Guild Wars 2

Well, while I was a big fan of glint, these day I’ve seen myself using this skillset less and less. To put it simply, I tend to take the traitline which allow me to have the neat F2 but as for skillset, I more a fan of mallyx and jalis since I find glint skillset boring.

PS : Just seen the reply of the guy just above me. I think we think alike.

From my understanding :

- Jalis is designed as the bunker.
- Mallyx is designed as the condi creep.
- Shiro is designed as the power creep.
- Ventarii is designed as a rear line support.
- Glint is designed as the front line support.

And the main issue of ventarii is simply the stone that is more a deadweight than anything. For me what it need is a default follow mode and make the utilities skills, that are not the healing skill, ground targeted. From my point of view it would solve 80% of the issues of this legend.

When I looked at the title I though it would be about :

- Spitfull spirit : shame that one of the best elite in GW1 has be reduced to that
- Master of Corruption : which could be renamed Stupidly masochist
- Parasitic Contagion : which simply does not have any way to be used since it has been released.
- Unholy martyr : Realead at the same time as Parasitic contagion (That was a very sad record to release 2 useless GM trait at the same time out of 3 GM trait released).
- Soul eater : I will just say that the life siphon on gravedigger is a big let down when you see core profession GS’s traits like Zealous blade or the totally broken Forcefull greatsword.

As for the 2 traits of the OP, at least they are usefull in some area of the game and you don’t kill yourself or have to waste precious utlities with them.

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

“Your conditions deal increased damage to Chilled foes”

I know this is the third time I’ve posted this, but it does feel like it could be a good alternative.

^ this.

Though I’d prefer : “You do more damage and condition damage on chilled foes”. 5% – 7% would be fine.

The Ele will lose access to his attunements…

I’ve stopped reading here. Simply put this is to short sighted, the core elementalist have ton of traits that make use of attunments. An elite spec can’t possibly discard 4 traitline out of 6.

If you wanted to do a Pyromancer elite spec, it would be better to just tweak a bit each attunment like tempest do. For example :

- Fire : when you use it again when in fire attunment, create a blast of flame
- Air : when you use it again when in air attunment, create a fiery wind
- Earth : when you use it again when in earth attunment, create a magma pool
- Water : when you use it again when in water attunment, create a liquid flame

Well, they could change path of scar into a melee cleaving auto attack and it wouldn’t sadened me at all. It could even make thing interesting.

Maybe it’s just me but don’t you think that using reaper runes is a huge loss of condi damage? You lose 175 condi damage and some condi duration. Yes, condi duration may not be the most usefull thing in an envionment where there is ton of condi clear but 175 condi damage is like 10% of your overall condi damage. This ought to kinda hurt your efficiency.

The question then is more : is it worth it?

I think that :

Issue 1, is not an issue. Mainly your shifting nothing from soul reaping, you are just making some LF gain baseline. Why? Traits are here to allow players to choose their gameplay. trait that help with LF on necromancer do exactly that. The issue is more that players are slaves of a quality of life granted by these trait and they do not wish to part with it.

Issue 2, I agree that deathly chill feel disappointing now. At the same time, I feel like the issue ain’t really the damage provided by the trait but the identity of the trait. Simply put, now, It lack personnality. It probably would be better to change it into a trait that increase the necromancer’s condition damage on chilled foes. And in fact it would be even better if this trait was increasing both power damage and condition damage on chilled foe. Another idea, change it into : Chilling victory, grant 2% condi damage and power damage for 5-8s when you stuck a chilled foe, stack up to 5 time.

Issue 3, I totally disagree. Shouts are balanced at the moment they don’t need any buff or tweaks.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vFAQFAWhUMophVNwuB0RMQAYykMEUCq1QaoMEFgAwCA-TBBXgAAK/C1B8oEsX9HA-e

In combat you should use fire. abuse of the glyphs of elemental which add some dps, body block and have a decent active skill.

When exploring / running use air for perma swiftness thanks to staff #4 and glyph use.

If something goes wrong or you need some extra CC use water/earth.

