Guild Wars 2

What’s there to inquire?

This is about retal. A passive damage boon that did more damage than the guardian did combined.

That should be ringing bells in your head.

It was a simple 1v1 vs my friend. He has retal up 100% of the time. He’s low, but his heal is off CD.

My warrior has no boon removal.

I just thought it was funny that his passive damage reflect did as much damage as all his other abilities COMBINED. And find it more confusing as to why Arena Net thinks this boon benefits their game play somehow.

Anet Net has created a class where doing nothing is rewarded more so than playing the game.

Using MOBA’s are completely different. You sac an item slot for it. It costs gold. Not to mention the item is only good vs lots of physical damage heroes. Retal is good vs everyone.

Guardians have retal up 100% of the time. There is no farm time to get boon like in a MOBA. There are no max boons that you have to decide “Hmmm protection or retal. Oh the choices”.

But I highly doubt you have “discredited” my intelligence by linking 1 item from LoL.

Passive damage reflect is the lowest form of gameplay possible. There’s a reason why everyone can play a bunker guardian. Because it’s impossible to screw up on a class that doesn’t need to do anything to kill someone.

To the people who think retal is fine:

In a game where not all classes have access to a spammable boon removal vs a spammable retaliation, why do you think it’s fine you need two classes to take out one?

Why do you think it’s fine for someone to do absolutely nothing, and by doing nothing, do 2x-3x the damage of their normal abilities?

Why do you think players should be punished for playing the game, while the player doing nothing is rewarded?

Jk guardians still have perma retal.

If you actually want the game to become an e-Sport then you need to remove this boon.

Not modify it. Not reduce the damage. Remove it. Because passive damage reflect has absolutely no place in any competitive game.

http://imgur.com/HfOYK

There is nothing wrong with HS spam. Not one thing. One slow on the thief and you can’t HS. Not to mention you waste the initiative to hit nothing.

It has a longer animation than anything else and is queued. So a thief in a team fight chaining them will die to focus fire while he’s locked into his 3 HS spams. Especially since thieves are a top priority for team fights.

The only balance change left for thieves is that Backstab either needs a 2 second cooldown or when attacking from stealth, your next ability will remove stealth. Because right now spamming BS on a person that just chain blocks/blinds isn’t balanced. The class needs to follow the rules put in place for the game.

tasbury.3674:

People who think that defensive (Bunker) build should be countered by glass cannon burst builds need to get a clue. Bunker builds are countered by sustained condition builds with poison and bleed stacking. You would think that this is intuitive as poison reduces incoming healing but to the masses of foaming-at-the-mouth burst players I suppose not.

Condition Damage counters Defensive Builds
Burst Damage counters Condition Builds
Defensive Builds counter Burst Damage

By and large this rock, paper scissors model is working pretty well.

Caltrop Thieves, Condition Necro, Pistol Engineer, and Short-bow Condition rangers can kill “Bunker” specs with ease.

Probably the most ignorant statement out there.

The goal of a “bunker” class is to not kill anyone. It is to delay them for your team to come in and fight. To hold the point 1v2 long enough for support.

If you’re having to use sustained damage over time, then the bunker has done his job. He will last long enough for his team to come in. Especially since you will have condition removal, which will delay their efforts even further.

The only condition class that could kill a bunker in decent time was a Ranger. But after the Shortbow nerf, they’re back to being useless.

So your so called “counter” isn’t countering them at all. They still perform their role.

Expect to see more people using axe offhand.

Before it was a death sentence due to the amount of AoE retal in the game from guardians. You’d spin to hit 3-4 people and do 15k damage to yourself.

Now that AoE retal has been toned down, it’s a very good weapon. Use it if your team has enough utility already that you don’t need to go warhorn or mace. Then again if you’re playing with a warrior in sPvP you need to design your team around the warrior to make the most of the class anyways.

There are more factors to consider than just time in game development.

You don’t know the quality of game designers. Their engineers. Their goals. How well management does in the company.

So let’s focus on what we do know. We know that in any game, if given the tools, the community will develop the game into a competitive state. It’s how games like Counter-Strike and DotA grew to where they are today.

If given the tools.

Arena Net has yet to give the competitive PvP community the tools needed to turn their game into an e-Sport.

And that’s all you need to know.

