Guild Wars 2

Anyway, thieves will probably have mace because mace would be good to stun things from behind and then steal their everything. This fit the thieve theme

The whole reason why birds aren’t popular is that they got this huge handicap called “quickening screech” which is an auto skill that just root your pet for way too long because of a kitten animation.
Probably, the day they will let us disable some autoskill on our pet, Birds pet would become the most used pet for rangers. But, until then, the “quickening screech” animation just cripple way to much birds.

Whatever would make it except… “Dead last”…
But since specialization have high chance to change general mechanism, I kind of expect for necromancer to actually enchant their weapon so maybe, to be really classic, I would go for :

Wizard.

PS.: I mean, “Druid” is something really classic, it’s more likely that they will go along with this line.

Well test are all done. the fact that a target move or not is irrelevant since no pet fare well against moving target. And still 2 might stack on auto for devourers.

The fact that you dislike devourers won’t change this fact.

What i was pointing out is that bleeds have 25 stack that will temper how it will fare in any party play.
Burns have only 1 stack and way better individual damages then bleed which mean this proposition will advantage a lot classes that burn a lot (Guardian, ele and Engi). Burn will become a burst condition with stack ready in second.

Just a simple tought…

Guardian’s damage would be totally monstuous as they continuously apply and reapply burn.
So, yeah, maybe what you propose may work for bleeds. But for burns at least it would be totally unbalanced.

It’s always dramatic if there is a cat involved!

to put it simply…

Use river drake, stack might on it, press F2. Each time lightning breath hit, it will do something like 2k damage (assuming you build for this). Lightning breath can hit more than 5 time.
Enjoy, ranger F skill is equal to warrior F skill.

Jim Hunter.6821:

Dadnir.5038:

- Carion devourer : maybe the best suvivability in PvE (not for the retreat but because of it’s very high toughness). Very best pet to use with rampage as one because of it’s double hit attack pattern that stack 2 stack of might for each every second instead of one for other pets. And F2 is a medium lasting poison aoe with base damage tick every second, always nice.

That’s very misleading. Devourers will only stack the most might if the target doesn’t move for the entire duration of the skill and if there isn’t anything within 900 range that can be targeted.

If there is anything else that can be targeted (door, npc, supply, etc.) the marsh drake will stack more might.

If the target is moving devourers become the worst pet for might stacking. Even spiders will do a better job of stacking might as long as they land atleast 1 immobilize.

You get it wrong Jim. Even without it’s f2 ability, devourer would still be the best at might stacking because their auto attack hit twice in the time every other pet hit once. which simply mean 2x might.

Worst thing? They are pretty good at annoucing that but if i had to chose :

They could announce they make 2 faction and wild pvp on open world between these 2 faction.

I would just uninstall the game and never play again.

My favourite pets are :
- river drake : I think it’s the very best of our pet for it’s deathly f2 skill
- Carion devourer : maybe the best suvivability in PvE (not for the retreat but because of it’s very high toughness). Very best pet to use with rampage as one because of it’s double hit attack pattern that stack 2 stack of might for each every second instead of one for other pets. And F2 is a medium lasting poison aoe with base damage tick every second, always nice.
- lynx : it has always felt a little more efficient then other cats since the nerf to pet’s damage.

No particular feelings :
Spider : slow attack… way to slow
Dogs : feel like they got their niche in spvp, don’t like it in pve because they tend to proc defiance on champs.

Never use :
- Moa : don’t really like it
- Bears : just totally hate them. As a BM it feel they got less survivability then any other pets.
- Pigs : can’t like the way their f2 is designed.

Element Two.7316:

Dadnir.5038:

This doesn’t punish zerker at all

The champion can’t take critical hit

Dadnir.5038:

My idea would be to give this buff three declension that would rotate each time you remove all defiance buff. Each of these declension would promote a different party gameplay.

What i mean is that it’s punishing people that are to lazy to ready their boss before they try to kill it. This is also punishing to braindead people that can’t manage some defiance stack.

And to be clear I’m not against “zerker”. I would just want to make more option viable then the actual corner/buff/pull boss/kill boss. 2 of the 3 buff are actually designed for zerker to be optimal. The thing is that one favor mele gameplay and the other favor range gameplay.

If anything i’ve been disappointed by season 2. Yes I think that season 1 was much more entertaining and made the living world much more lively then the 2nd season.

I know that the living story of season 2 has been set on a more permanent content but… seriously what happened to the world? In season 1 we had worldwide event, land changes, redrawn maps, we had clues and hint to thought about. While season 2 set 2 lame farming map on which event have been overused for 4 chapter each.

Trying to understand and whistand the schem of scarlett was way more entertaining then staying for month on the same map while waiting for the next chapter to change a tiny bit of things. Come on! LA and kessex had been destroyed! We had to fight scarlet’s minions while she was studying our world to leaving strange things here and there. We had to save our kind. In this regards season 2 was plain boring. You know? Actually their are npc that have been repairing LA for a year now… They must be very lazy because almost nothing change since they start working.

I believe this had to be the most meaningfull post out there.

Thaddeus.4891:

Dadnir.5038:

Taku.6352:

TL;DR: Let’s punish those who use zerkers.

Feel like you read nothing… This doesn’t punish zerker at all, this add more room for diversity.

No it won’t. Except for the difference between condition and power build, gear have nothing to do with build diversity. You gain that diversity with trait, sigils, runes, skills, weapons. Gear only give you a balance between Damage and Survivability.

That doesn’t mean that diversity should be increased, but you target something that isn’t a problem. Talk about fixing condition damage in PvE or adding some meaningful support build like they did with Phalanx trait or stuff like that. Not awkwardly forcing ppl into specific build that are not good right now.