Anchoku.8142:

It does not look as if condition damage builds have an alternative. Blighter’s Boon looks solidly in the powermancer camp and Reaper’s Onslaught was designed almost exclusively for open-world PvE. It is very useful, there, but not so much anywhere else.

You made my day! I almost spit out what I was eating when I thought about a skill designed exclusively for open world pve.

Life steal is weak in GW2 mainly because if it was strong it would kill PvP by generating unkillable uber necromancers. Changing it into percentage damage is not a good idea either since it would kill stat diversity even more than they are killed atm.

imo, it hurt me to say it but life steal number are somewhat balanced at the moment. Well I’d like them to scale both damage and heal on healing power (and thus with better coefficient) but, I still think that the number are balanced.

I don’t think that the necromancer will have an elite spec heavily focused on life stealing. We may see some traits/skills that feel great in addition of the blood magic but that should be stopped at that.

ex :

- Any main hand weapon auto attack like spatial surge, solar beam, arc lightning, Ice shard_ …etc. would give a lot of depth to the base life stealing ability of blood magic.

- traits that would buff the damage or healing done by the necromancer’s life stealing abilities would still stay in a balancable range.

- trait that grant conditional life stealing abilities (on skill use or something else).

All of these can stay in a balancable range if they ain’t stackable. As soon as there are to much focus on this kind of effect it would become detrimental first to the PvP area and second to the PvE area where these numbers would be laughable (like they are at the moment )

The animation change is good, the decreased attack speed is not. I know that it may feel silly but the decreased attack speed of the auto attack impact both the ranger dps and the pet’s DPS by potentially reducing the cripple uptime and the number of might stack that you put on your pet. Seriously it’s not like the sword dps was OP.

- Sound change… yeah, why not.

- Reaper’s touch : we said that the travelling time of the projectiles was to slow, we got a CD reduction.

- Spinal’s shiver : we said that the cast time was to long, we got a damage buff.

- Well of darkness : Here we got a very small step on the right direction (still not quite enough). Nothing justify more than 30s base CD on this skill.

Other than that, I feel that the balance nerf are pretty decent. Though Deathly Chill will need a buff now or maybe swaping it with chilling victory or a reworked soul eater. (I wonder why but I always feel like the dev think that a bleed stack do amazing damages while it’s obviously not the case)

Wondrouswall.7169:

Archon.6480:

The third animation looks slow enough to get a good whack of mistrust…

Not even sure how you could view it as slow as the entire chain appears to be the standard ½s strikes with lowered after-casts that were updated onto the Thief’s sword. Pounce being ¾s with a bit of an after-cast is slower.

And if it turns out to be all ½s sword casts, it kind of evens out in the end. ½s x 3 vs old sword ½s -> ¼s -> ¾s.

More likely, if some attack speed is lost it will come from additional “aftercast” since it didn’t seem that there were any aftercast in the original skill set.

AnariiUK.7409:

Underwhelming in PvP perhaps, but for raiding/high end PvE it’s part of the strongest build available to rangers right now.

I wonder what you gain by taking SB in your condi weapon set. Evade? no. Really short stun? Probably not. I believe that on second set taking a dagger instead to just replace the torch would be more valuable than the shortbow. The shortbow’s auto attack (power wise) is one of the worst in game (not even sur that it reach the necro’s scepter auto attack) and doesn’t even bleed it’s foes reliably. Come on, even the bleed duration is laughable, this is really a cheap reward for all the trouble asked.

NB.: Before they nerfed SB range and auto attack speed, the Shortbow was a good power weapon (just due to it’s auto attack). Now, condition wise or power wise it’s the same : disappointing.

That’s one of those traits/skills/sigils/runes that feel like a remnant of the past when burn and poison weren’t stackable. imo, another thing that the dev need to look at.

Personally, I think they won’t change the shortbow. Changing sword auto attack is already a lot.

And I say that even if I think that they totally forgot to balance the shortbow after the bleed change (I could say the same for sharpening stone though). The best way to handle the shortbow would be to remove the flanking thing necessary to the bleeding effect. As for light on your feet… the idea was bad from the very begining.