Better question is when designing a game that you want to become and e-Sport, why on earth create fire and forget mechanics?

That’s a mystery I’d like to be solved.

If they’re taking your close point on Foefire, take their farside. From the sound of it they wanna play 2-2 with the mesmer supporting. So it’s free.

Constantly keep mid contested. Do not let them cap it. A bunker ele/engineer won’t be putting out enough damage and you can keep 5 people there all game because their team wants to play an offensive bunker strat and probably won’t ever send someone to recap their close point.

Always kill the Mesmer when he comes in. He’s the only DPS.

If you do this, then you’re setup for a Lord kill, like they set themselves up for one. Your thief can easily solo their lord whenever he feels like it and they can’t contest you (if you have a thief). Your team needs to watch for the mesmer port and kill (probably coming at the 375 mark).

So I’d suggest taking a lord kill early to secure your points, give you the lead, and so you can pull all 5 back when needed. Also, if you take the early lord kill, you can dedicate your thief to following their mesmer around all game.

They don’t stack, but they can’t proc both at the same time.

They can proc back to back however.

Have you thought about increasing the minimum amount of players to hold a point to “2” instead of “1”. Or creating an object you need to channel on in order to capture a point, that breaks channel on receiving damage.

This would make those tank-specced classes less useful without actually having to touch them in the balance department.

Because as it stands more and more teams are shifting to a tri-tank, 2 DPS team.

Ele/Guard/Engi – tanks
Mesm/Thief – DPS

It’s just really strong.

Not really.

You can still use evasive skills during an immobilize. You can still attack/cast abilities. You can still teleport while immobilized.

Being stunned means you can’t use any abilities, except stun breakers.

If you’re fighting against someone and you make sure you’re always in a good position, immobilize is largely ineffective. However a stun is always effective.

Really dislike the utility skills, especially the broken plague signet. No reason to just copy debuffs onto yourself.

Corrupt Boon sounds good on paper, but really it’s only useful vs Guardians. All the other classes you’d want to use it against can instantly get those boons up again and a focus 5 will remove the same amount of boons over the same time frame.

Everyone has their own playstyle, but feel like these wins are more or less your team rather than a necro. The moment that staff ele steps away from keep you were down on the ground, and really the moment the staff ele dies is when your team loses mid. Yall are able to take it back, but that staff ele is always there.

Then you have the less than steller damage output. So it makes you wonder if a guardian mid with the heals and retal would have made that fight more in your favor.

Sigh.

Once again, the only reason burst classes kill tank classes that don’t have perma retal is because those tank classes have very little to no offensive pressure.

Burst classes don’t do well against a more well-rounded play style. These classes take the defensive utility and traits in order to survive the burst, while being able to dish out damage. A bunker spec can’t (or shouldn’t, hence the change) dish out enough damage.

If your well-rounded build can’t win vs a heavy offensive play style then you need to rethink your build.

Necros and Guardians are both good bunker classes mid.

One brings group stability, retal, and heals. The other brings condition damage, spread damage, aoe chilling, and blind spam.

One favors more offensive play styles. One favors more defensive play styles.

They are not better than each other at the role they are trying to fill; bunker mid. Just better at different play styles.

A bunker warrior is not better at being offensive than a necro. A bunker warrior is not better at being defensive than a Guardian. There is no trade off. Not until bunker guardians get toned down or bunker warriors receive more in the terms of healing or damage output.

Your whole point was “you need to fully build for a tank role”. My point is that even built for a tank, Guardians will outshine you.

Should stick to the strength of the class, which is the highest damage output in the game.

@Echra

I want you to take a second and review what you’re saying.

Don’t use condition stacking if the have their removals up. Guess what’s wrong with the logic behind this one? It will always be up because there hasn’t been a need to use it.

Same with don’t stun/burst. If you don’t stun, then there is no reason to use a stun breaker.

The only one that makes sense is protection because the player has to decide when to use it before the incoming burst. Not after.

Same with “don’t attack during retal”. The point of the bunker spec is to delay. Having retal makes it so that attacking the guardian either kills you or forces you to stop attacking and heal up, in which case he fulfilled his role. Not attacking allows the guardian to delay, in which case he fulfulled his role.

Your idea of balance is pretty skewed.

Another “lol stop attacking” player I see.