I do agree with what you’re saying but i can’t imagine dev designing traits for all classes to be usefull at all because this would cripple their beloved pvp.

What we periodically see on this forum (for PvE) are complaints stating :
- There is no challenging content and dungeon are especially easy.
- Some classes are useless/unwanted in dungeon.
- You can’t play how you want to play, you gotta play zerker.

What i believe the change i propose could add to the game :
- A bit more challenging content : having to “ready” your boss before engaging him would make classes like mesmer and thieves even more welcome then now.

- Including a buff that allow damage only if the taget is chilled would maybe make rangers and necromancer, which are among the best to provide chill, a bit more welcome in dungeon. (I know that elementalist are pretty good at that but what aren’t they good at?)

- Don’t forget that there are boss that purge themselve and that why being able to chose which buff you want to handle on which boss could be a great addition. (ex : You would probably do CoE golem with the range buff).

- Removing the stupid nerf to weakness on the unshakable buff could also allow player that want to build defensively to be able to better manage any survivability. I know first handely that it’s possible to facetank bosses in dungeon but having more room to do it would probably help diversity.

- A buff that prevent any critical strike and allow condition damage to do more damage is a cheap solution to fix condition damage, at least in dungeon. This allow all party member to have more room to actually inflict any condition by clearing all short lasting condition given from critical strikes that remove longlasting condition. This also allow defensive build to not be a burden from an offensive point of view.

Taku.6352:

TL;DR: Let’s punish those who use zerkers.

Feel like you read nothing… This doesn’t punish zerker at all, this add more room for diversity.

Disclaimer : I don’t think I have THE solution, this is just an idea that i’m proposing to all of you.

Problematic :
Since now a very long time, dungeons party are stucked in this so called “zerk meta”. In fact this is just the most efficient way to do dungeon since the faster you kill mobs, the easier it is to survive any fight. This mindset has lead to the very whole approch we got of dungeons and it’s narrowing class choice as well as gear choice to the depressing “zerk meta”.

A way to shake that :
What i’m suggesting is to allow some changes to the Unshakable buff of dungeon champions. You know, this gray icone that grant some hard control immunity to dungeon mobs after a control.
My idea would be to give this buff three declension that would rotate each time you remove all defiance buff. Each of these declension would promote a different party gameplay. Let’s list them (I give them some color to differentiate them) :

Blue buff : Gains defiance when targeted by crowd-control skills. Blind is 10% as effective. While not under chill effect the champion take only 20% damage.

Green buff : Gains defiance when targeted by crowd-control skills. Blind is 10% as effective. The champion can’t take critical hit, conditions do 50% more damage.

_Yellow buff : Gains defiance when targeted by crowd-control skills. Blind is 10% as effective. For each player in [distance] radius, the champion take 20% less damage. (this does not apply if there is only one player in this area)

Explanation :
- The blue buff will clearly be the most prefered for organized speed run. Maintaining it for the fight duration will certainly prove to be a kittenallenging but this should promote a bit more diversity in the party gear.

- The green buff is here to promote condition damage and the fact that the champion will be immune to critical strike will give player a harder time caping condition stack. The critical immunity will also grant some place for tanky gear.

- The yellow buff should promote range strategy and allow players to still be able to solo dungeon.

Conclusion :
I think this should be enough to promote more variety in dungeon while still keeping things in line with the current game. Also… You can name the differents buff hoever you want, i’m to lazy to give them a proper name.

You absolutely didn’t understand Zenos, I never said they will have less might stack. Pets are heavily impact by might stack. If the stats granted by might stack are lowered, the pets will, de facto, do less damage and i don’t think they deserve this kind of nerf.

I’m not saying that they hit like crap since the ugly patch in which they horribly destroyed their damage but… Oh well! I’m saying it they hit like crap and player will complain after this patch because with their lower dps they will think even more that pets are more of a burden then needed.

SpellOfIniquity.1780:

Ones to avoid are bears and devourer’s. Bears have terrible damage and only two of them (black and brown) have useful F2’s. None of the devourer’s have useful F2’s, none of them deal good damage, they pull bad aggro with their “retreat” skill and conditions destroy them.

I do agree with how you see the bears but not the devourer.
Let me explain, the real strengh of the devourer is it’s synergy with “rampage as one” there ain’t better pet to grant you might stack than the devourer. In fact, each time they attack they hit twice (meaning 2 might stacks) while in the same time other pets will only hit once. Also, carrion devourer have a good F2.

As a BM ranger, i’m worried that with the might nerf, the bigest burden is on our pet’s dps which rely heavily on our ability to overstack might on them. In short this mean pets will lose 125 power, so something like 5% dps.
For me this change will be a nerf but, for other spec that don’t really rely on pet, sure, this will be pretty enjoyable. I will probably use a bit more the torch for open pve farm and every buff to WH are always welcome (for me CD reduction is mean more combo blast and better boon uptime. Thought, hunter call buff is a bit off since this skill need either to be a channelled skill with a better dps or some usefull debuff on it.)

Changes on Heal as one doesn’t make it more appealing. This skill grant absolutely nothing except health. What this skill truly need is to be tied to one of the ranger skill categorie. Just tie it to survival skill, add 5 second CD (up to 25 second) and everything will be fine because there will be room for us to improve this skill via trait.

As for me, I’m pretty please with this changes.

Buff to locust swarm (0.5 cast time instead of 1) is one very good thing. That’s a skill i use a lot and most of the time I’m kittened because i lose tons of time casting it. this will be a great addition to my overall dps and i love it. (Still, the fact that devs don’t understand why it’s a good buff is just laughable)

Buff to CPC is a good thing to. Not because it will be something interesting to use after but because it seem they start to aknowledge that necromancers have really weak skill with way to long cooldown. (The area denial thing made me laugh, you’ll need something a lot more effective to call it area denial)

Buff to locust signet is interesting because, again they reduce a long CD skill but they also try to buff some healing done. I still won’t use active but it feel like this skill will be way better after patch.