I just hope we won’t lose any attack speed on the sword AA with this change.

posthumecaver.6473:

2nd change let the Elemental Bastion Aura activate at the start of the Overload channeling not when it succesfully completes. I accept this can be problematic with a cleric Ele, so place the trait in Air or Fire line, no cleric Ele goes to these trait lines, better as a minor, so if somebody is not using Tempest, it will not look weird.

I’m a bit puzzled about this part. Elemental bastion is a trait that heal when you grant an aura so why are you talking about Overload channeling? Or perhaps you meant :

“2nd change, let the aura gained from overloading (when you take Unstable conduit) be granted at the begining of the overload.”

Alas, the resulting issue of this change would not only inclued Elemental bastion but all traits that grant effect when you grant an aura.

Or… Perhaps, you mistook elemental bastion and Unstable conduit?

If the issue really is Elemental bastion healing effect, then let’s be honest putting it as a minor in the air or fire traitline would be beyond broken and absurd. This trait clearly earn it’s GM seat since it doesn’t have any internal cool down for the healing part.

Even if you have 100% Chance to Crit (which i think like 89% is soft cap for most classes)

The Elementalists damage is subpar.

You sure know how to joke. I advise you to “play” a bit more each and every profession in every game mode before saying such things.

- There is only one cap to the crit chance and it’s 100%. If you are above 100% you are just wasting stat in precision. There are sigils, boons and traits that specifically increase your crit chance. For example, a Reaper could reach 100% crit chance with absolutely no precision on it’s gear.

- While the elementalist tend to lack “direct burst” damage, it’s ability to stack area of effect make him reach the top tier of the dps chart. beside warrior are not bad in regard of dps. All of your misconceptions seem related to PvP gameplay issue where people know what kind of attack they should avoid (should I say : “where ennemies use their brain”?)

From my point of view this concept may be attractive but fight to much with the core traits of the necromancer.

Let’s be realist, the whole F key mechansim make useless traits that are specific to the Shroud#1 skill and It also nullify the life saving device that Unholy Sanctuary is (Death defiance would not insure that it work, it would just replace it making the trait, defacto, useless). Beside you need to take one thing in consideration, The necromancer need a lot of HP to use it’s corruptions skill and sustain it’s “role” as a condi-sponge that draw condition from allies. (I wouldn’t mind if they were to delete totally this thing but it’s here and there is even a GM trait that is dedicated to it)

Another point that hurt me is the fact that you say that the necromancer can’t burst. That is a false assomption. The necromancer don’t burst with it’s weapon but with it’s utility that’s the major difference between the necromancer and most of the other profession and this doesn’t make it worse at bursting.

What the necromancer really need is not “burst” but “altruism”. The mindless dps statut of the necromancer is what hurt him the most in PvE. (Un)Fortunately, it’s irrelevant in PvP.

Vote : No
Like OlliX said, Scepter animation is fine as is. Axe? well One’s would say that it’s better not to look at it or we may end up with something worse.

Krysard.1364:

Vlad Morbius.1759:

Screwing PvE over for PvP & WvW what else? Seriously that’s been happening since day 1 and without separating PvE out it will remain the same thing every balance change.

Thats why Anet will prob up power based GMs, cause they are bad compared to the DoT counter-part most of the time

Giving more power damage to the necromancer would be an arguably bad solution. The necromancer do not need more power damage. Beside, deathly chill do not strictly compete with any trait that focus on power damage. Although outside of Close to death which is an okay trait is there really any other strictly power based GM trait on the necromancer?

I believe that they said that this was intended because : “If they were to save all the pet’s name for each player, it would be a massive amount of data to store”

To be honest, I think you are stepping into an over-complicated idea and giving a traitline for each kind of pet would be to huge of a work.

The traits that improve pet already exist. The traits that improve specific pets, I’m glad they no longer exist.

I’ll be honest, If they were to do something to the pets, It would be hundred time better that they work on :

- The ranger ability to prevent the pet to use unneeded skills at an unneeded moment. At the moment the ranger is still fighting against his pet due to these skills.