The point of a bunker class is to hold a point until reinforcements arrive. So please, do tell how “not attacking” is playing to your advantage and not to his?

And Guardians still have 100% retal uptime. Just not passively anymore.

Point is why bring a Warrior bunker with less survivability, less DPS output, and less healing. Defektive was right on this one.

Guardians are the only class that can get away by playing pure tank/healer because of the easy access to retal and other healing effects.

Against a bunker guardian, retal will be at least 50% of their damage. Remove retal (as it shouldn’t be in the game in the first place) and they would only delay their death.

Warriors don’t have the retal uptime. Warriors don’t have the multiple healing abilities. You’re no where near as effective by sacrificing amazing offense for mediocre defense.

But they don’t.

Have you seen Oppa stream? He uses axe/mace and traits for more survivability.

I literally do 100% more damage than him. He auto attack crits DPS classes for 1.3k while I crit for 2.6k.

Thing is we have the same survivability because he’s sacrificed too much damage. Being tanky and controlling players is only effective when killing players quickly is not an option. When you can drop people from 50% health, there’s no reason to play as a tank.

Evis isn’t that easy to dodge. It’s not like 100b. You know when 100b is coming. Even in group fights you know when 100b is coming.

At any time you can decide to swap targets and lead off with an 8k crit.

Most of the dodges vs evis though are just general dodges in order to get some distance. They’re at ~30% health and have the endurance so they dodge away. Just happens to be the best time to evisc. So you just change up your evis timings so that they’re dodging away with 5% hp and you finish with auto attacks.

100b is a one trick pony. You are required to have frenzy + bull rush + stability in order to land it. That’s 3 utility skills needed to land one ability.

You don’t need any of those to land an evis. And even if you fail, you get to try again in 10 seconds.

Thing about belt burst engineers is that it comes on a longer CD and they lack the ability to endure pain and keep trucking. Not to mention you really need your target knocked down during your burst and one stability will ruin your fun.

Rangers don’t actually have instant burst, they just increase their stream of damage from fast to super fast.

Thieves are probably the closest, but need setup. Have to be in melee range for the C&D and have to get behind for the BS. All in all takes about 3 seconds.

Warrior just needs a full adren bar. Because it hits at once and because it’s also a gap closer, you can surprise people very quickly. Basically it requires the least amount of setup and is the hardest hitting ability in the game.

I’ve found that none of the other classes really have that pocket burst damage you need to be fearful of 24/7.

Strength of the warrior isn’t being tanky. It’s being able to instantly kill most targets at 50% HP and being able to lock down players with mace/shield.

Take a DPS ele/thief/mesmer/ranger with only 16k~18k health. If they are around the 2k armor mark, eviscerate will crit them for 9-10k. Meaning while they feel confident at 50~60% HP, they’re in the kill zone.

Most players will use their stun break on your shield bash, leaving them open to a 2.5 second skull crack. You can drop any target during this stun with frenzy + axe auto attacks except 3k+ armor tank classes. But they end up coming out in the kill range for a 4k eviscerate.

Warrior is the ultimate assist class. A team with a thief & warrior combo will instantly drop the other team’s DPS.

#1. Change your build. No viable ranger build uses GS
#2. Get a shortbow
#3. 1 so hard
#4. Die to retal
#5. Come to GW2 forums and post threads

You just haven’t mastered the 3 abilities death shroud has.

@Valador

Tank classes with passive damage reflect are the easiest class to play in any game. You make your worst player play this type of class because it’s impossible to screw up. You just sit there and people kill themselves on you.

And now you want sPvP to turn into a zerg vs zerg?

Ironic, coming for someone who doesn’t want “mindless” things in the game.

You don’t bring a heavy defensive player to counter heavy offensive. You bring them to counter well rounded players. Heavy defense isn’t that effective vs heavy offense in a game without healers, because that defensive class can’t put enough pressure on the offensive one to down him in time before being downed himself.

That being said, the most effective way to counter heavy defense is with a heavy offensive glass cannon class. You don’t need defense when fighting someone with little to no offensive pressure. That was the point he was making.

And that’s where retal comes in. It counters the heavy offense playstyle. This allows bunker classes to not only be effective agaisnt well-rounded consistent pressure, but also the high burst and heavy offense.