The buff to Signet of undeath is irrelevant switch LF gain to health gain and this will become something useable. Active have no real use except trolling a zerg in wvw by rezzing a fort supervisor.

I was most likely using this build :
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fRAQNBmQDbkjmWarsxmG+bTgLUQ/mBQLEbFcC0dGA-TBSLwAZ2fQmyvfKBbr6DBNB8VDAgOAoaEAA-e

(yeah i know it’s not optimal but it’s just meant to easily farm open pve)

Absolutely no vitality buff. Like other, i was just standing still waiting for another wave of loots… sorry, mobs.

Since last patch i’m seeing my necromancer randomly losing LF.
It happen twice while doing the ulgoth defense event and some other time on other WB event. My LF was brought down to 88% from 100% (while out of combat and without using DS). Anyone have seen this happen too?

In fact, SoV is just another example of how much the staff overvalue life siphon.
The damage part of all necro siphon is a joke even in full power build.
The healing part require a full investment in your build (granted that you don’t use a minion build) to show a bit of potential. (this mean full healing gear, vampirism runes, dagger/WH, full vampirism trait and well build… I won’t talk about the looooooong cd on well that hurt this build)
SoV is the exact same thing. It could have been interresting if passive hadn’t any gcd by granting, de facto, a passive direct damage reduction but the gcd just hurt to much. Active part grant a minor party dps boost and a minor heal that don’t really have any use.
So like spoj said, it’s only interesting if you want to spec in signet which have all a long CD.

NB: Thieves are also crippled by this fear of life siphon by the way they designed venom.
NB²: I will never understand why they fear healing gear to the point that they separate the damage part and healing part.

Let’s try to be constructive :
- Fragment of war seem to easy to gain add one 0 to the rank. Rank 2500+ would be much more accurate for “prestige”.
- Why do you go half pvp rank while full pve challenging stuff completion? Rank 80! nothing more nothing less (I assure you there are more then enough that are at this rank )
- What do you do about the fact that PvE in it’s whole is united in a megaserver? your “reward” lose automatically it’s prestige don’t you think?
- What happen to people that have a lot of character and use all of them equally? Will each character be a racial hero or just one? in case if it’s just one, will the time while the character ain’t played count as actual non connection?
- Lot’s of people pass from one server to another will they lose their statut?

Some unproductives thought :
I think you’ve got an idea that might be interesting, but at the same time you’re developping it in the wrong direction.
“Prestige” in guild wars 2 should most likely get through skin and maybe title. But PvE don’t fit the requirement for “server prestige”. Servers are here for WvW, everything else is megaserver.

Why i like your idea is because you can apply it with more depth in WvW. Sure, it won’t become a “mentor” like character but you can imagine each server being granted the possibility to chose at any moment a “warmaster” in wvw. This guy would have no real buff except maybe visual and grant more point to it’s server when he take tower/fort… At the same time, opponent would be granted wvw server point for the head of this “warmaster”.

To avoid exploit, it would have to be elected by at least 30 player and statut reset each time he leave wvw. Sure you can add some requirement like an actual minimum wvw rank or whatever.

PvE wise, I think it’s a bad idea.

PvP wise… I don’t think there is a real interest. Maybe you can add a glowing effect on players that are in the top 10…

Trevor Bennett.3691:

Hmm, I love getting them. Once I finish my 8th alt so I have all the classes I’ll use them on new characters to 1)Run through the personal story, 2)Map complete, and finally 3) Cash out the skill points for w/e.

At minimum you get skill points out of them, with a little more effort you get all the level up rewards.

1- that’s a good thing you plan to run through personnal story, maybe you will be able to understand how flawed it has become since the last change. Yes personnal story is a total mess right now.

2- Map completion? I assure you map completion is much more fun if you do it while leveling and you will gain more then enough experience to do it without the need to use level booster.

3- And yes, ultimately, this is just some skill point that we can burn in the mystic forge.

Ok it seem there are some misunderstanding here.

First of all thieves are top “burst” damage not top dps.

I recall that on reddit they did some parse and believe it or not Ingeneer are on top by a small margin and essentially due to additionnal condition damage that they gain from like every skill they have. I would also like to say that ingeneer can grant descent invisibility uptime and can replace ele for might combo. Saying that they are here to apply vuln is just a noob way to see things.

Now. While i said Guardian/warrior/ele are holy trinity, i said it for casual speedrun. Not for highly elitist record speedrun. I agree for most of what you say Thaddeus from a record stand point and an organized teamplay with player that actually mastered their classes. But most of the time people pugs. And in pug you usually can’t check everyone skillplay. So why Guardian/warrior/ele and not Ele/thief/mesmer (which would be probably one of the best dps team).
- guardian is the insurance. While being able to dish out a good dps he also provide aegis, clean condition, reflect and some regeneration to keep people at their best (which mean over 90% health).
- warrior is the passive supporter. While they took a severe hit with adrenaline decay, they are still a pretty good choice for their high survivability, descent dps and banner. They can also take the boon provider role via utility and trait (sure they won’t be optimal dps wise but they will grant even more offensive boon than an ele while in combat)
- Ele are the sure choice. They got high dps, party tools and buff easily the party.

Why thieves and mesmers are optionnal for these casual speed run party? Mostly because people lack insight on every classes (what’s their strong point and weaknesses. How certain skills work.) In a word, it because of human factor.

Now, why cornering? Cornering didn’t appear with FGS exploit. We were already cornering before. The point in cornering are :
- Regroup : by regrouping, you are sure to share boons, heal and you got an easy time rezzing peeps that fail to dodge.
- Overcome fight mechanisms and, sometimes, use them against the bosses. (yes I’m thinking about all the reflect stuff here).
- Wisely manage add pop.
- While cornering you are fighting on your own ground. You will most likely don’t have some weird surprise.