1. Bird : Quickening screech kill the efficiency of the birds
2. Devourer : Lash tail and Devourer retreat are a hindrance without active control
3. Bear : Defy pain is good and all but again, without controle it’s useless
4. Vivern : Wind buffet and tail lash like all control skill are a hindrance without active control from the ranger.
5. Moa : Harmonic cry is good and all but, again, it would be hundred time better to be able to use it when it’s needed.

- A huge balance patch on F2 skills.

1. Forage from Pigs need some work in order to be user friendly
2. Pets shout that are meant to buff ally absolutely don’t need the cast time and the useless animation that break the already difficult ability of these pet to actually hit their target. I understand the need for a “tell” on offensive shout but buff shout absolutely don’t need it.
3. Looking at the usefullness of each F2 skill wouldn’t hurt

- Improve pet’s attack speed which is pitiable and most likely contribute a lot to the laughable inabiliy of the pet to hit reliably a moving target.

- Last and not least, NPC totally ignore the movement speed penality when entering in combat. The pets are the only NPC who are affected by this penality. So either apply the penality to all NPC or remove it from the pet.

I really wonder why people want to nerf deathly chill damage while the issue is not the damage but the uptime. Merely, the best solution would be to add damage on chill application instead of overtime. (this is something that they probably won’t do anyway but in my opinion that’s still the best solution out there)

Other than that, it’s best not think to big since there probably won’t be any big change done at all.

What I expect… Hummm… I expect that they will “balance” some skill/mechanism in a way that will affect PvP and be almost non-sensitive in PvE. (like always)

And if I were to imagine an april fool joke of a change, they would probably change the poison effect on putrid curse (3rd skill of the scepter’s auto attack chain) into a self inflicted condition.

While other seem to not like the idea, I find it almost interesting. There are still some restriction to add :

- Your nature ritual ought to have an inert stage, a passive stage and an active stage. (like Herald’s one)
- Your nature ritual also ought to only affect 5 target for 10 second with a refresh every 3 second. (Like spirits)
- values need to be balanced (for example frost soil could reduce revive speed or revive healing value by 50% instead of the interrupt effect which feel out of place)

Outside of that, there is a few issues :

- the elite doesn’t feel like a nature ritual
- the healing skill is the only skill that feel like having a balanced cost but need a cap of boon taken into account
- you didn’t talked about traits

Tragic Positive.9356:

Yup, it’s pretty much explained already.
The guy was an arrogant shnap who got stuck in a time & space dimension of pre-HoT.

Nothing game-breaking.
But on the other hand, regardless of how much people want to defend the ranger, I’d bet 9 out of my 10 fingers that the Ranger holding onto shortbow had literally no idea how a Ranger is played (which shouldn’t matter since no one proposed a Zerk/Speed run but on the other hand is a nuisance all in all considering that the Ranger wasted some time of 4 other people – which is the same as telling he doesn’t care about them).
And a fact that Shortbow Bleeder is viable has nothing to do with that.

Most of the time the issue don’t come from the player that use an “exotic” build (read uncommon) but the player that is narrow minded and start to rant about what other players do.

I’m telling this because this is a common situation and it happen to me. I was playing a condi mesmer build in fractal (yes, I’ve done it) and everything worked perfectly until we reached the middle of the 2nd fractal and a revenant start to rant about me playing a condimesmer. I left asap and hoped onto another party after a moment. From what the other players of my first party told me, I finished my 3 fractal before them. Beside, the guy that was ranting about me was always down.

Most of the time narrow minded player are just bad player that need to be carried by their party and are unsure about whether they will be carried by player that play “exotic” build or not.

From my experience/knowledge :

Above 50% health : dagger is slightly better than GS
Under 50% health : GS is slightly better than dagger

Gravedigger do shinny numbers but it does have a cast and an aftercast even under 50% health which allow the GS to do a dps that is slightly under 20k damage per second at best. (damage per second effective on 1 lone target)

Well, I disagree with the merging of the 2 weapon simply because the most different type of weapon we got in the game, the most possibility there are for elites spec. Simply put, there is nothing to hinder the possibility of any profession using each of the two bow in the futur.

