Guild Wars 2

Spite – Parasitic Contagion : A percentage of your condition damage heals you. (5%, not affected by healing power)

Ok, a long time before necromancers didn’t have “burns” and somes said it would be cool if we could burn our foes. But wises people tried to reason everyone that this would break balance. You know what happens, “dhummfire” arrived and all the QQ arise. most of our way to apply condition have been nerfed for the sake of a balance were “Dhummfire” could shine, and we know it’s not even perfect.

With the next balance patch we’ve been advertised this new trait : Parasitic Contagion. I feel this trait will be really cool, I already see myself using it. And I know, a lot of people ask for this trait. I’m truly excited…

But let’s be honest it would be probably perfectly fine if this trait was in the blood magic trait line but… In Spite? Is this an April fools Joke? Giving to one of our offensive trait line the futur verybest sustain/defensive trait we could have?

That will totally break balance. I’m sadened because it’s like the design team of the game is saying : Play condibuild that’s the very best choice you can do!

In my opinion, the Spite trait line should be filled with power damage traits and non damaging condition related trait not things that directly say to players : If you wanna faceroll everything, go condition damage.

Sadely, after this balance patch we will obviously be nerfed for the only sake of this design choice.

Here it is the last of your master piece… Sorry I just laughed when I was reading this and at the end too.

Surprisingly there are really few “delay” on skill in this one. Does this mean Fantasm skill are already to easy to read? I saw just one on “illusionary assault”. sight

Overall, you idea for fabtasm is pretty bad because that would force mesmer even more into shatter. If you look at mesmer weapon damage, they are balance around having 3 fantasms out. So With only 1 fantasm out, we would do… half of our damage. Hopefuly we can still burst by shatter… You didn’t remove shatters skill, do you?

Changes on signet feel out of place…

Nerfing mimic… ( lol )… well why not, change mimic however you want…

Still compounding celerity may be an interesting idea.

Specific Game Mode
<PvE.>

Proposal Overview
<Reduce pet health pool by 25%. Change instinctual bond into a trait that grant high toughness or a permanent damage reduction.Reduce pet health pool by 25%. For instinctual bond it would be something like :
- Grant 400 pts of toughness at level 80.
or
- Reduce incoming damage to your pet by 30%>

Goal of Proposal
<Enhance pet survivability by making them tougher and helping ranger to actually heal them effectively. Large health pool are meant to suck condition damage not high power damage.>

Proposal Functionality
<I think it would be a change that is in line with the current design of GW2. It’s more a “quality of life” change that is meant to help ranger that want to invest effort into their pet.>

Associated Risks
<If the increased toughness hypothesis is chosen, it may grant a bit to much aggro to pet, leading to an increased death rate for dps pets. A flat damage reduction would probably be more welcome.>

Rangers with a BM build usually worked fine with cleric gear before the pet damage nerf. To achieve an interesting dps now, you’ve got to mix some Zealot in your gear.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vMAQNBjYDbkRlWVLYxiFuWDEMFHKRvHtKWt3poUnKhXf+WA-zwBBIrCykfwUBBKJtIasFVFRjVnEThlIqGA-e

Apothecary or settler may be a bit more interesting for PvP encounters.

In my opinion (note that it’s my opinion). Your changes makes ranger overpowered here.
You are right in one thing, Ranger need a bit more damage bonus but you add too much damage everywhere.

Marksmanship :
hunter focus : you are creating here a second “warrior play GS cause that’s the best weapon to deal damage whatever you’ll try” Just replace “warrior” by “ranger” and “GS” by “LB”. This will be totally broken PvE wise and this will hurt PvP/WvW a lot. It’ll be really easy to maintain a very High number of might stack with longbow.
Merging signets trait may be a good idea though.

Skirmishing :
I feel that companion might is already in the right place and I’m playing as a beastmaster. It’s not a necessary change. 5s instead of 3s was already an handy buff.

Wilderness survival :
Here your change on Empathic bond is totally OP. This is already a trait that is really good and at his place as a grandmaster trait.

Nature magic :
Nice change, I really like all of them. But maybe this will become a bit to much an “I must have 25 point in this branch”.

*Beastmastery : *
A bunch of change that may be interesting (support wise). But I’d rather see a flat damage bonus for pets which are part of our damage but gain nothing from our damage bonus.

Weapons :
Too many changes here to be really objective. GS may be a bit op, same for LB with a the shortened cool down on barrage.

shout :
I’d really like to see a “guard” as a more reactive skill which would grant distorsion to my pet instead of setting a zone to protect to my pet but… well whatever.
Heal as one change feel appealing. I think just promoting this healing skill as a shout could make it really good for some builds. Maybe this don’t need the other fancy changes.

Pet change :
Way too many changes here. Your idea for bears may be a bit op (they are tanky they don’t need to do tons of damage).
What I’d like to see would be more things like :
Pet shout being instant even if this mean a reduction in boon or condition duration. Plus this kind of change would address the lack of responsiveness of some of our F2 skill. All pet that use shout would become reactive.
Porcine F2 should be replace by the discovered object after using “forage”.
Devourer : 25% on auto attack is a bit much. 10% should be less op. Don’t forget Devourer hit 2 time on each auto attack, with rampage as one it’s already a really good combo.

Well that’s all.

Turamarth.3248:

Dadnir.5038:

Snip

Don´t forget that most of these need special conditions.