Now it’s sure that there are encounters in dungeon that evolve (like AC spider or HotW troll). I’m not saying that it’s a bad thing. It force us to actually adapt and rethink what we do. Again, it’s sure that certain classes lose potential while cornering or meleing but, here what you got to look at is wether you are ready to lose some of your insurance for a slight speed increase. This is up to the party to decide about that.

This thread hurt.

Rangers are perfectly fine mele wise.
“Nature’s voice” builds are still alive and kicking. Yes rangers can rock with strong survivability. From this you can go condi or power as you wish.
I hope I could teach you, longbow users that rangers have still their pets which can still add some pretty descent damage if properly used.
Maybe I could also teach you that there are different type of pet that have their own niche.

Right now, most ranger clinge to longbow because it has been a bit overbuffed during 2014. While that was what most of the ranger community wanted, this didn’t had a good effect on genral gameplay because it’s a ranged weapon and making a ranged weapon into the “best weapon of this class” have buffed a lot the unconscious selfishness of rangers gameplay. Let’s be frank, most party will hate Longbow rangers for just one and only one skill : Longbow # 4. Skill that is overused in most of the case and that destroy teamplay in 90% of the case which lead to a high drop in dps.

As for dungeon, I thought it was well known that they are oowned by the holy trinity guardian/warrior/Elementalist. Every other class (sadly) are optional.
- Thieves grant a descent dps and easy trash mob skip (not to say that they can perma blind).
- Ingeneer is a jake of all trade but sligthly harder to play that can fullfill an ele spot or a thief spot
- Rangers add a bit more dps but have it’s own issue (for example, newbie have a hard time controling their pet and even a hard time restraining themselve to not overusing LB#4)
- Mesmer grant easily some nice utility like timewarp and all the reflection stuff.
- Necro… well… no… let’s just skip the necro this poor thing add nothing to dungeon.

NB: cornering, except maybe for AC run, is still the best way to ease some fight mechanics like SE Alfa aoe. FGS was just usefull to hide player that don’t know how and when they have to dodge.

Well…
Fact is that your low amount of damage is due to your build. Build make your damage or not.
Fact is that your survivability is due to your build and your skills.
Fact is that you seem to use either P/P or D/D.
Fact is that you are using build you search on internet.

So, first of all, mister KeyboardWarrior, you need to understand your class what you can do, what you can’t. You also need to understand how to build and why you build in a way or not. You need to choose things that fit your gameplay and help you where you are lacking.

There are some rules in this game. Unless you understand them, you won’t be able to perform with any classes.
1°- Damage are done by stacking, on your build, the most possible + X% damage trait/ runes. (power build)
2°- your damage will stil be laugeable if you don’t have any crit chance AND ferocity. (power build)
Once you understand this 2 points, you are able to build for damage.

You want dps? build and gear for DPS. when I see your damage I can’t help myself but thinking : “God this guy have absolutely no crit chance”

Now you seem to have an issue with survivability. Luckily, without stealth, thieves have a set of skills that are here for that.
First of all, Blind . Blind is something you can spam as a thief. It will totally negate any non aoe attack from your ennemy. A blinded ele, a blinded warrior or whatever, they will all miss their high damaging/long cd attack if they are blinded. You as a thief, you can permablind! Do it!
Second, Dodge/evade. Thieves have so many of them it would be a shame to not use them.
Third, stunt. Yes, as a thief, you are really potent at stuning foes. You can easily interrupt everything that could come at you.

Sword and off hand pistol are your best friend if you lack sone defense. It won’t hurt you to give them a try.

Lastly, I think, you are caught up in a meta against which you don’t want to adapt. You are just a wanabee owned peeps. I personnally think it’s totally possible for thieves to play a cele OP build to. In fact it would probably be a good counter for the boon starving meta because cele thieves can and will steal boons to use them.

Sadly, you will do subpar damage in dungeon with this build.

Even with your high potential power, you will lack :
- 20% damage from close to death
- average 10% damage from target the weak
- 5-10% damage from runes
- tons of critical damage

On an other hand :
- spectral walk and spectral armor are useless because dungeon mobs hit way to hard so what you want is dodging hits not taking them.
- plague signet : Does this thing even have a purpose in dungeon?
- Golem : must be used cautiously to avoid agro and uncornered mobs.

And lastly but not least, the moment you lose death shroud, you virtually do no damage.

For wvw i could see this work.

Well, my point when I said that Necromancer are on par with other profession when you look at condi cleanse is that Necromancer’s condi cleanse are in a way longer CD than other classes condi cleanse that may be weaker but that you can use a lot more.

Anyway, we got different point of view, probably different experience too. And while you’ll sit on your opinion, I’ll sit on mine .

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

Dadnir.5038:

You 2 are right on this. Yes it would be very difficult to play necromancer, in fact using corruption skills would be a suicide move. But why do we still kill ourselve with our utility? Do you really think that necromancer are the best at handling condition? I do think we are on par with other but absolutely not the best.

In fact with natural decay of DS, you wouldn’t turtle damage longer than we do today with a larger DS health pool. Here is my point. Sure necromancer would be able to handle stronger hits but, they wouldn’t stay longer that they actually can. While with your change they wouldn’t.

Also… an elementalist ain’t squishy at all.

In reverse order:
Elementalists are incredibly squishy without their defensive skills. Necro defense revolves entirely around death shroud. Biggest difference between the two is that an ele starts with all of their skills available while a Necro has to first build up enough life force to activate death shroud. Try playing an ele without using a defensive skill for the first 6-8 seconds of a battle. See how you manage.