Heavy Defensive > Well-rounded
Heavy Offensive > Heavy Defense
Well-rounded > Heavy Offense

@Wolfe

The point of showing what D/D thieves use for utility skills is to show that they’re very easily kited. It’s also to show that kiting, while strong, really goes against the game design.

Kiting has its place on a map like Foefire, where you can engage people well off the point. But on BoK and FoN, kiting is much more difficult. Really the only place to kite and still solidly defend your point is Mine.

You can’t leave a ranged class to defend, because they need to stay on point. You can’t send a ranged class to assault, because they need to kite. See the problem? While fine for sPvP, for tPvP ranged loses its power. You need a hybrid type of playstyle, similar to a mesmer. Which goes back to the point that creating distance and crippling/chilling a thief doesn’t really play into the current game design. If this was a CTF and TDM, then it would be much more effective and D/D thieves would lose a lot of their strength.

Explain how you can quickly kill an enemy Lord when you need to take time to kill the guards? You want teams to not be able to defend in time when they hear “Your Lord is Under Attack”. Any thief can solo engage the Lord (except blue lord, you need to down a caster for him, but takes about 3-5 seconds).

I honestly don’t know what I’d take if I had to replace a thief. No other class has the mobility or burst damage.

I’d say the bigger problem are the debuffs.

The only one that provides a true negative debuff when using Quickness is Frenzy, making the warrior take 50% more damage.

If all quickness effects had this, it would be fine. But atm, the ranger debuff isn’t even noticeable and the thief debuff is countered by having Vigor and stealthing.

The point of bringing a heavy defensive class with no offensive is to hold a point long enough for your team to come in and back you up. Instead, you’re given support skills to aid your team in fights.

Retal allows those tank classes to not only have the support and survivability, but also the damage to kill others.

It’s just a broken concept and caters to the lowest common denominator of players.

Don’t know how to play your class? Can’t even “spam 2 to win”? Play a bunker guardian! Just run around and heal while people kill themselves on you.

Don’t know what to say to people who actually think that’s a good idea.

Retal shouldn’t even be in the game in the first place.

Passive damage reflect is the worst thing to add to any game.

Most D/D thieves take shadow refuge, shadowstep, and a signet. If they run movespeed, they don’t have a 2nd gap closer. If they run the shadowstep signet, they move slower and aren’t as mobile for backcapping or in combat.

The main reason for mentioning slows is that while it’s a great counter to D/D thieves, it’s really not that useful because of game design. You want to create distance but because this is a point control game, you’re giving up your control point for a kill. If someone comes in to reinforce the thief during your fight, you’re going to go down quickly and they will cap it faster.

As such, the D/D main weakness is removed due to game design. While S/P weaknesses are still relevant.

But side note: the one random condition becomes much less random when those condition classes only have one primary condition on you. A condition thief for example will be stacking bleeds. Just bleeds. And the stealth regen isn’t weak at all. It’s ~10% of your health if you wait for the full duration.
Then you have shadowstep in case you get a good amount of conditions (typically vs engineers and mesmers only).

Between all those you can take out a condition class with confidence.

And what I described is TPvP. I can easily grab a boss kill with Mug + C&D. That’s 10k damage instantly if I crit both. I can wait as long as I want because of stealth, not to mention the longer your team waits, the more time my team has to reinforce and take mid.

Also, what other classes can easily kill the Lord by bypassing all the guards?

@Wolfe

That trait is a 10 second cooldown with 20 pts into the Acro tree. Only condition thieves, and to a lesser extent S/P thieves, touch that tree.

Conditions are easily dealt with by going into Shadow Arts. They make most condition classes useless, outside of Engineers and Mesmers, as those are the only two classes that don’t rely upon one source of condition damage.

Slowing a backstab thief makes the class a joke. When I play a frost necro (can epidemic 15-25seconds of chilling) a thief with the chilled debuff is just a sad sight to behold. After they engage, they have nothing to close the gap outside of their heal, and even then you just debuff them while stealthed. They do no damage because they’re not hitting anyone. Heartseeker can’t close the gap because all Leaps are affected by the slow.

Now while S/P has more mobility, it doesn’t have the power of stealth, lacks burst when haste is on cooldown, and PW can be easily interrupted. Also, S/P thieves are actually easier to kill than D/D because stealth drops target.