I’m not targeting warrior, I’m targeting the way the op think .

He is damaging so many build without any touch on the PvE meta zerk that it’s pitifull. He want to bring down dps while nerfing conditions build and base damage. He want to limit survivals skills while nerfing base damage hurting the non-meta so much it’s painfull to see.

A game without diversity is a game that will rot, and the only thing that this guy does in all his killing diversity. He don’t address anything about things that are being ignored because uninterresting while he bring down everywhere thing that are very popular. It’s a poor way to think.

And again, with warrior you’re killing diversity PvE wise.

It’s good and all to think it will be more fair for players vs players to remove things like invincibility, stability and all but you are looking at another game here. Your change to warrior make me laugh (and i don’t even play warrior).

-This is already the most resilient class in the game and you want to add (a lot) of protection on them?

- Greatsword, PvE wise, is already overpowered damage wise and you wanna add a burst skill that is so appealing for PvP, it make me puke. Come on, Boon strip, controle, large damage, leap, how many foes does it hit? 3? 5?… You are totally out of your mind here.

- Change on mace and sword : You make a tanking niche on mace (Issue : You nerf survivability skill/tool so much, it will be unplayable PvE wise = You made mace even more non appealing). You kill bleeds on sword (Issue : Conditions build are part of the diversity and sword warrior have almost oly sword for condi builds = Let’s just force warrior into power build)

- Not even a word from you about Physical utilities. Yeah nobody care about them, let’s just remove them from the game and nerf what work fine (oups sorry I didn’t see that you even nerfed one of them my bad).

Honnestly, look at what you are suggesting. When people ask you some question you only answer to the question that you want to answers. Let me just ask you a second time Swagg :

Why, instead of nerfing base damage, don’t you suggest a flat cap on damage bonus?

On warrior you got :
dual wielding (strengh V) : 5% (dual)
Slashing power (strengh IX) : 10% (GS)
Berserker power (Strengh XI) : 15% (all)
Stick and move (Strengh) : 3% (all)
Attack of opportunity (arms) : 10% (all)
Cull the weak (defence VI) : 5% (all)
Sundering mace (defence VII) : 10% (mace)
Merciless hammer (defence X) : 25% (hammer)
Desperate power (tactic III) : 20% (all)
Empower (Tactic ) : 1% per boon on you (all)
Burning arrow (tactic X) : 10% (Longbow)
Destruction of the empowered (discipline VIII) : 3% per boon on foe (all)
Burst mastery (discipline X) : 7% (all)
And I’m not even trying to list bonus on runes/sigils.

If you max these bonus it’s easy to enhance a lot your damages. Let’s face it a skill that would hit for 1k non crit non multiplier would easily hit up to 6k if you try to max this. Do you think it’s balanced in your picture of suggestion? There is no cap on how many of these bonus you can have. Don’t you think a flat cap to 50% would be pretty fair?

Swagg.9236:

Dadnir.5038:

You clearly didn’t understood the balance preview about sigils.

I’m talking about people running two-handed weapons with Sigils of Battle on each weapon now because of the extra slot. Even if it’s just one weapon, all this update is doing is pumping more passive might and damage procs into the game, thus speeding up combat even further and making actions even harder to discern.

Seem like you didn’t answer any of my questions.

So then, let’s talk about Power damages. They are done by a combination of base damage, level of precision (chance of crit), percentage of crit damage and tons of additionnal passive damage multipliers. Why don’t you touch these traits granting passive damage multipliers? Why don’t you add a flat cap to how much damage multiplier you can have?
It’s because players build with tons of damage multipliers that they can instagib other player. Why don’t you try to resolve this issue before touching base damage?

Rigt now I’m more worried to see greatswords warrior or staff elementalist running both sigil of the night and sigil of force then more sigils of battle. Stack of might are already super easy to gain, passive damage bonus are way more valuable on weapons.

Swagg.9236:

Yes, but even so, getting 3 stacks of might for 20 seconds (base without boon duration) every 9 seconds is, ehhhh, it’s just something very worrisome given that we’ll be getting double sigils on two-handed weapons (not a great idea to be honest). Since a lot of weapons are going to get double sigils now, it’s not hard to imagine a vast number of players just running about with 6 extra stacks of might in mid-combat. This kind of power creep is extremely dangerous in a game that’s already heavily over-tuned when it comes to poorly cued spike damage.

While I’m doing my best to address the issues of balanced damage across every profession, it’d still be dangerous to underestimate the potential popularity of sigil of battle in the double-sigil for two-handed weapons update and what a free, passive +210 power/condition damage for a lot more players would do to combat in general.

The nerf to Sigil of Battle is to avoid excessive power creep.

You clearly didn’t understood the balance preview about sigils

Karl McLain.5604:

Sigils:

• All sigils now have independent cooldowns, meaning you can use two on-swap sigils, or an on-swap and an on-crit sigil at the same time. You will not, however, be able to use two sigils of the same name at the same time. On-kill sigils that provide attributes, such as Sigil of Corruption, will not be able to be used simultaneously with other attribute modifying on-kill sigils.
• Two-handed weapons can now be slotted with two sigils.
• Sigils will receive a general balance pass to bring them more in line with each other.

So nobody will achieve better result with this sigil then what they already achieve.