Second, what the heck are you trying to accomplish? Necros are very good at tanking hits. That isn’t something that needs to be changed.

Third: Necros are very much the best at handling conditions. Only one condition clear on a Necro only clears a single condition, and that’s an unpopular trait (shrouded removal, though I make use of it personally). The typical Necro build has 2-3 cleanses that have the potential to be total clears (if not garunteed). Death Shroud plus a large health pool lets us just sit on conditions when others would actually be worried. Necromancers are by far the hardest profession to kill with conditions.

Well, I’m playing every classes since gamestart so :

1- I do not agree with the way you see the elementalist. in fact it is really resiliente despite his low natural health pool, it’s just a matter of build.

2- I do not try to accomplish anything. The only real weakness of necromancer is it’s inability to cope with repeated big hit, if you want to use DS as a protective thing just go all the way and make it a very large health pool so it can actually suck up the big hit that we can encounter in game and not just the hit you can received from other player. It’s just a matter of equity.

3- I’am also a shroud removal user and i know perfectly well how much way you got to handle condition. I also know that necromancer aren’t the only one that can trait, use utility, use weapon skills to get rid of condition. So yes, I’ll say it again, necro are on par with most of other class in this aspect. This is just a matter of build.

Now, for the propose change of the OP, my point of view is still that there are to many flaw in it’s change. If he want to change DS, he would have to revamp it all the way like :

- While in DS you are still using your own health pool.
- No more DS health decay while in DS.
- Now, DS skill consume LF (we can imagine that corruptions, instead of weakening necromancer will as well consume some LF).
- Spectral armor and spectral walk transfer damage taken on LF pool.
- Some tweek could be welcome on some DS trait. (ex : Vital persistence : DS skills cost 50% less).
- We can imagine with this a change to “hunger” (Soul reaper specific trait line bonus) : each trait grant 2,5% damage to DS skills.
- On the same time, with this, there would be no more excuse for denying necromancer actual “reactivity” by granting them a bit more defensive ability.

With these base change :
First change from OP become irrelevant
Second and third change are perfectly done.
Fourth change still depend on whether you trait with foot in the grave or not.
We could imagine well of darkness CD halve to 25 second (even with this cool down I hardly think this would be overpowered, granted that thieves can permablind peoples without everybody shouting that it’s overpowered. In fact, this would help a bit diversity because well have way to long CD to be usefull at all.)

Well, after seeing this thing, we can easily state that the thief was a total newby.
First, what kind of thief don’t have gap closer? DD that don’t know they got F1 button?
Second, the whole way he talk remind the good old day of GW2 first month, when player were discovering class mechanic.
Third, he think that thief is all about stealth (I really laughed hard here). Thieves have 4 main mitigation mechanic : Stealth, evade (more then anyother classes can dream of), blind and interrupt (permablind is easily achieved while perma interrupt is a bit harder but doable)
Forth, asking someone if he is french in a way that it sound like an insult should be reported for discrimination. I won’t say racism because french ain’t a “race” and they ain’t worst then any other nationality.

The OP while kiting just outplayed a newby nothing bad in this.

I still can’t understand what they call “rewarding”. I’ve got over 6 thousand hour played, all eight classes maxed leveled and geared, I’m throwing fractal jewel because they just pile up in my bags. Do i need experience? No. Do i need fractal relic? Hell No! Do I need wvw crest? I’ve got over 30 000 of them, I think it’s plenty enough. At this state, I’ve done almost everything I could do despite my terrible drop rate which is terrible even with my 260% base Magic find.
Before, dailies were a kind of redline to follow that was giving me the will to play almost all content everyday. Now, Like today, there are even day when i don’t even wanna do my daily.

You 2 are right on this. Yes it would be very difficult to play necromancer, in fact using corruption skills would be a suicide move. But why do we still kill ourselve with our utility? Do you really think that necromancer are the best at handling condition? I do think we are on par with other but absolutely not the best.

In fact with natural decay of DS, you wouldn’t turtle damage longer than we do today with a larger DS health pool. Here is my point. Sure necromancer would be able to handle stronger hits but, they wouldn’t stay longer that they actually can. While with your change they wouldn’t.

Also… an elementalist ain’t squishy at all.

Well I do understand your point but here we enter in a balance perspective. The fact is that DS ain’t something we should call a defence mechanism. You see it like an aegis and you shouldn’t. In Anet wildest dream Necromancer should be able to dps, tank and support in DS, not using it like an aegis. And in fact, Necromancer can do all of this. The issue is more like DS skills don’t fit for the game combat design.

- Sure life blast can hit 5 targets but piercing is a terrible way to hit more then 1 target and it required player to actually trait for this. Not to say that this is a reeeeeeaally slow skill.

- Sure you can heal a lot if you trait deeply in blood magic and soul reaping while in DS, but the game has been design so that healing scale poorly and most of the usefull support come from boon instead of pure HPS. Which mean that we call defensive support someone who grant protection and vigor and offensive support someone who grant might and fury. There is no place for a heal in this game.

- Actually with DS you can have a taste of good resilience if you use it with spectral skills and warhorn #5. This kind of thing is perfect to suck up a lot of small hit in a short time. The game design make this usefull in zerg v zerg and pvp (out of bunkering) which is “ok” (I mean, I’m sure a lot of people are glad that another bunker option ain’t viable).

What would your “changes” do :

Low DS health pool affect directly directly how much healing you get from healing in DS. But it also affect the time you’re able to dps in DS, The time you support in DS and totally ruin your capacity to facetank small hits. This also affect directly the ratio time beetween LF building/ LF consuming. You will use more of your time to build LF than to use it. You can totally understand what this would do by trying a bit of underwater combat with a DS build (It’s harder to build LF underwater and this hurt a lot DS builds).