You slow a D/D to counter them.
You interrupt a S/P to counter them.

However, Thieves are a requirement for TPVP. I don’t know why you think otherwise. They’re the best class to steal a Svanir/Chieftain on FoN. They’re the only class that can solo the Lord on Foefire. They can teleport through walls and up the Z-Axis in BoK. Not to mention they’re one of the best treb assaulters because of thieves guild and the 1v1 power of the class.

It’s not good anyways.

Cloak and Dagger has a cast time. Just C&D + steal and you’ll stealth and do more damage.

There are better traits in that tree anyways than Hidden Thief.

Thieves are strong because the main counter to them, slows, are not useful for most classes in TPVP.

As any ranged class with slows, thieves aren’t a problem. You slow them. They can’t easily close the gap. You just need to create distance after the Steal, Shadowstep, and heal. An immobilize can spell death. HS spam while chilled will only move the Thief forward 100-150.

But that’s the problem. Only an Engineer, Ranger, and Condition Necro want to fight from 900+ range. All other classes fight in melee range, with the Mesmer splitting time between S/P and Staff.

Then factor in that this game is all about point control and that kiting off point is punished, and all of a sudden the class’s main weakness is removed due to game design.

Stealth in this game is different. ANet wanted to remove “perma-stealth” seen in other games. So instead they granted an in-combat version of stealth.
—Stealth in other games can be activated any time OOC and breaks upon damage. Lasts forever.
—Stealth in GW2 is typically only activated in-combat and doesn’t break on damage. Lasts 3 (4) seconds.

Going to say that their vision of stealth is far more powerful. Ironic you seek to reduce the power of stealth seen in other games and end up creating something more powerful.

@Aelona, stripping retal from a guardian is useless. It’s like using Corrupt Boon vs a staff ele. It removes it for a few seconds, then it’s back up.

Guardians get retal from Aegis being removed. They get it from Stand Your Ground. They get it from activating a Virtue. They get it from Save Yourself/Retreat.

All those apply retal for at least 10 seconds. Not to mention the other boons they apply.

You can’t strip retal from Guardians.

Then again retal needs to be removed in general. Passive damage reflect on a tank class is the worst thing you could ever add to a game.

Really that hard to translate “Coming Soon”?

French – Prochainement
German – Früh
Spanish – Próximamente

Assassin’s Signet increases your next attack by 150%. That’s how backstab gets that high.

Add in some vulnerability stacks and it’s easily achievable.

Also do not play Necro. If you want to play a condition damage tank class, play Engineer. Unlike necro’s, they have access to tons of boons and use all 4 damaging conditions, instead of just bleed.

@Sylosi

I can evis every 10 seconds on my warrior if not being heavily focus fired and forced to play defensive. Also, that evis hits that hard on all squishy classes. DPS ele’s, DPS mesmers, DPS thieves, etc. A thief can only achieve a 10k backstab from the Assassin’s Signet, which is on a 45 second cooldown. Otherwise, he’s going to be hitting for 6k crits on the same type of targets.

As I said, the thief is the damage. If he is not doing damage for 10 seconds, that’s huge for your team. Especially if the thief wasted Steal as the opener, as now he won’t have an instant gap closer for 40 seconds. Meaning he has to walk into the fight and the other team can see the thief coming and has time to react.

There’s lots you can do with stealth, but exiting a team fight mid after you botched the opener isn’t really its biggest strength. It’s dropping the “Target” symbol above your head. It’s doding abilities that require a target. It’s reseting NPC’s in Foefire and allows any thief to easily kill the other team’s Lord.

Really the only thing left being too strong with Thief is Heartseeker. It needs a new animation and the gap closer removed. It’s way to strong, considering it’s also considered a “leap” and you can gain all sorts of amazing abilities. Like Chaos Armor.

And I don’t know what you’re talking about. Engineer’s can leave a fight any time they want. Rifle knockback, immob, medkit, swiftness away. Unless you’re talking about existing a 1v3. You need to be a condition tank spec with bomb/grenade kits for that.

So play another class?

The necromancer isn’t a real class. You’re only brought to a full condition team for one spell. Which is debatable if you need a necro anyways, in favor of a class that can do more.

Maybe once they fix the 90 something remaining bugs with the class, it will be better. But until then, you’re choosing to play a very underpowered and poorly designed class.