Also, all of your suggestion for balance hurt a lot because you always seemed to see only the shiny face of each class and never see their weakpoint. At the moment, all classes have their strong and their weak point and feel almost balanced. Your suggestions hurt damages (power and condition) and defense.

Some time it’s a tactical move to use skill to gain time. Why are you killing these skills?

Adding delay on most of the skill hurt directly the pleasure most of the player have from playing a dynamic game. What do you want to achieve by adding all this looooooooong and uninteresting delay on skills?

By nerfing base damages you kill most of the non-zerker build or full condi build and by the same you kill diversity because to achieve what they do now, people that still use build out of the meta will have to work even harder. To destroy the dps meta you have to reduce the margin between min and max dps. You are enhancing it. Why?

You add ton more “conditions”/hex to the game. While it may be interesting I think it will only create a lot of confusion to players. Nothing good in the end. Our condition bar is already really crowded will we have enough space in our UI to see all your hexes?

When i read this I can hardly imagine you playing Ingeneer in PvE.
First of all : Change on pistol.
(1) Actually why do you even bother to enhance the damage modifier.
(2) You add a change on volley which is an almost fine skill for power build and condition build. Why? Seems like you switch the two fonctionallity between MH pistol and FT. No needs for this change. Well, in fact, this make the weapon even worse.
(4) This skill is meant to be a burst skill you change it into a poor copy of FT(1)

Riffle :
Reducing damage across the board as always. Let me say it out loud : Right now Engi ain’t in a good position for competitive PvE, this changes on Riffle just kill them for Donjon in the actual meta.

Elixirs :
Elixir are already the best tools of Engi, do they need to be buff like you’re suggesting? No.

Elixir gun :
Honestly… I just laugh at this.

Flamme Thrower :
Useless changes.

Tool kit :
Lot of encounter require player to be actually able to Block things. Your changes to Block skills show clearly that you hate being blocked. This change cripple Engi even more in PvE encounters.

Grenade kit :
Laughable… nade’s damages, like pistol damages, are low and balanced around traits. You seem to try to break this balance. While doing this you will just cripple all viable builds by opening absolutely nothing.

Bomb Kit :
Here certainly your worst suggestion killing melee Engi.

Traits :
You seem to hate passive effect and… You add more and more passive effect. Bunch of nonsense.

Now, let’s conclude. With this, you totally kill Engis for PvE, destroy them on WvW and cripple them in PvP. While your change may be almost viable for PvP you clearly don’t understand this class mechanisms. Why don’t you change some things on gadgets? Well actually most of them are crappy and buggy but why? Do you really feel that turret are in a good place? And our elite what’s your feeling about them?

Please before writing this kind of nonsense you should try playing engi in all ply field. Don’t restrain you to sPvP.

Beastmasters rangers.

Beastmasters were good with cleric/settlers but they were lacking precision to add more boons to theirs pets. With zealot beastmasters will be able to do more damage and add more buff to their pets. Of course they will lose some self survivability but damage wise the gain should be pretty huge.

Well… You wrote a lot of things… Let’s point an overpowered things :

_[Ghastly Claws] (2)

FUNCTIONALITY CHANGED
Cast-time: 3¼ seconds
Recharge: 15 seconds
Channel a cone of biting energy that slashes foes in a quick flurry of strikes. You gain life force with each strike. The final pulse removes up to 1 boon from foes that it strikes.
Damage (9x): 918 (2.8)
Duration: 3 seconds
Strikes per second: 3
Life Force per strike: 2%
Range: 600
Strikes up to 5 foes._

Traited this thing could totally filled your LF pool every 12s and give you almost 3k hp. This almost make me laugh. Totally off balance.

Axe (1) and scepter (1) change are huge nerf against all type of reflect skill that will leave us with just Dagger to damage some classes or even some boss.

_Deathshroud skills
[Dark Path]

FUNCTIONALITY CHANGED
Cast-time: ¼ second
Recharge: 20 seconds
Whirl in target direction, chilling and bleeding foes that you strike along the way.
Damage: 61 (0.25)
Chill: 2 seconds
Bleeding (1): 6 seconds
Combo Finisher: Whirl
Range: 900_

Absolutely ridiculous, this would give us even less mobility…

Your changes on [Well of Blood are really off. Changing this field in water field is something really interesting but that can’t fit Necromancer. Because Necromancers are tied to life and death matter (Light and dark). Healing combo vs condition cleanse combo which one fit Necromancer better? You are just trying to make a new signet of vampirism.

[Spectral walk]… I mean are you serious here? Super Jump? PvE gamebreaking by opening door to exploit bug. Gamebreaking for WvW to by jumping over the walls… While I feel it boring when I’m perma lock/cripple/chilled, I don’t think we lack condition cleanses to get rid of them to the point that we need to add this things to a skill that is already really good.

And lastly [Dhuumfire], best way to fix this one would be to replace it with something that actually help our soft cc. Something like : enhance by 1 seconde every chill/cripple that you inflict.

I won’t argue more but overall there isn’t anything I really agree or like in your suggestion. Because none of them address the real issue of necromancers.

In fact MM almost never go 30 in blood magic. It’s way more interesting to go 30 in spite or Death magic.
MM build are mostly : X-0-X-X-0 where X is usually 30 or 20.
- 30 in spite grant tons more damage
- 30 in DM grant “utility” (combo field or boon removing)
- 30 in BM grant condition resilience
A MM necromancer is better up supporting it’s minion then going in DS which support is limited.