Along with the low DS health pool, we got healing in DS and being able to use utility skill while in DS. The time spend in DS has been lowered so what’s good in healing in DS? “Unholy sanctuary” already prove that a small heal in DS is useless at the point that Anet had to add another effect on this trait to make it almost noticable. Let’s adds vampiric traits. Unholly sanctuary become totally irrelevant in front of vampiric master, Vampiric stay crapy and vampiric ritual may become… ah no… vampiric ritual will stay crap until well CD are lowered. (Vampiric ritual is a good trait until you take a focus attack, the worst part of this trait is that you gotta blow all your utility to gain a bit of resilience.)

Spectrals skills would need a lot of balance to gain a bit of interest because they are balanced around the actual DS system. Issue will be that if you can’t take a beating with spectral armor and DS activate, spectral armor will be a dead skill, but if spectral armor give to much LF out of DS, it become an overpowered skill. If we keep the numbers you previously said, Anet would have to double the LF gain per hit on spectral armor to keep the ability to take a beating but out of DS the LF gain become OP with these numbers.

Minion master : even with low DS health pool, the siphon from minion would own. I used to play MM for some time, without heal from siphon in DS it’s pretty easy to keep yourself alive with just your minion siphon. Give 2 second free heal from minion by just entering DS and Necromancers MM become godly. They are, at the moment, almost balanced, a suvivability buff to them wouldn’t do any good to necromancer general balance.

In my opinion, utility skills in DS is still way to dangerous and if you add a bit of stability in DS, it would become totally laughable.

So from my point of view, all your changes ask for a lot of balanced change on other skills that may be balanced at the moment. And at the same time, a lot of thing that actually need changes won’t be looked at because necromancer will rock in area were they are already good at in pvp (condition and minion masters). Necromancer issue ain’t it’s DS, it ain’t it’s survivability against small hits (where DS is just fine), it ain’t it’s dps. The necromancers issue is in it’s lack of teamplay ( bad support, horrid combo zone), it’s lack of a real cleaving weapon (sorry but even if the changes on dagger were a good start, i still think nobody see it as a cleaving weapon) and it’s lack of survivability against hard hit (Necromancer have a large health pool which is hard to resplenish when it’s almost empty while a guardian will pop an aegis or invulnerability which will suck up tons of damage).

In the end, I would like to ask : What if necromancer had a low base health pool (11k HP) and a higher base DS health pool (18k HP)? This would probably hurt condi build a lot (and of course corruption skills) but would this be unbalanced?

Lily.1935:

After reading through the comments I noticed that a lot of people disagree with 3. Your views on it seem to be coming from viewing it in a vacuum rather then view its potential with the other suggested changes as well as what is already their and what other possible changes could go along with it.

One point I’d like to make is that With healing along with access to traits DS goes from a sort of proxy damage prevention to actual damage prevention. Allowing us to heal up and not take any damage to our important health pool gives us real Damage prevention. This is only one example of an immediate effect it would have.

Before we continue with the No on that one, Ask yourself on what would happen if it did get implemented that way? How might this effect game play, skills and traits? What might we want to change to better function with it? Humor me.

I carefully answered for 3. And yes taking all your suggestion along, I still think that this would overpowered the necromancer.
Let’s be blunt, I already use spectral skills to enter and leave safely an ennemy zerg. Being able to activate spectral skills while on DS would garante me almost 15s of invulnerability before ds restart to wear of. That’s imbalanced. Using spectral wall while in ds… people are already kittened off that we got a fear in ds imagine if you pop a wall…
Signet : we got a signet that grant us LF while in combat, while we could argue that it’s good it would enhance a lot DS. Being able to condi bomber in DS (signet of spite) and by that improve a lot DS damage would only lead to a nerf on DS attack killing even more DS.
Minions : Here is the worst enemy of your changes. Minion master are terribly tough because of the trait vampiric master. Allowing the minions siphon to pass through DS would make minion masters absolutely unkillable even if you lower LF pool to 10k.
Wells : Again a lot of damage here and absolutly OP heal with vampiric ritual. Being able to enter a zerg via DS2, pop up wells and stay alive enough time to repop DS while doing tremendous damage would be OP.
Corruption : I think those could fit in your changes. But that’s all.

Now, your change to necromancer won’t give a place to necromancers in dungeon. because Necromancer will still lack an actual worth to the team. Necromancer only bring it’s dps to the team. Alas it’s dps is on part with every other profession and is lacking for multitarget. Debuff are nerfed to the ground by bosses property so even if necromancers where the only one to be able to weaken they still weren’t needed for dungeon. Lowering life force will also lower necromancer ability to survive hardhitting thing. Again, a hard nerf to pve survivability where you could careless about some kitty heal in DS.

My point is that your changes wouldn’t help necromancer at all, overpowering him in spvp/wvw and nerfing him to oblivion for dungeon. Open pve doesn’t really matter except the fact that as necromancer you would be only glad to play solo. Taking you apart from large scalling event where mobs hit harder and harder.

I agree with the op. New daily are an horrible fail.

Why?

First, we feel forced to do things. Nobody like to feel like being forced to do thing. Forced to play a specific class in pvp? well i won’t pvp anymore. Forced to stay in a building in wvw? Hell! no more wvw for me. Forced to go in nothing-interesting-land in pve to do event? why would i do that?

Second, Reward feel absolutely NOT rewarding. Experience… We can gather experience everywhere. This world is so full of experience it would be a crime not to get some. You enter in an area, you gain experience. You’re mining a nod, you gain experience. You kill something, experience again. Do an event, experience. Crafting, experience. Build something in wvw, experience again and again and again. Does experience feel rewarding? No.

Third and not the least, with new daily, you don’t want to play the content of GW2. Previously, you add a goal that led you in every aspect of GW2. Now you do 3 thing the way you’re forced to and everything else can go to hell, you already got your AP.