I can 10k evis on my warrior against squishy cloth classes as well.
A rifle+belt burst engineer can combo for 10k. Although it’s multiple abilities, they hit all at the same time. All while you’re knocked down.

Stealth is only good vs classes that need a target in order to do damage. It doesn’t stop the damage. It doesn’t stop the AoE. Stealthing vs a warrior, the warrior will still auto attack chain. I kill thieves all day in stealth. I kite them in stealth. Predicting their movements is pretty easy, and it’s not hard to circle strafe for 3 seconds and keep yourself facing them.

Exiting the fight on the thief means nothing. Think about it, he comes in, you dodge his burst, he stealths out. The class is brought as damage and he’s…not doing damage. So one team is down a high DPS class, while the other team isn’t. Can guarantee your team will win if their thief is only coming in when Steal is off cooldown.

If you don’t want to create a build to deal with stealth, high burst, conditions, stuns, etc. then that’s fine. Make one. But complaining about them, when you have the counters available to you makes you a child.

As I said earlier, the Engineer class has plenty of ways to counter a glass cannon backstab thief. But he doesn’t want to use them. He wants to play a glass cannon engineer. Which is fine, but he better learn to dodge other glass cannon attacks.

Or change his build.

So no real punishing skills should be added into the game?

You should only be hit at most for 2k for being out of position, misusing cooldowns, poor play, etc.

A BS thief is easily dealt with by snaring him. That’s it. Most play with shadowstep, the 25% movement speed signet, and shadow refuge. The thief has no way to close the gap outside of step, and you can just roll away. Returning does little to keep you on the target.

Explain why if a player refues to have defensive stats (vit/tough) and defensive utilities (slows/blinds/stuns/etc), favoring heavy offense instead, they shouldn’t be punished when being pressured. Because that would be imbalanced.

You’re talking about a build that has all its eggs in one basket.

If the thief failed to land that combo, he would have died. Actually he risked much going against an engi in the first place. If the Engi actually used a bomb kit, that spec wouldn’t have stood a chance.

It’s a spec that preys on the new players and the unsuspecting.

Complaining that “but what if I’m fighting someone and another guy comes in and I die?”. If that second class entering the fight is a burst DPS class, you’re dead anyways. A signet + BS thief just ends the fight quicker. A power well necro, frenzy warrior, rifle+belt engi, burst ele. They will blow you up as well.

And wanna talk about effort?

A engineer has to lay down smoke bomb to counter this opener from a BS thief. A thief has to use steal + C&D, signet, backstab. 1 ability to counter a killer combo. Where’s the effort?

But knowledge is power. If you want to play a glass cannon class then you need to dodge the other glass cannons out there. If you can’t do that, then play something tankier until you know how other classes work and how they like to open.

Point of condition damage is to make things hectic. With a teamfight mid and everyone as condition spec you can easily spread 25 stacks of bleeds/burning to all players. You’re not sitting there doing your thing while taking no damage. Everyone is dying.

People are getting better at countering burst and using KD’s/stuns/dodges to stop the majority of the incoming damage.

But the real advantage to a condition team is that you prevent res’s, because while you wipe all conditions when going down, you don’t wipe them when getting up. Getting res’ed with 5k hp and having 25 stacks of bleeding on you just makes you die instantly. You can res people who get bursted down. Resing people against a condition team is a waste of time.

It takes just as little skill to counter a thief. Blind or a slow+dodge roll away would counter the signet backstab burst. The key to stopping a BS thief is to dodge the initial burst and then kite him at <400 range with a constant cripple. No real way to close that gap, unless he wants to HS spam nothing, or risk using Shadowstep only to get knockdowned/stunned after using the ability.

Considering he’s an engineer Smoke Bomb from the Bomb kite is a pulsing AoE blind. Toss that down and you won’t take any damage. Toss down a cripple, and you’re kitting the thief easily with swift+vigor.

Pressure always makes you play hectic. This is most likely a case of shock at the burst + old man panic under the pressure.

I purchased all character slots.

For your second comp, even if your team downs someone quickly, you have no real way to punish a stabilty res/cloak. Assuming your wells are down and the ele’s abilities are on cooldown and recharging cause you just got a kill, this really only leaves your auto attacks + hammer warrior attacks hitting them.