Also I’m against the idea of being healed through DS, It would be a totally unskilled gameplay while being sustained by dancing in and out deathshroud is a bit more rewarding for active gameplay.

Well, we all know that nobody would take Fetid consumption over Vampiric master in this trait line. For me Fetid consumption ain’t worth his grand master state.

Why not bring him down to master tier and relace him by a whole new trait. A trait that would fit our core mechanism, our need of survivability and revive some of our utility skills.

Let’s introduce a grand master trait that give us health point with the current value of vampiric per % of LF we gain.
Benefit :
- That could give us up to 3600 max health point each time we refill our LF pool from 0 to 100%,
- Give our minion an interesting “health pot” effect,
- Benefit the all hated Reanimator trait,
- Give an interesting new life to signet of undeath that could give us a a passive regen

→ Each time your LF pool gain 1% LF you gain 30-36 health point.

Good news, that’s exactly what I understood.

Uh… What about No?

Well, let’s argument. 4 pets would be a lot and when you are skilled enough at managing them, they barely die.

Standardizing CD on F2 won’t help for anything. I would better see something like shout are channeled skill instead of cast skills. So a a 3 s cast time fear for 3 s fear become a 3 second channeled fear that apply 1s fear every second.
Swap CD, Cast time on F2 and cool down on F2 have already trait that do the Job.

Well, in fact all classes suffer from condi pressure (with perhaps the exception of warrior) even Necromancer are hurt badly by conditions if they run no cleanse skill.

@Op : I use this build since ages (0-15-30-20-5) but without Empowering might and 9 time out 10 I just carry my team in donjon. People can sell you all their berzerk gear but in the end it’s a pain to rez all these folks.

In this build, I’ve seen that Writ of the mercifull is a way better choice then empowering Might You may gain a lot when everyone is in range but most of the time, they will be out of range.

PS: I love to spam F1 when mobs are dying. Renewed Justice is tha best.

Well, in fact I’ve done him recently and I think they buffed is mobility. I had to Kite him in a low dps team and he was awfully fastest then before.

I guess that will depend on what you like to play. So Instead of saying to you : “You have to take X because everything else suck” I’ll say : “Use an armor that fit your gameplay”.

I would just add one advice. Try to take insign that grant you vitality because there are very few accessory that grant you a decent amount of vitality. So it’s harder to balance your survivability with accessory than with your armor/weapon.

Ah ah ah, I love this thread ^^

I love your lack of conviction when it come to ranger. I love that you complain about other classes CC when warrior is a god a this…
And this is so true. People lack the will to adapt, they want “Godmother Anet” (I love this one to ^^ ) to buff them and nerf other classes. And when I say buff them, it always buff their own build instead of “buffing all the crap that we don’t want”.

PS.: By the way necro don’t flee… they already know that they can’t they are designed not to be able to flee because… because… well who care?

You gave me a good Idea…

why not change all fear effect in : force your target to /laugh This should still interrupt but poor and saddened guys won’t flee anymore.

Bhawd: “That is massive scaling, something that other classes don’t see. 483 procs in 10 seconds, 22k additional healing and damage just from 30 trait points. No wonder the devs are scared, in ideal situations it is insane what they will do.”

Really nice advertisement but… Why don’t you try to give us things like hps? What you advertise us is a very specific situation out of cooldown and cast time consideration.

By the way, you will deal on each foe 4k5 damage over 10 second that’s roughly what you can do with a fire sigil. Not that awesome…

And how many time will you be “naked” after this 10 seconds? 20 or 25 seconds? You bet all you have for situations that you will never see. You’ve got to have a least 5 foes at your feet that don’t hit you to hard.

I like to play gardian in donjon, each time I grant a boon I’m healing myself by 70… It’s not much but I’m pretty sur this gardian trait out heal the whole Bloodmagic trait line (except perhap a minion master siphon build).

Same for Elementalist, they can complain a lot but when they sit in water, with a proper build, they can easily out heal and out damage these number of yours.

So, that’s it, you’re seeing numbers that you feel being awesome, but, for me they are just pretty common and a bit weak because I really try to see them in a whole. We are far from this so called “attrition” and the new healing signet is already overnerfed in my opinion with passive designed for sick 1v1 and active revolving around perhaps an ideal world where you gank 5v1 and you are not focused.

By the way, from my point of view, I pretty like the changes on weakening shroud. We can deal a lot more power damage with it than we did before.

I’m speaking from Jade sea (French server). We are doing it everyday. Since last patch It seem that you have to clean Jofast camp and escort some NPC from this camp to debug Arah’s gate first escort.

Tringsh.2380 : " I understand that with the necro you regen 300 hp on each hit "

Actually it’s not “each hit” It’s “On hit and once per second”. So you can be hitten 100 time during this second, you will only heal yourself by 300. Same goe for the active part, the idea is awesome but the final result is terribly bad. We could manage something with 25 charge or the 1 second ICD but with both… Absolutely not.

Siphon wise, I still can’t understand why they divide damage part and healing part in the scaling. Would we really be awesome with a full healing power stuff/build? I don’t think. When you play healing power you loose a lot of damage and with our siphon value (out of perfectly optimal situation), that’s just a waste.

