Guild Wars 2

Well, I was just answering to the idea of life siphon. Like you said, wells have better use than siphoning life and that was the purpose of my answer. In any way, life siphons shall not be the purpose of any build, just a mean to achieve a greater purpose. Pur “vampire builds” won’t perform greatly in the game because life siphons are laughable in their state. Wells have a trait that support them with some siphons but in the end that’s not that great while minions increase substantially your survivability via siphons if you chose the blood magic traitline.

Overall, to make siphons usefull in the game you need to stack a great number of damage source at the same time. Still, it won’t make a siphon build “great” in any way.

Well… I may be wrong but since HoT, it’s better to see life stealing as a side dish that can help you survive instead of looking at it as if it were a main dish.

However, as far as I played with life siphons, I’d say that the most effective is a minion build. You may eventually try your luck with wells but that’s bound to disappoint you.

^
1 word : respect!

Oh… Irony?

For a whole PvP season I made all necro in my team unkillable with a Sw/A riffle and shout build. I gave them so much sustain, it even healed the through shroud.

Enrage is just a flawed mechanism in itself that could only exist in gamelike environment and break any kind of imersion. Logically, any kind of human, creature, demon or whatever would just run away the moment they find themself in a dead end. More than that, It’s illogical that something could have a huge surge of strenght after having being bitten to death by other things.

Honnestly, you ve been beaten, you bleed, you got broken limb, you’re tired… The most logical answer is that you get out of here. What nonsense is this that you stay, have a surge of power and wipe the ant that you were struggling against just before?

The last phase of any boss should be a harsh struggle of the raid to avoid having the boss getting out of the arena and maybe cutting off the way out in it’s escape, making you unable to pursue your journey.

Well… Most player to like to be killed and come with various excuse to cover up their flaw. Having someone raging on you in WvW is a common occurence whatever profession you play.

If he had won, he would probably had a sneer and just gone bothering/fighting someone else to enjoy it’s “superiority”.

The concept is interesting, however

The Strider is no proud warrior, not anymore. A lone wolf who lost their trusty companion, the Strider now walks alone with only the spirit of their former companions appearing in their time of need.

The ranger not having physical companion is detrimental to many core traits and skills. Without this “wall”, I’m sure your e-spec would be very enjoyable to play.

NB.: Also, I dare to say that giving specific buff from each pet type is a move that is bound to fail since Anet seem to want to give us new pets in the futur. And for them to have to update an e-spec each time they release new pet… that’s just impossible.

Irony : “on”

We got poison to tune down their sustain…

The philosophy of the profession is that where the other have thing that benefit themself, we got things that bring down the benefit that those other professions have.

They can block? We can bypass block.
They can heal? We can reduce heal.
They have damage or armor? We can reduce those two thing throught soft condition.
They have fast pace, attack and swiftness? We can reduce all of that.
They have boons? We have corruptions for those boons.
They got condition? We can send them back!
They have projectiles? We can even destroy them!

Without adding any “but” or thinking of the reality of how things really work in game don’t you feel like the necromancer is the perfect counter to all other professions? In theory there is nothing that we can’t counter!

Irony : “off”

It’s easier to feel great when you think about what you can do instead of what you can’t.

It’s sad that when a racial skill start to see some use in the game the first thing that players ask for is a nerf on this skill.

Instead of a nerf, player should ask for racial skills on other races to be brought up to the already pathetic level of take root. Human have reaper of grenth, reducing it’s cool down to 90s could make it a good match against take root. Charr have the charzooka which is already close to take root in efficacity, giving 1 to 2s more duration to it’s base burn duration would be enough. Norn have the wolf shape which could enjoy a 2s longer base bleed duration making this skill worth take root. Asura have the D serie golen which need a total rework due to it’s uselessness, transforming it into a golem that emanate a radiation field that only poison enemies would be enough.

3 fractals :
- Prophecies : A free story where we have to defend the temple of ages against the undead. The boss could be a bone dragon.
- Faction : closer to the stars, I chose this one because it feel like it’s the easiest ascension quest to adapt in GW2.
- Nightfall : I’d like to see the grand court of sebelkheh adapted to GW2.