That said, the shortbow is widely used by the thief while it’s right that the ranger’s one is a bit hindered by some design issues. Technically, the shortbow is supposed to be a skirmish weapon while the lonbow is more a long range steady weapon.

As for what I think they should do to the ranger’s short bow, it’s simple :
- First an update which remove the optional aspect of the bleed on the auto attack.
- Second, look at how it fare for a few month.
- Third, if it’s well received by the community keep it like this or if it’s not well received, balance bleed duration.

Well HoT was mainly an upgrade of the basic layout of the game so that the dev may have more freedom when they create new content. I expect them to use fully these new layers in the futur.

- specialization system : This is were elite spec will be born. I guess we can still hope for a proper balance to the core spec.

- Mastery system : A huge layer that allow the player to grow in a different way than getting level. I really like this feeling of adapting oneself to the environment.

- Multilayered map : This allow more depth to the maps.

- A new class : well I hope it’s the last because this one still need a lot of balance.

As to the PvE/PvP/WvW content… Well, I think all of them suffer of some design issue that could be seen as a missed first try.

- Open PvE : There is absolutely nothing that really make you want to play on these map. The event completion are way to much time consuming and the reward chests need to be standardized.

- Raid PvE : Depend on personal DPS. Honestly it’s sad that the game always only revolve around the optimized dps stat and not around a bunch of outside mechanisms to kill a boss.

- PvP : While HoT only introduced a map, we can’t deny that a lot of effort are done in order to throw more players in PvP. Sadely most players want their favourite easy map which reduce a lot the variety of map played. (I often wonder why they even bother to create new map since player stick to the same maps)

- WvW : I have to admit that the new map is beautiful but… players wanted diversity not all maps replaced by a new one. Beside, lags plague this new map. Not to mention the fact that their will never be any balance in WvW population (but that’s an issue that take root in the player mentality so we can’t really blame Anet for that)

Everything has been set up for the futur. Was it worth the price? Let’s say that it still hurt from the point of view of a veteran. What I expect for this incoming futur? first that he is not to far and then that he is a bit bigger than what we’ve got with HoT which is a little rough on the edge.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vhAQFAGSAAATA-TxBFQBAw8H0+AAtb/hDq87fq/IAlgvTHApAAcmF-e

caped at 100% but you may reach almost 110% with exotic trinkets.
Not even taking into account the fact that chaotic persistence grant you 3% boon duration per boon on you…

What make the biggest difference between the 2 skills is the uptime. Rise! near 100% uptime of defense, which make it superior to Spectral armor. However, spectral armor have it’s strong point as well.

Most of the people out there are wrong. A slow dps on tequatl won’t garantee you the whirlpool. There are 2 way to have garantee whirlpools :

- Having Tequatl reach 75% at the same time than he spawn some fingers. If you have very low dps, even to the point of not being able to reach the 75% treshold, you won’t even see any whirlpool at all. At the same time if you reach the treshold a bit after the finger’s spawn and tequatl don’t bother spawning another set of fingers, you also won’t have any whirlpool.

- Having low dps when you burn tequatl to 50%-25%-0%. At this phase if the dps is low and you don’t reach the treshold before the end of the “stun” phase you’ll have garantee whirlpools.

The right move to have garantee whirlpool is to have low dps on a “stun” phase, not seeking the whirlpool on the first one.

The most annoying bug i have had…

Going all the way to kill mordremoth, downing it and then seeing him disapear before I can stomp him. In the end being stuck in the nightmare world without being able to reset the boss or getting out. That was really really really frustrating…

Electra.7530:

My first character in this game was a Mesmer. I loved her. I did so much in the game with her. But now, I struggle with her. She can barely kill mobs in pve let alone be effective in pvp against other players.

She is a power build and I haven’t really looked at the condition build for her as she is in ascended gear. The prospect of changing builds on chars with ascended gear is quite expensive.

So, I have put my Mesmer on vacation ankitten ow playing with my tempest/auramancer. A good Mesmer (which most of them are that I encounter in pvp) kill me with no problem. I need to learn how to survive against mesmers.