But, still, there have been some good things in the laters patch. MM are in a pretty good spot now. I had been able to solo all the tower with a simple MM build. This make us pretty rubbish while Minion were total garbage for a long time.

Power spec are probably our weak point and i still wait for a buff here. Maybe one day…

I’m amazed because a lot of your so called “Buff” may be “debatable Buff”. Like fix bug for trait or vampiric’s “Buff”. To be franc, vampiric was way more reliable before they cough cough Buff it then now. But that may be because we are way squishier then before.

And, there is the “debatable nerf” about LOS that ain’t here.

PS.: Oh, I forgot, for me change on spectral wall were a big nerf for powermancer.

Electro.4173:

The game as a whole FAVORS ‘zerkers. It doesn’t require them. Its largely the most effective way, no question, but defensive builds can still work even if they’re not ideal.

A DPS boss would REQUIRE ‘zerkers. There’s a distinct difference between favors and requires.

I think that’s exactly why they changed Dwayna priestress in Arah path 4 month ago. Few were able to do it because of the large amount of dps you had to produce to kill it. And it was just destroying this path for almost everyone.

My 15 idea is more or less based on the Chaos 15 trait from mesmer. That’s basically the same protection uptime for the same ICD and for the same place in trait line.

I think gaining more life force on hit is stronger then more life force on death especially in small scale battle. But, Yes I agree that it would be a buff in PvE and WvW. But I don’t think it would change anything in sPvP except perhaps for minions master.

After though, it may be 2 suggestions too minions centered but I think it fit this trait line.

Well, In my opinion, here is what would fit us :

Death magic minor 5 : Gain more lifeforce on death. (15% instead of 10% right now)
This thing won’t be overpowered, always usefull and will easily replace our actual LFpot (read Jagged horror)

Death magic minor 15 : Gain 3 seconds protection when one of your minion die (15 seconds ICD)
I think this one could actually be a very interesting change and good move for build variety. Minions could fit into non MM build for strategic use (especially summon flesh wurm and summon Bone minion) while right now i think they are more a bother then anything else.

And for falling damage : I think, grasping dead coud could be way more interesting then anything else
cripple, bleeds and damage fit us. Not to mention that this kind of trait are usually designed around skills that the class already have

Pro :
Necromancers have the best effective base health point in game pretty good access to defensive condition (weakness, blind, fear) and some defensive boon (regen and protect).
We got 2 health bar that are fed by 2 differents source that need us to play an aggressive playstyle (siphon and life force generation).
Fairly good heal skills on long cool down.

Cons :
Necromancers are designed to have poor mobility (teleport and movement skill), few dodge and poor out of combat sustain.
We’ve got no invulnerability so we are bound to suck up damage with our health bars.

Personnaly, I think, defensively, we are in a pretty good spot in sPvP. Our skills are pretty well designed for 1v1 setup. But, when it come to WvW and PvE, we start to fade away, lacking evade and invulnerability to suck up instant massive amout of damage that are pretty common in this 2 realm.

Just to state it, I read all you’ve wrote here Captain Swag and yes, I disagree with your statement.
Bomb kit is an interesting tool but not mandatory. It’ll be interesting in a glass canon setup but will lack the survivability you got with FT. And, by the way, tool kit has great options.
Nade kit is an higly offensive condition kit but that’s all, you get only damage out of this kit while Elixir gun give a lot of support and benefit a lot from traits in regard of support.
Turret could enjoy a buff but all classes are balanced around sPvP (oups sorry I shouldn’t say that even if we all know this fact) and right now in a 1v1 setup turret are pretty good.
Elixir… well this absolutely don’t need buff we are already a boon machine with them.
Gadget are somewhat good. I wouldn’t build around them but they give us really good utilities.

What I mean is that everyting is almost well balanced right now. Slight nerf on Bomb and nade would just resume in a dps loss for the persons that actually use them while leading to nothing.

If your goal is to promote build variety, just try to create builds that don’t focus only on damage and promote them. I don’t think that the actual “rush through dps” meta is a good base to balance class.

How can I say this… It seem in this state that you have a general Idea that damage conditionmancer are a bit too powerful. But it also seem that you are totally in the dark about death and blood magic. (Except that you’re right, death magic is too centered around minion and that kill it.)

About spite and curse, there are change that certainly have to be done. But what you’re doing seem to be always out of place. What’s needed is to tone down condition damage builds and buff a bit power builds. (warning! What i’ll suggest will probably feel like massive nerf)

- First, swap terror and withering precision : Weakness is overestimated and anyway, there ain’t a class that can’t apply it almost 100% uptime.

- Change Dhuumfire (to maybe a five seconds cripple on crit with a 5 seconds cool down) and swap it with an improved version of chilling darkness (maybe you can add a damage fact or enhance a kittenill duration)

- As for axe training, It’s far from being worth grandmaster tier. We fought for month so it come down where it belong and it’s fine like this. A lot of us think that this trait is still not worth taking it. The simple fact that you mention it to return in grandmaster tiers creep me. But yeah, if you want to actually improve this weapon trait, just get rid of the damage enhancement and replace it with a 100% might on crit. This could open some possibility.

Death magic :
This trait line feel closed for build variety. Change this trait line would really imply a lot of work. What hurt me the most is that you tied boon duration to this traitline.