Some encounter from LS1 could be fun as well but I’m restraining myself to GW1.

It look like a thief on steroid… Nowhere close to a necromancer in anything.

GW2’s necromancer may not be satisfying but it does have some ties with the idea of what it is to be a necromancer. I know that the minion master don’t feel like a one man army but at least it try. I know that the GW2’s necromancer is a bit pityable when it come to weakening it’s foes… But at least it try.The necromancer in GW2 have a design that have it’s root in how wwe picture a Necromancer at least.

The Dark knight in BDO… Well it doesn’t look like a knight, it doesn’t have any design elements close to a Necromancer… Well I’m even wondering why this thing appear in a thread in the GW2 necromancer’s forum.

Let’s open the pandora box and say : Scarlet Briar.
A name that a lot of people don’t want to hear ever again.
A name that strike hate in a lot of heart.
A villain that shoock tyria and destroyed the lion arch.
The one and only one that awaken Mordremoth (or wait is he the one that was behind her?)

Well… Now that I think about mordremoth, I think that there is one guy that I absolutely don’t wan’t to see as a legend… Trahern… Unlucky as we are, Anet would even give this legend a greatsword… I’d hate it to the core… Yeah! Trahern with GS would be the absolute worst that Anet could do. Even rurick (whom I absolutely hate) would be better than a GS trahern.

I really like the “rebel” idea. I especially love how you gave calls out to the legends.

The spec in itself seem fine but in need of some tweeks :
- Desperate power : a minor trait that give up to 20% increased damage is a bit to strong. 66% give 7.5% increase and 33% give 12.5% should be more balanced.
- sunder and rule : sould probably be change to : condition you inflict last longer with each vuln stack on foe. simply, I doubt that the game have enough ressource to track down and apply the trait effect on each vuln stack.

Just what’s needed… another shatterstone buff!

It’s the raider but then it’s called cultist and in the end the shroud is the vampiric shroud? Something’s not right

It’s a bit incoherent but well that’s an idea. Strictly speaking, banners need their own set of skill as well. I don’t know why a cultist would use a torch. I’d also like to say that burn is a condition that have a really bad history with the gw2 necromancer. I’d rather not see this condition on a necromancer’s e-spec.

This is just my opinion but, I think that “signet” are a bit to “magic” for the Engineer. I think the engineer deserve more some “implant” a kind of medecine that continously boost them. The tool belt skill could come with a soft self outburst of power while the active of the implant would create an area of effect centered on self. (this is deliberatly the opposite of elixirs). This already exist in our society, there is no way that engineers that pursue the path of technology to compete on an equal ground with magic wouldn’t come to this kind of answer.

I don’t think that we will see a spec that change the way current skills work… It would probably help a lot of skillsets in almost every profession of the game, it would probably be very healthy for the game but… There is no way they will do it.

Levetty.1279:

If torment was meant to be Necro exclusive then why was it added to Mesmer and Thief in the same patch it was introduced to the game?

It wasn’t “meant”, it was sold out as an exclusive condition for necromancer. If I recall correctly, at that time, Anet had introduced dhummfire and nerfed it to the ground because it was a big mistake to introduce this trait but they didn’t want to admit it.

At the same time, since they had nerfed every other necromancer conditions before taking care of dhummfire, the result of the dummfire nerf had left the condimancer in a very sorry state. So they came up with Torment as a solution and the concept was something that the necromancer community received pretty well. I’m saying it again, they sold it as a necro thingy, however, when they released it… the necromancer just gained it on the newly created shroud 5 while mesmer and warrior obtain it as well. A lot of necromancer were pretty dejected by this and they were even more dejected when the era of the torment warrior happen (thanks god they nerfed it).

Just to say, when anet say something is “exclusive” there is no reason to believe it since it’s been proven wrong many time in the past.

Ice: Chill is a kitten whether you’re a necro or not. 66% movement reduction and skill cooldown increase.

Yet when you suggest to an elementalist that it could be usefull for them to use some chill against their foes in PvP they say that it’s a useless condition and they rather have less of this.