Honestly… you’re doing it wrong…

For a long time a lot of mesmer player have despised the condi mesmer… God it was even to the point that Anet buffed it. In reality the PvE condi mesmer only needed players to max their bleed duration. With a simple scepter/pistol build it’s truly easy to sustain more bleed stack than any other profession and add on top of it some confusion/torment. That said, I coincidently happened to realize that in HoT condi build seem to work better than power build.

As for the gear, honnestly it cost nothing to change your stats via the mystic forge. Well I agree that if wou want to change for “HoT stats” like viper it would be a bit expensive, otherwise it only range between 1g and 3g per gear piece which is nothing.

Otherwise, I don’t think that the ai condi mesmer really need a nerf, the poor survivability of the fantasm/clone in PvP content allow these specs to be balanced since there is plenty of counter play.

Tragic Positive.9356:

They die less often in HoT because new content’s AoEs are reduced by 90% to minions (pets, illusions,…). When it comes to PvP they die less because you can send SmokeScale to burst-evade all DH traps. Old PvE content has lots of attacks that ignores that change, though (heck, even the new content).

A lot of design in GW2 is outdated.
We just suffer the most because one third of our existence is glued to their outdated pattern. People do not remember this but they didn’t want new spec to be oriented around pets especially because they are unreliable.
Well, our nature cannot be denied so once we got what we wanted people started hating that there’s no synergy with pet.

Pets in small scale fights are now mostly fine because if you heal yourself you heal your pet as well. When next xpac comes – there will be no more druid – and no more pet that lives in small scale fights.

If you ask me – Ranger will not ever be enjoyable unless they get their ß$¤? together and fix what they never did right – the core Ranger.
If they keep fixing the Ranger by never addressing the main issue and trying to give him everything he lacks in 1 spec over and over again – no one will stay to play the class. There’s just so many other games with better designed Beast Masters, Archers, and skirmishers in general.

What’s amazing with ranger is still that when there is a pet that happen to work pretty well, most of the pvp community cry and the pet is nerfed asap.

And I agree with you, Anet don’t seem to want to fix the main issue of the ranger. We’ve pointed out for almost 3 year and a half now that they have to work on the rangers pet (a lot!) and from what we’ve seen up to date they’ve simply stick to the lazy bad design that we still have today.

There are plenty of things to work on the pets. Be it the UI, the skills balance, the pathing or even the unwanted skill that plague some of the pets.

There is so much work on just this aspect of the ranger that obviously they will try to avoid involving the pet mechanism for each and every elite spec they will create. An elite spec that would rely on the current pet mechanism would be broken and almost unsuable. It’s sad…

I believe that sooner or later we will have an elite spec with a pet based mechanism (after all, when one think about a necromancer, one usually think of a powerfull bad** that control undeads).

There is 3 way to introduce such spec :

- Make it so the pet have no link whatsoever with life force : that would be a spec with a mechanism a la Druid, which mean totally flawed from the very begining and that would work only for a very specific situation (I’d hate this)

- Share life force between pet and master : I think it would be somewhat difficult to balance but the death of the pet probably wouldn’t affect to much the outcome of a fight.

- Last way would be to make it so the pet become an avatar of the life force : Major issue here would be to concile it with the traits linked to the shroud.

… Well I’m happy that I am not a dev that have to design a spec like this. There seem to be definitely ways to do it but at the same time there are plenty of things that hinder them.

Staff is ok in open world PvE because :

- auto attack pierce and can’t be reflected.
- on a crit build you can take advantage of the auto attack to keep your pet at 25 might stack H24 (thanks to Companions might) or add some bleed to your damages thanks to Sharpened edge.
- Ancestral grace (overall, a usefull skill)

Levetty.1279:

Well looking at what Ranger needs it should be ranged AoE, which kind of works with rifle but I’m not sure would thematically fit in with the Ranger. Really staff should have been this but they kittened that up and there isn’t really another weapon.

Rifle skills that would fit in thematically with a Ranger elite spec would probably have too much overlap mechanically with Longbow.