Blood magic :
Let’s be blunt, you got a false idea on the actual viability of this traitline and more about siphon. Right now, you can’t rely on siphon for sustain even in the best case you seem to fear.
I’m a siphonmancer since already 9 month and my survivability droped down a lot during all this month. Every patch you’ve released since the “dhuumfire day” i’ve seen my deathshroud losing in reliability, my spectral utility dying and my siphons weakening. You certainly think you’ve improved all that but in fact, out of spvp tankmancer has been hit and hit again by the nerf bat. Situations where I had the upperhand 9 month ago, i’m just being destroyed now (With the exact same build and gear please!).
Here is what I suggest to make siphon and the blood trait line a bit more viable:

- Move down Fetid consumption to master tier (here he will compete with vampiric master so it won’t be an issue. Minion master are the only one who realy rely on minion and they will still take 30 point in Blood magic if they want this 2 trait together)

- Move down deathly invigoration to adept tier (this trait certainly ain’t worth master tier)

- Move up vampiric precision to grandmaster tier but here are the change that are needed. Base heal/damage 10. Squale to 8% on Healing power for heal part and 4% on power for damage part. This way power geared build will gain a bit more damage with the same sustain as now and healing power build that will need to focus on precision and healing power shouldn’t gain enough sustain to be overpowered. But siphon should be in a way better position then now.

Soul reaping :
This trait line feel balanced enough right now.

So…
at least 15 in skirmishing for fury and swiftness on weapon swap
I’d bet on 30 in wilderness survival for the awesome bark skin (but a least 15 for protection on dodge)
You should have targeted the bird at least once so we could have known if he invest in nature magic but he should have at least 10 point here for regen duration.
At first i though that the bird was a bit resilient but no.

Runes have to be runes of dwayna.

So I would expect something like that :

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fMAQNAsYTjAV91JWCWsWCi2DN1/zzPco/hY5KMqCWdA-jEyAoNACDQWsIas1tioxqYw0nK1K1A5TKiWtUA6pMC-w

But that’s just a guess

Don’t you prefer a trait that enhance by 90s every stance duration?

Well… seem like someone forgot ele ^^
actually i’d say :

Tier 1 :
1- Thief (Lot of teleport skill, swiftness and leap finisher)
2- Warrior (easy swiftness and movement skills)
3- ranger (swiftness and movement skills)

Tier 2 :
1- Elementalist (permaswiftness easily achieved and some movement skills)
2- Guardian (can struggle a bit but swiftness achievable + teleport and movement skills)
3- Engi (easiest permaswiftness in the game)

Tiers 3
1-Necromancer (can achieve permaswiftness at high cost but almost no movement skills)
2- (and last) Mesmer (Only class that need gear help to achieve a decent movement speed)

Actually, in this game, there is no such thing as pure range class or close combat class. There is no pure healer and no pure tank. But every class can do everything in a way or another and that’s how this game has been designed.

What’s suggested is something overpowered. There is tons of utility skill that actually only buff pets. If stowing the pet make us able to be affected by them we would outdamage by far every other class even without the 25% more damage. Not to mention our heal skill boosted.

In fact deceiverX, you can do the same amount of damage as a warrior GS and without pet by using a proper rotation with long bow and utilitys. It’s not all about big number, it’s more about a lot of damage source (hint : traps).

Condition wise, we’ve got tons of good builds and conditions never suffer from damage reduction, they are only restricted by condition cap. But, 1v1 or 1vX it’s rarely an issue.

I’ve seen in this forum build with wich you can almost one shot ele, guard or thieve without using pets.

PS.: Waouh Manekk feel like you’ve got problem with pet management. And yeah I agree devourers are really reliable underwater. I’d like them to have the same attack speed on land.

Burnfall.9573:

I will say it again, we need Necromancers’ Balance Team as our new class balance.team.

Because their history show us, they know how to get the job done right!

Best quote ever (I think)

As a Necromancer I would gladly say : “Yes take them, good grief!”. In reality, for the same build, necromancer survivability dropped a lot since May. They introduced a trait that narrowed so much our build possibility that it’s disgusting (Yeah I’m talking about Dumbfire). We still have our lovely Jagged horror that enter us in combat and die from it’s own bleeding. Minions are still great at watching us murdered while doing nothing (Because, yes, when you are stun your minions don’t do anything). Golem still die and enter CD when you enter in water… etc. Oh and you need to be well prepared to joke like our siphon improvement. Sure you will laugh a lot.

As a ranger, I’ve seen a lot of change on rangers. Some that I liked and some that I hate (Yeah the change on “guard” and shortbow range were killer move) but for me our pet are still well balanced and, yes, still better then this golem you like so much. We got a lot of way to keep our pets alive while necromancer don’t. We just need to use them. Nothing more, nothing less. And, well, I don’t get why you are jealous of class that’s so different. Different mechanisms need different balance.

No there is absolutely no need to be jealous of necro’s minions.

Burnfall.9573:

“- A ranger’s pet have still more survivability then any necromancer pet”

I encourage you to take a necromancer flesh golem adn test it in especially in wvw and in dungeons to see for yourself; i assure you, you will want to rewrite what u just stated.