In conclusion, these new daily may be a good thing for lazy people that like to be bossed around. But, it’s done in an horrible fashion and i think it’s a very bad step if you want player to enjoy the game and stay in this game.

How to make necromancer welcome in dungeon?

Make the trait “furious demise” Party wide. Here you go, Necromancer give fury on demand, necromancer become usefull.

They could also change “Unholy Martyr” this Grand master trait that we wouldn’t take even if it was an adept trait, to something usefull (party wise) like :
Dark aura : while in death shroud, your teammate gain the buff “dark aura” allowing them to steal life each time they hit. Life stealed would be at the level of vampiric.
This would grant a real party support. (not saying that vampiric damage and heal is worth anything, just saying that this would be in a better direction)

1. Well I somewhat agree with this one. I’m not a big fan of large health pool. The real issue is that dev seem to think that a large health pool is an increase of survivability. Necromancer are a lot like ranger’s pet : lack of dodge and large health pool. And yeah increasing ranger’s pet’s health pool didn’t made them sturdier. In fact, a large health pool is perfect for pvp defense but is this game only about pvp. wvw and pve are at a loss here, I mean, large health pool are usefull in small scale battle and even more 1v1 but this is an mmo and it’s useless to have a large healthpool for group content (or pve with One shot mechanisms)

2. Here, I do not agree. From an RP point of view this should absolutely not be allowed because when you enter death shroud you supposedly switch from one life bar to another. (well I know that the overflow of hits taken in deathshroud already killed this “RP point of view” but whatever). From a player point of view, deathshroud, is right now to much of a defensive mechanisme, most of the necromancer’s use it to suck up damage because there are no other option. Every feature that we trait our deathshroud are optional in the regard of these last defensive option. We do not need healing on DS, we actually need out of DS defensives options. And don’t tell me we got siphon. Siphon are broken useless since release.

3. I don’t agree with this one, this could make DS really too powerful. Minion master would wreck everything (even more) in pvp, too much dps for a lot of specs, hellish defense for spectral spec… No no, this definitely shouldn’t be done.

4. I agree with the fact that necromancer should have more stability. Tiying it to DS? I don’t know. this would even more emphasis the “last defense mechanism” that plague DS.

For me It’s not DS that plague necromancer, it’s more the generally bad design necromancers trait. Necromancers need to be able to support it’s team in a proper way, which would mean :
- better combo field.
- better combo finisher.
- better trait option. Necromancers need to be able to spread a bit more boons.
For all these things we don’t need a large DS pool so that’s why I do agree with #1 but everything else would just keep DS in it’s current state of a last defense mechanism.

So true…
You forgot that megaserver killed guild missions
But all in all, every feature patch kill a bit more the fun of this game.

Megaserver were supposed to fill low populated map… But these map have nothing attractive so nobody still goes there.
Megaserver were supposed to be intelligent and ut you with peeps with the same kind of gameplay as you… It’ doesn’t.

I was doing my daily to play a bit of everything everyday. Now I’ve looked at the “rewards” and seen experience crap everywhere. Leveling in this this game is easy as breath. You got experience from killing, exploring, walking, doing event, doing heart, mining, doing dungeon, crafting… Do you seriously think somebody here need experience? Not to mention there are leveling scrolls or books. What the hell do I have to do with this thing I got from the daily.

Actually I feel punished for doing my daily.

I was slowly reducing my playing time because LS2 over exploit everynew map they release. Asking players to farm mindlessly a freeloot map. Overdoing the same thing : “Kill these boss during breach for an RNG chance to get the thing you need” = Hey we are at chapter 7 each boss need to give you 3 item (you can only have one item at a time, you can, and you will, have past item instead of the one you want)

Thanks anet, you’ve bored me.

I feel that your analisys on ele and gardian heal is a bit off… One thing that will make them absolutely better then necro in this area is ther easy way to grant “protction” which your build doesn’t.

• Elementalist : water staff AA = ae heal (pretty much bettre then the unreliable pathing of life blast). Add to this permanent heal from water attunement passive, easy acces to party regeneration buff, blasts and water field. Cleansing whenever you grant regeneration in combo with healing rain is a 4 condition cleanse.
• Gardian : Virtue of resolve (this should be enough to make every other classes jealous). Add ae healing on auto attack with mace, healing on symbols, heavy access to party defensives boons (regen, protection… and stability), tons of way to cleanse (not to say some whirl in these petty light fields…)

So yes I think necromancer fall behind… especially if you use unholy martyr which remove 1 condition to 1 ally of your party every 3 seconds. (Yes you choose the very worst grand master trait you could choose).

Well… let’s just say it… You will dish out your 3-4k auto attack, same goes for any warrior or any other class in full glass. But your worst issue will be that if you dare face one player in pure condi build you will melt faster than you will dish your damage.
I used to think the same way than you and then I got owned. Just keep this in mind even a necro is a frail thing in full zerker gear.

NinjaEd.3946:

Is it wrong of me to have pvt asc set on my thief then? Am I doing something wrong?!

Well you don’t need PVT as a thief… for living story you just need to perma blind and use auto attack and you’ll easily get all achivement.

“the sealed, cylindrical case”
You know… this really feel like he is talking about a black lion chest. Well, for me every hint lead me to this item at least. (merchant, large city with water, sealed, and very common object)

Edit : I checked black lion chest can’t be used on the forge sorry for the bother
Edit 2 : On the other hand, basic salvage kit and crude salvage kit can now be used in the mystic forge

From a PvE point of view, what creep me the most in your suggestion is your change on AA. Stun/daze on auto attack… The words totally gamebraking and totally dumb are what i’ve got in mind. Why? first of all you want to select the skill you will interrupt and that’s what we were doing in GW1. With this you’ll perma daze/stun or have the boss invul against daze/stun when you really need to interrupt him. This is totally broken. In PvP, it would be even more broken because you’ll perma daze while your pet will wreck the heck out of your enemys.