^
Agreed, a riffle wouldn’t add anything new to the current ranger.

As to what it would look like… They would probably give a non conditional bleed to a boring auto attack (Just to bury even more the short bow) and give us a set of preparation that work like venom or sharpening stone. As for the new mechanic… Well… Let’s make the op happy and say that it will be an F5 skill that let the ranger enter stealth for a short duration. (It’s so bad it almost feel like a thief with a riffle and a pet)

Lightsbane.9012:

the rewards given for completing a raid in the time it takes to complete them is better spent farming the silverwastes for profit instead.
the reason i don’t think raids work for GW2 is because of their point: legendary armor. not only is it not obtainable right now, but it’s just a skin. you’ll have to do a bit more convincing to make me want to do this kind of content.
think of what raids in other games reward you with, then compare them to GW2’s rewards for raiding. they are minimal to nothing in comparison.

I’m affraid that you completly missed the point of “legendary items”. There are not “just a skin”. They are usefull item that you can adapt to your build as you wish, whenever and wherever you want. Skin is just a very tiny part of what make a legendary.

Well raid are a form of end game and it’s never a bad idea to produce different kind of end game. The whole idea being to keep the player base busy with in game content. The moment the player base is bored is the moment the game fall apart.

In this regard Anet seem to have a pretty good understanding of this fact. The only thing that may be lacking is the fact that raid, like PvP, is an area that is not thought by the vast majority of the player base. To much focus on raid will probably hurt the game more than anything.

As for my personal opinion, raids are incredibly boring due to the fact that you play for 10 minute and wait for your teammate to be ready for 1 hour. But that’s something that is right for all game that feature “raids”.

I’d say that the only realist idea you got is the 2nd, something along the line of a deepest relation with spirit magic communion.

Well, granted what we’ve seen with HoT, the next ranger’s elite spec could revolve around the idea of switching something (being : pet, weapon, spirit or whatever). That’s a pretty redundant theme of the ranger to the point that it might become an elite spec.

Otherwise, and most likely, it should be something that revolve around the use of pets. The druid spec have been pretty disappointed in this regard, it was almost as the dev forgot that the ranger’s primary mechanism is the pet… Well it’s not that they are close to balance this mechanism which have a loooooooot of room for improvment.

Disclaimer : this is only personal point of view.

What are the current balance problems of necromancer/reaper?

The main issue of the necromancer/reaper lie in it’s inability to support it’s teammates. That said, it’s obvious that Anet push this class into a form of indirect “support” which is know as “debuff” or soft condition. These conditions does not provide any “support” even if useful in PvP area, they are mostly useless in PvE. Additionally, the necromancer have always had unsatisfiying primary weapon which have led us to recent change.

So in these recent change Anet pushed us up with a boon corruption effect on the scepter AA. I think we were supposed to see that as the pinacle of what a necromancer may provide as support. While this stupid change have made the weapon useful (read it as totally toxic and broken) in PvP, it also didn’t change the fact that there is no support provided in PvE group content where this weapon need a trait that make it or break it in this specific content.

What is too strong and overbearing in build diversity?

As of today we may considere 3 things as to overbearing on the necromancer :
1- it’s corrupting abilities tend to lock again necromancers into condi-builds.
2- the Soul reaper traitline seem to be one of the 2 traitlines that feel necessary for most of the in game situation.
3- the reaper elite traitline provide a shroud that is a lot more enjoyable, usefull and practical than the deathshroud. Utilities also tend to outshine core abilities.

What is too weak and overshadowed by stronger options?

Here, we fall in very specific area, again that will only reflect my opinions :
Weapon
- the Focus is plagued by long cast times.
- The axe lack a little push to finally blossom

Skills
- Well of darkness have a way to long cool down for a shallow effect
- Well of power need to lose it’s stability effect and simply become an instant skill.
- Spectral grasp is still way to slow.
- Shadow fiend is almost irrelevant.

Traits
Spite : Spitefull spirit simply can’t compet with it’s 2 contender.
Curse : MoC and Parasitic contagion need changes.
Blood Magic : Unholy martyr also need some changes.
Reaper : Soul Eater is still far from being kittenefull trait.