So it really focuses on downing 2 players at the same time, which is a feat in and of itself for even the best of teams. So if your team can consistently do this, then I’d say more power to you. If not, and you only down one, a team will just res in your face and not take punishment for it.

Also if you’re sending the guardian mid and not on point defense, you’re putting a lot of pressure on him for Stand Your Ground. Do you use it when your team is getting knocked around? For res’ing? For stomping? He’s gotta make some pretty big decisions by himself. One bad call and it could cost you the fight.

Like I said, if you can make it work more power to you. But I see a thief in that situation bringing more to the fight and your team than a well necro.

Keep in mind, this isn’t a personal attack on you as a player. It’s an attack on the class. The class is just poorly designed. You should try playing a thief, as the class scales very well with player skill.

One hammer warrior would completely decimate your entire team.

Your team lacks stability, outside the engineer.

The standard setup I see from most serious teams is:

guardian/mesm/thief/ele/engie(war)

All those classes have stuns/knockbacks/blowouts and your team doesn’t really have access to stability, only a few stun breaks after they’re used.

An ele and engi(war) alone can make sure no one gets to move with their knockbacks/downs/stuns. The thief and guardian just add to that.

But maybe yall can make it work. Dunno. Just saying that with most teams going for burst & stuns/knockdowns, playing without stability puts you at an instant disadvantage. If one of your players gets knocked down, your team has no real way to res him outside of the thief’s veil. If you down a player, stomping them in time without stability isn’t going to happen.

I multi-class every class.

I have about 40+ hours on necro. It’s a fun class. When you win, you win because you seriously outplayed somebody.

But the class is a joke compared to others. Hell, over 50% of all abilities do not even function properly.

Point is that this spec for tPvP isn’t good because the role you’re filling, the damage dealer/support DPS, is better played by every other class, mainly because those other classes bring more than just burst.

If you are going to play the support DPS role, better off playing as a condition spec, with plague form/well of darkness to stop the DD burst and bleeds to destroy their support guardian.

When someone goes down expect stability stomp. So that fear really isn’t too useful. Not to mention a thief can aoe stealth while your team resses. And it’s on the same cooldown as the res/fear.
Everyone that’s in a line? Awesome. Everyone line up! While other classes bring an AoE.
DS fear is your only control ability. Then again, any necro spec has access to this.

Control effects aren’t chills/cripple. Those are conditions. Control effects are haste, knockdowns, knockbacks, stuns, dazes, stealth, etc. Take a look at gw2skills. They will break it out for you.

Damage mitigation is about blinds/protection/weakness. Things for your team to use to their advantage. A S/P thief makes those 100b warriors and other PW thieves a joke. Just drop a Black Powder and the 100b damage is cut in half. Toss a weakness on them and a warrior just used Two major cooldowns to do about 3-4k damage. Protection cuts that down every further.

No protection for your team. No blinds. Considering DD is the current meta-game, you’re bringing very little to stop this.

But here’s the real joke. Utility skills actually bring utility for other classes.
Necro utility skills bring damage. Makes sense right?

Point is that right now, there is no reason to bring a burst necro, because while their damage is good, they offer nothing else. The only role a necro can semi-fill is the team fight support role, because plague form blind/well of darkness decimates any burst attempt on your team and boon removal really destroys those support guardians.

edit: sorry D/D has weakness.

Control? What control?

Where’s the stun? Daze? Knockdown/back?
A hammer warrior has 5.
A thief has two.
An ele has two.
A mesmer has two.

Your build brings no control.

You also bring no damage mitigation with the minion elite. While all other classes bring this.

You can sit here and theory craft all day, but the point is this. If you wanna talk about dodging burst abilities, then a well necro is the worst class in this department because of the CD and the lack of any damage outside the wells.

Dodging a pistol whip, ele burst, warrior stuns, etc. doesn’t hurt them too much when they’re spammable or on 10-20 second CD’s. Dodging a well necro means no significant burst damage for 48 seconds.

Which goes back to my point. Why bring a well necro with high burst DPS every 48 seconds, no control, and no mobility when other classes have the the same/slightly less DPS, but all those things.

The necro isn’t a real class. The lack of those key abilities and the massive amount of bugs with almost every skill makes it clear the developer made the class in a day.