recharge and have quirks instead that actually makes skills work differently instead of being the same but more effective. That would be harder to design though and make the game more complex which I feel they wanted to move away from.

I really like the access to frost aura from using RS5+RS2. The short CD on RS2 could give some auras frequently from all the fields others can drop. But I do feel like that RS2 would be so much better if it worked like warrior sword leap. It’s kind of wonky atm. Falling of cliffs to often. Necrocopter sure sends you flying. . .

That’s mostly because they look like smaller bone minions, have really low health and if they somehow survive dmg they die anyway as their health ticks down to fast for them to do anything useful. While the lich form summon against 1 target could get some halfdecent bleeds with 5 of them, one per target from Rise is quite bad. They are only really good as deathnova fodder. That makes them really boring as minions.

As Anet said that they might change the minions created by Rise I thought it would be nice if it summoned undead chickens instead. They only use that model for one eventchain and minis. I think the model looks a lot better than the current minions and would like to see more of it as I like it. It has decent abilities as an enemy already(an auto, a leap and a aoe selfdestruct explosion). with new dmg-numbers to fit it ofc. I would be fine with it just leaping onto an enemy and exploding right away.

This would be good if a bunch of people stacked on top of you as they get hit by multiple explosions. It would probably be good if the explosions caused a bit of bleed (which the risen chicken does) or poison for condipeople. An absolutely terrible but fun idea would be to let them be the most uncontrollable blast finisher, which could be fine as you can spawn up to five so at least one hits.
Also this would most likely make this skill useless as a minion skill but it summoning jagged horrors now it’s already a bad minion skill.

So I have an idea for a grandmaster trait which is basicly is a variant of the the removed Withering Aura. This is not a unique idea and there is probably someone that made the exact same thing but here it is. I’m sorry if there are sentences that don’t make sense or typos. After staring at this text for too long I’ve become blind against such things.

The trait could be called “Withering Presence” (not aura as that is a different mechanic and might be confusing)

The idea is that when you have that every 10 seconds (while in combat) pulse out (the same area size as plague) 1 stack of poison with 5 seconds duration and 2,5 seconds of weakness. And it would still work while in DS, plague or lich form. It would also give the same effect to Flesh golem if that was active. I was thinking it could give an effect similar to to the the new guard elite signet(but green) to show you have it active so others can see and react to it better.

I was thinking this would be a grandmaster in deathmagic that would replace “Death nova” as I don’t like it =D. It still works as a minion trait(kind of).

This is supposed to be a defensive trait that also gives attrition. I have designed it for pvp but it could work in other modes as well. The logic behind this is that the poison is there to prevent healing which is why I only want it to be one stack. It’s not supposed to be about the dmg. The weakness is there as it more or less does the same thing as protection but in a more necromancy way. It also opens up more room for counterplay as condi cleanse is more accessiblefor all classes.
If someone doesn’t know, weakness gives reduce endurance regeneration by 50% and 50% of hits are Glancing Blows which means they do 50% less dmg.
It also works very well together with protection to reduce dmg taken which would open up necro for more teamplay.This would help necros be better in longer fights as foes heal less and does less dmg so you can slowly wear them down even if we have lower dps or lacking burst.

Now the trait may seem a bit weak with 5 sec poison and 2,5 sec weakness. But I thought that could be a good place to start. With 100% condi duration this would be 10 seconds of poison and 5 seconds of weakness, which means you have 100% poison upkeep from this skill alone and 50% upkeep on weakness if your opponent don’t use any condi cleanse. And if you would add flesh golem that also gets the trait you could have 100% upkeep on 2 stacks of poison(slightly more dmg for condi people) and close to 100% upkeep on weakness (weakness only stacks up to 5 times then resets) at 100% condi duration. If you go with a powerbuild without condi duration and you pick flesh golem it would give you 100% upkeep on 1 stack of poison and 50% upkeep on weakness. I think that would make it a good trait for all builds because of the survivability it could give you and make fleshgolem a bit more useful. This trait is basicly made to outlive foes.

There would still be enough counterplay I think at least. you can condi cleanse to heal or to burst and if you kill the fleshgolem the traits effectiveness would be reduced by half. That said putting your condi cleanse on cd and fail to heal or to burst might leave you leave you vulnerable for counterattacks. This is why I wanted it to pulse every 10 seconds. This makes condi cleanses rewarding if you cleanse at right after a pulse and but it’s still often enough to not be entirely countered.

Now this trait might be really good,really bad or just useless(The details of it like duration and such might be off as well). There might not be enough skill to it as it’s a passive thing which might be boring. Now this doesn’t have to be a trait. It could just as easily be a elite signet instead if you buff it a bit and give it an active.

I came up with this trait as I wanted to design something for the necromancer that isn’t tons of stab, deflects, stunbreaks, protection or mobility.
I like that necro are slow, doesn’t have a lot of stab or lack burst dmg. It makes them feel more unique and just one of the rest. That said, they really need something to make up for that as those things are quite important(which they really don’t atm). I also really like the idea of giving necro more weakness as dmg mitigation as it fits the theme, while also having great synergy with protection which other classes like guard can provide.

I would like to get your thoughts about it. Mostly about the ideas behind it. I don’t think we’ll see anything like this implemented as they removed a similar thing already.

I would like to see changes but I would like necro to feel unique and not just take things other classes have. I have some ideas for skillchanges but only how the skills work rather then numbers.

I think the skills for the weapons are ok but the CD’s, cast times, range and dmg probably need to be changed in some way. This applies for some utilities as well.

Corruption skills feels weak and bad for the most part. I don’t think they should add conditions to us but rather use lifeforce or hp. Sure, we can send the condis away but it’s still annoying to deal with. As deathshroud don’t really fit all builds. I really think there should be other ways to use lifeforce. Corruption skills would be perfect for this as DS don’t offer much more then utility for condi builds anyway.

Minions are ok, they just suffer from poor AI as most things. Anet have said that they have improved AI for HoT so let’s hope they’ll go back and fix this someday. When that is fixed they can balance dmg and CD’s. Doesnt really matter if they change it and the AI is still bad.

Spectral armor could use some stab, resistance, CD reduction, chill to nearby enemies or something. I like how it works atm but the CD feels to long for what it does, so added functionality or a CD reduction feels a bit needed.

While I do think Spectral walk is an interesting skill I hardly ever use its second active. Aside from the swiftness it’s a crappy Spectral armor. I would rather make this skill a 600range dash that removes movement impairing effects and gives a bit of swiftness at the end of it. This has the possibility to be the extra mobility necro needs with a decent CD. Just need to change the name to spectral flight or something instead.

I would like to see Spectral wall get an additional effect as well as a slight increase on the duration of fear. While reflects sounds great it doesn’t really fit or feel right. Personally I would rather see it block projectiles converting them into lifeforce, cause bleeds on the target or pulsing out might for each projectile. This would be more intresting and feel more necro but that might be to much work for Anet to implement.

Finally Well of power should be instant cast and Well of darkness needs something or just be completely reworked into something else.

My most ninja-like character.
My asura use these skins:
Phantom’s Hood
Magitech Shoulderpads
Magitech Jerkin
Magitech Armguards
Magitech Leggings
Magitech Boots
with these dyes:
Night Shade, Starry Night, Midnight Purple and Celestial

and here is my ninja in action and an overview.

Race: Human
Sex: Female

The bangs animation of this female human hairstyle have clipping issues with it’s animation on all animation quality settings. it clips through the head while running/jumping. Would be better if it was static.