Shroud
Life blast need to be faster
Dark path already have a cast time, there is no need for the additionnal slow projectile that cripple this skill.

Combo
What the necromancer lack the most are reliable combo.

How is your experience in PvE / PvP / and WvW?

In PvP/WvW the necromancer feel almost to strong at the moment
In open PvE, the necromancer is as rubbish as ever, nothing really changed here
In PvE group content the necromancer still lack any synergy with other professions to become a though choice.

What I wouldn’t want to see anymore in the next balance update :

I don’t want to see any more toxicity in the necromancer. The necromancer need to be able to blend into a group without being absolutely needed for a specificity. Corruption is a fine mechanism but it’s just a specificity, to much corruption is toxic for the game as a whole.
Every profession need to be able to fullfill any role In game (that is how the game have been advertised). At the moment the necromancer still can’t fullfill the “support” area and agin, no, boon corruption and conditions are not a form of god **** support. The boon removal abilities are to much of a niche for few professions to become a mechanism that become needed.

Regarding the question of that thread, my answer would be :

Does it really matter?

The point is that the actual resilience of the minions is void in competitive content (aka PvP/WvW) and doesn’t make the necromancer a better pick than any other profession in PvE. So does it really matter that playing a minion build became the easy way for lazy necromancers to reach the same result with more survivability than non minion build?

Beside, at this point I wonder what we have to consider as a Minion build. Is this a build filled with minion as utility or is it a build that only take 1 minion as a healing skill and fill everything else with skill that aren’t described as “minion skills” but shout/spectral skills. Do these build rely heavily on minion trait or did it only rely on few skills exploitation?

Minionmancer’s build make you sturdy, that the choice development of Anet. I find it difficult to make any complaint regarding the fact that it finally reach a really sturdy state that make it not totally useless anymore in PvE (thus, after 3 whole years).

Instead of complaining about the minion resilience in PvE, shouldn’t we ask the dev to take a look at :
- Blood fiend passive healing. (I think it’s okay, but maybe the resilience of the minion make this passive healing a bit high now)
- Lich form skills. (I’m part of the people that have radical though about Lich form since I relly dislike this transform skill and think that it would become something more valuable if it was rework into a non-transform skill. The same can be said for Plague but that’s not part of this thread)

What I don’t like :
- Astral form (yes I hate it to the core but I can live with it by simply ignoring this sh…)

- Stupid ICD on Invigorting bond (honestly reduce healing value to that of cataclist’s Elemental bastion and remove ICD)

- Stupid flanking requirement for pitiable effect.

- Inability to disable some of our pet skills

- Ridiculous and totally unjustified cast time / cool down on some of our pet skill on [F2].

Other than that, I can live with the current ranger (… This doesn’t mean that I can stand other rangers mindlessly using LB#4 and yes in itself this skill is part of the ranger’s problem)

Chill strengh isn’t in it’s damage part so you’ll probably fair pretty well. You need to chill a foe for 16 second straight to reduce it’s health by the average amount of health point in game profession have… I mean if someone is chilled for 16 seconds straight, he obviously need to change a bit it’s build or it’s gameplay or he deserve it’s death.

Well… that’s very anet’s like.

One pet got a burst skill with a short cool down on F2? Let’s reduce damage.
Other pet got kittenty skill with very long cool down and huge cast time on F2? Let’s keep it like this.

I think, that’s beyond being blind… It’s obviously paired with being deaf.

How about, no?

Don’t get me wrong, for me, if a trait have to be swap with Unholy martyr, it’s parasitic contagion.

Unholy martyr is a trait that is here for condition manipulation which is something that belong to the curse line.

Parasitic contagion draw life through condition. In it’s current form this trait is stuck in spite due to the fact that it would be overpowered if it was paired with Lingering curse.

Unholy sanctuary, on an other hand, belong to the death magic thematic. Well, I wouldn’t be against some minor change to this trait but It does have the “undead” mark on it. Beside, why would you put a trait that doesn’t have any relation with “blood” in Blood magic?