I play 6 out of 8 classes on this game regularly but for dungeon I’m mostly playing with my ranger. The tool we’ve got to manage our pet are way better then the tool we have as necromancer. Let’s just say in CoE, my ranger pet never die (maybe It’s experience but that a fact), In arah, it will die maybe 3 or 4 time in a full run. As a necromancer, first i give away an elite skill for a pet. Death mean a way longer CD (I’m sure you are aware of that). Summoning cast time mean that your can be interrupt and you do nothing while you are summoning.

Burnfall.9573:

Why do you think majority of the ranger community including myself want Arena.net to give us an option to stw our pets?

Archer wannabe?
I’m sorry but if you set your pet on passive mode they can take hits without entering in combat and we can stw our pets when we are out of combat. Pets are the core mechanism of the ranger. Removing them would just destroy this core.

You’ve got issues with ranger’s pet while a lot of players don’t. You can see tons of video where players show how to play with our pets in wvw or anywhere without any problem and even being great. Maybe you should try viewing some of them and learn some things (I’m not saying this the bad way, we all have things to learn even when we think we have mastered something.)

As for me, I really think rangers already have all the tools to keep there pets alive through donjon. Not saying I wouldn’t change some things but at least i think that our pets are still better then Necro’s.

And if you wonder what I’d like to change it would just be :
- all pet’s shout being instant
- core change on “guard”. No area guard, no stealth. Just being instant, 10 seconds of protection and a 2 seconds distorsion buff on pet.
I really think that’s all rangers really need.

Oh yeah! I love “Reanimator’s discussion” and I’m sure all dev already know we hate this trait.
This budy of ours have a terrible design. Uncontrolable, always bleeding to death, die before even thinking of doing damage. Only use I can think for them is life force ressource.

You want a real suggestion? Swap Reanimator with Shrouded removal or/and rework Reanimator. There could be a lot of ways to rework it. Like :
- “Summon Bone minion” summon 3 minions instead of 2
- Summon a Jagged horror for X seconds (cool down X/2 seconds) → No bleeding… I think this one won’t work because of lich form elite
- You periodically grant health to your minions (Range 900) -> no great numbers but something like “soothing Mist” (Elementalist water minor trait) that would only affect our minions
… etc.

I agree with Bhawd on the fact that 3 of them wouldn’t help more.

Do we really play the same game?

- First, necromancer’s golem is an elite skill… So it use a slot for something like rampage as one (loooooooong stability skill and way better then whatever necromancer can have)

- A ranger’s pet have still more survivability then any necromancer pet

- Better dps (no necromancer’s golem can hit as hard as a cat or a bird)

- Responsiveness (not sur of the word, but that will do the trick). Some necromancer’s minion still lack the will to fight. Nothing beat our F1 in this area.

- Utility. Our pet’s F2 skill need some work (especially shouts) but these are still in a better spot then necro’s one. (Drake blast combo FTW)

You asked “Why can’t our pets Naturaly perform these without enslaving to a skill or traits?”. It’s so that when you trait for this, your pet become better then poor skilled warriors.

I see a lot of issues in what you suggest, things that i personnally don’t like and things that devs obviously don’t like.

issues :
- Channeling skill are way to easy to break. and, well, we already have dagger #2 that do this.
- F2. We have already enough things with death shroud. IU would be horrible with anything more.

What i don’t like :
- tying a skill to a trait line and requiring it so you have 30 point in this trait line (probably worst idea ever)
- Even if dev agreed to this, they would broke it by their totally absurd double scalling thing. (“Oh god I’ve got a super idea! let scale siphon damage on power and healing damage on healing power! it would be soooo great”… Maybe your idea is second, this one is definitely the worst)
- 4 second immobilisation is OP… Only a warrior would consider this like a given.

Dev position :
- “No way we give a leap or anything that give mobility to Necromancer! They are way to resilient with Death shroud, they don’t need mobility or anything that could give them other way to survive then Death shroud.”

I’d agree with you about most of the pet except Devourers. They’ve got quite a good dps for their amazing toughness. My Devourer have absolutely no problem staying alive against most of the champs in Orr or anywhere else.

Bears… are just horrible. Poor damages and (yes) poor survivability. Worst part is that their shout have a cast time. Just removing their shout cast time/animation on F2 would make them ok.

Birds still have their annoying speed boost cast time/animation that destroy their dps.

Moa… I use them sometime when i need extra heal (still not on par with drake and water field). Better survivability then bears overall.

Cats… well, we all love cats ^^. Please remove this annoying cast time/animation on jungle stalker shout (again, that’s an useless nerf and we don’t care about this animation).

Pigs, like said their F2 is a freaking issue. Why don’t they just keep this item so we can use it just by pressing F2 again?

Devourers are tricky. They’ve got amazing survivability and they can have pretty good damages. It’s just they don’t do high numbers. (Still, I wouldn’t spit on an attack speed boost)

Spider just die to easily. And as for me, I think Devourers have an higher Dps. (It may be because I use a specific build that focus on a lot on optimizing their possibility. Like Bleeds on crits for exemple that are pretty handy when your pet double hit or chain hit)

Drake… Are ok

oZii.2864:

Life force bar now show you exactly how much Life Force you have left so you don’t have to guess anymore.

At least!

oZii.2864:

Transfusion – F4 will heal your allies more. Deathly Invorgation – heals you for a small amount when you leave Death Shroud.