Rapid fire is fine as it is. It deal far less damage then hundred blade and you only need one dodge to doge the full unload while you needed 2 before. Yes it’s easier to negate a rapide fire now then before. Removing critical strike on rapide fire… /facepalm

Hunter shot… Actually this skill have a good synergy with the marksmanship traitline. The stealth is here for that. I don’t think your change would make the ranger gameplay healthier here.

Point blank shot. You say that you want to change the ranger for the better and you keep the worst thing that the ranger have. Even more then that you want to increase the knockback effect. This skill is THE skill that make the ranger persona non gratta in dungeon. The best thing you could do with this skill would be to swap it with an utility skill. Everyday I see people flaming rangers because of this skill and I can’t complain they are right. It feel like the ranger can’t stand having this skill out of CD. Mob fly everyday to the end of the map with melee class running after and aoe empty of monster because of this skill. So NO!

Barrage : Barrage is fine as it is. Why because it’s a nice source of cripple than have a good synergy with a very interesting trait. Weakness on it would be totally pointless and more then 5 target for a skill would be probematic as well. It can already hit 12 time up to five target which mean 60 impact. Don’t ask for to much please.

After going trough marksmanship in his blog, the first thing that hurt is that “etheus” seem to be a range freak that want more and more range damage.
To much “range” emphasis in trait is already what kill this traitline and cripple rangers for dungeons.

Skirmishing : not much to say exept the fact that the emphasis on “swaping weapon” is interresting and “flanking strike” totally outclass “predator onslaugh”. Beware, pet’s already hit really hard do not underestimate them.

Wilderness survival : same here seem like you clearly underestimate pets damage. As a beastmaster when I see a 10% increase damage for my pet on adept I just smirk and say “yes please, yes! I will wreck everything yes…”

Nature magic : Just… No. Especially “Force of Nature” totally broken idea.

Beastmastery : adept come with more pet’s damage… Master, I had expect that you will come to a solution to the totally useless stability training but no (very disapointing). Grandmaster… more damage to pet and more healing in a world where the developpers don’t want a proeminent healing power… Just no.

From the point of view of a long date beastmasters all your suggestions are insane. Just understand that the cat would be able to do some 18k-ish crit while they already can top around 10k (you know, before pet nerf, beastmasters were wreaking everything while roaming?). From the point of view of a dungeoneer, their are way to much trait that say : “Use bow man use bow” while everyone need to be melee for maximum support/damage.
Other thing, I didn’t saw anything on “expertise training” one of the most horrendous trait for pets. there is absolutely no base condi damage on pet’s and this thing grant 350 condi damage to them. What the point? Even with this it’s impossible to create a condi pet.

I think you don’t really get it.

First of all i have to say that necromancers don’t have poor damage. In a full glass setup a dagger/wh necromancer will dish out probably as much damage as a thief (which are well placed in the dps ranking). Why dagger/wh? Because dagger AA is better in dps then thieve dagger AA and wh provide a flat boost in dps with it’s 5th skill. This is balance by the thief stealth attack who provide an high damaging burst every 3-4 seconds.

What I find wrong with what you wrote is essentially your emphasis on well. Wells are our worst ennemy in PvE. In PvE, you need might, might and might again. In PvE, you need fire field, blast and… nothing else. To be more accurate, everything else is an hindrance so wells become automatically an hindrance.

As for your ideas, I think :
- Vampiric aura should be a blood magic grand master trait which could grant your ally within x radius to have the effect of vampiric (the trait). The effect should not be able to stack (I mean you can siphon just once per hit by the effect of this aura to prevent abuse by stacking blood necromancers in a team). Moving this to a trait would have a meaning by becoming a party dps boost and neutral party support.
- Unholy Martyr. As it stand it’s probably the most useless trait in game but i don’t think anet is up to make a move and buff/change/remove this trait. I think the best thing would be to change it to vampiric aura but whatever…
- Plague signet. Never seen this thing work and i don’t even think this would help necromancer to shine in support. Who would want a necromancer to suck condition when warrior/guard can erase them with shout, whirlwind combo etc. ?

Hey there,
I too play a beastmaster sincedecember 2012. While I do agree to some of your point, there are some that i can’t agree with.
- First of, we already got a cleaving pet. Drake cleave and are one of our very best pet because of their blast effect.
- Rangers have more then enough way to get rid of condition. I think right now the game is pretty balanced in this regard. Either you trait for it or you struggle that’s the same for every class out there.
- Axe is a pretty good weapon right now. Axe 2 may seem a bit weird or underwhelming but assuming you face a whole zerg, you got the possibility to hit a whole lot’s of target with just this skill.
- The fact that interesting pet relative traits are out of beastmastery is also fine. we’ve got 14pt and you can only use 6 on beastmastery for 3 traits. If other traitlines were useless for beastmasters, it would be worse.

By the way, the only thing which i think would really help rangers at this state, would be the possibility to disable some skills in our pet skillbar. They’ve got 4 skills but sometime you’d prefer your pet not to cc your target or disable the swiftness skill on birds.

The trait effect is supposed to occur once per target hitten when skill used. Do you tried it before flaming this forum?

Sadly, rangers still have LB#4 and abuse of this skill in dungeon is a really good enough reason for a party kick. And don’t give me the “no skilled ranger use it” argument. Actually most rangers you encounter in pug can’t restrain themselve to use it whenever it’s of CD.

This Buff to LB, will naturally raise the ranger hate only because of that point. Remember LB#4 (worst skill to spam in dungeon).