This one is pretty nice for support

oZii.2864:

Vampiric changes – Bloodthirst changed – reduced to 20% increase but increased base life steal of many abilities/traits (increased to 80% of what Bloodthrist was)

This one feel pretty dumb for me. Feel like they style wanna have zerker with high survivability, while HP build drop down. Good thing is that this trait won’t be a “must have” trait anymore for siphon build.

oZii.2864:

Change to Vampiric Master – now deal damage to enemies it siphons from. Siphon reduced by 16% at the base level.

Good thing for minion masters, that’s a huge dps boost here. I’m already earing all the whine coming.

Feel like this time we won’t be nerfed but it probably won’t last long. For me it’s not the right answer to necromacer’s flaw.

FrownyClown.8402:

Fire is a bit tricky because nothing really synergizes with it that well. The entire trait line needs to be redone before they think about implementing anything like that.

There are already pretty good things in the fire trait line. And more then that things that synergize a lot with other trait line.
- burning precision (adept) is a pretty good addition if you wanna have a condibuild
- Ember’s might and internal fire are pretty logic
- Pyromancer alacrity, same here that’s in line with the other trait line
- Fire Embrace is the keystone for a signet auramancer build
- Persisting flame seem pretty interesting (even more with the next change to conjure weapon)

The only things that i feel out of place may be Pyromancer’s puissance. I don’t think it deserve a grandmaster trait place. I would swap it with conjurer and change conjurer by :
“you no longer share your conjure weapon but they have an unlimited charge number”.

I don’t play elementalist with a deep investment in arcana But it already work just fine. I don’t think we need a change in CD swaping. It’s just a rythm to take.

Right now the best rangers builds are builds where the ranger and his compagnion cope for eachother weakness. Like a tanking pet and a dps ranger, a dps pet and a support ranger… etc.
Rangers that work with their pets usually best a way to heal or do damage while their pet will tank or do another type of damage.
For apothecary stats, pets will gain toughness (alway welcome), healing power (absolutely not welcome) and condition damage (here, you absolutely don’t want your pet to compete against you for bleed stack or poison).

So this kind of change, except for power build will just work against a symbiosis between the ranger and his companion. Not to mention that this will probably throw rangers dps builds out of balance.

awge.3852:

Your post is very intriguing to me QueenHysteria. I play a ranger and I myself feel happy with how it is, mainly because I never played GW1 and I do not understand the gap between that ranger and today’s ranger. Personally I like how my ranger feels, but I totally agree in the fact that it’s not perfect, and it’s not what you would normally expect from a ranger profession going into it. My friend who played GW1 and recently got his ranger to 80, as his first profession, admits that GW2 ranger is very kitten. In my opinion, I guess it all can come down to how you play, what works for you and what does not. Ranger has always been my preferred profession throughout games, and I have come to make my ranger a very efficient killing machine, but that is only because of how I play it.

Perhaps one day they will make all the traits and skills more helpful and they will make it so that everything ties in together better. It took a ton of time to master the ranger and I felt that was unnecessary, it could have simply been easier to know what to do, rather than being frustrated for many months until AH! I figured it out. My suggestion is, try to live with it if you can. When I feel that those negative thoughts are coming my way, I just go into WvW and start killing all the solo thieves I can find, then I feel 100% good about playing a ranger :-)

I mained a ranger in GW1 and i play ranger sometimes in GW2. Between GW1 and GW2 none of the classes are the same, even the mechanism changed. I think the op want something else that he call ranger… Well I think he want an Archer.

I really loved my ability to pull carefully mobs in GW1 and that’s something that won’t ever exist in GW2. But, what I love in GW2 is my resilience as a ranger. Our real strengh is that our pet can cope for our weakness. There are tanky pets, support pets, dps pets… Once you understand how to keep them alive, ranger begin to be really enjoyable.

However, I don’t think that’s an answer someone wanting to play an archer will accept.

So I’ll just say that :

Ranger in GW2 ain’t an Archer

Wow… that a super squishy build you’ve got here.

First I think your 6th rune bonus don’t work on attunement so you may change at least the 6th one.
Glyph of elemental may be a good choice for your elite skill.
But what do you plan to do with this build?

I think it would be a pretty good build in PvE and it could shine a lot against things like Tequatl.

By the way it’s build in PvE mode so I assume it’s not for PvP or WvW. Not that it would be bad in WvW zerg. Except that a necromancer in a zerg have an other role then pure dps. But it’s style totally viable.

For wvw I would change signet of spite with spectral wall and locust with spectral walk.

Actually… I found something pretty in what you said here…

Vigor spam

I love this concept, instead of change in trait why don’t you ask for a sigil that grant vigor on crit. Let’s say 70% chance to gain 1 or 2s of vigor with kitten iCD. It would be a better addition in this game than all your unbalanced changes.

The Build I’m talking about Daecollo is a 20/10/30/10/0 build. Absolutely no point in arcana and this build work just fine like this. With this build and your new signet, I would be able to have perma protection and perma swiftness and I know, it’s unbalance when you are able to do this kind of things.

There is no need to change the way skill work to change the (false) fact that every Ele run 30 in arcana. You just have to exploit what the other trait line can do. The auramancer build for exemple is a lazy build that depend a lot of signet. With this build, you got boons, good survivability, nice damage (gear for power and you are good or gear for condi, you’ll rock to), good cc, a breakstun. It’s not popular because it lack the nervousness that’s needed in pvp. Nothing more, nothing less.

Thanksfully, there is more than pvp in this game.