On topic, to be competitive in PvE group content the necromancer still need it’s share of group utility. It’s actual tools are all underwhelming and easily covered by other professions. It was necromancer’s issue before and the issue is still here 4.5 year after release.

If anet really want the necromancer to support it’s teammate through the use of debilitating conditions, they have to build unique mechanism in the necromancer that actually benefit the team from taking a necromancer with it.

I understand that epidemic is strong but that’s no utility. Epidemic is a dps skill that become stronger the more condition on a foe. That’s all.

Want the necromancer to stick to it’s design and become a competitive profession in pve group content? Just make it so a necromancer can break throught the 25 vuln stacks by a maximum of 5 more vuln stacks. The calcul is easy, with a necromancer you reduce the foe defense by 30% while without it will only be 25%. Thus, the necromancer don’t step out of it’s narrow boundaries and there is no need for many necromancers, yet having one benefit the party. This change little to nothing in PvP and in WvW. In open PvE, it only make the huge health tank die a few seconds faster. The impact on the game is minimal, yet the necromancer start to be though for instead of being taken out of pity.

Xenon.4537:

So the latest balance patch they gave away yet another “mesmer unique” thing to another class. Was anyone honestly surprised? Do you really think they won’t give anything else away? My predictions for the future:

Warrior gets high uptime quickness on one of their banners in a balance patch.
Seem legit, but I think it’s unlikely, maybe this could come has a change to the banner skill “inspire” in order to reward active gameplay while holding banners.

Engineer gets alacrity on one of their elixirs in a balance patch.
Alacrity doesn’t fit engineer, I think it would be more something like replacing the knock down of slick shoes by a slow effect.

Elementalist gets alacrity in their next elite spec.
It’s possible, after all the first design of the tempest elite skill was pretty close.

Necromancer gets confusion in their next elite spec at higher effectiveness than mesmer.
I want to say that it’s possible but you could also say that mesmer have better torment than necromancer (while torment was initially sold has an exclusive condition for them). Most likely anet will stick to bleed for the necromancer and won’t step on the confusion’s landmine

Ranger gets something very similar to moa in a future elite spec.
They already have moa ^^, the moa skill have already been given away to the engineer.

Thief gets something kinda similar to clones in a future elite spec.
Very likely, I agree

Guardian gets a sort of defensive version of phantasms in future elite spec.
Spirit weapons are already in game and they do exactly that. It’s just that they don’t work that well. You talked about confusion previously, this could be a good match for guardian since they don’t have anything else than burn atm. Giving them confusion through an elite spec named inquisitor could be seen.

Someone gets a portal.
Engineer, necromancer and revenant are good candidate for that yes

I’m sorry crinn but for me you sure have a lot of experience in PvP (except perhaps the fact that you don’t understand that blinding your foes is the sae as a “block”) but your understanding necromancer’s survivability is to shallow in PvE.

In PvE you find a lot ore situation where your foes will hit extremely hard than in PvP. Except perhaps if you think that PvE is only open world PvE and even here, if you find yourself in a scaling event you’ll most likely die faster than other professions.

LF gain is mitigation, it’s reactive mitigation rather than hard mitigation yes, but it is still functionally mitigation. But since it doesn’t scale it’s crap in high damage environments like PvP.

That’s here you are wrong. The LF bar is basically health, you do not mitigate, you take the damage, well, those damage seem to be reduced, but still you take those damage, you do not strictly mitigate them.

You mitigate damage when you reduce the incoming damage by a certain percentage. A block/evade/blind happen to be a 100% mitigation over 1 or more incoming attack. The real worth of block/evade/blind is that it also nullify any incoming hard CC and that’s why it’s vastly superior to the shroud where you tank (and ot mitigate) the icoming attacks.

@Iridi

I think that yo don’t get what I’m saying. I’m not defending the current design, I’m pointing out that it is flawed and everyone know it but Anet will stick to it until the end.

However, when overusing some of your skills, you can indeed achieve a descent amount of survivability throught damage absorption without having to nullify those damage. This is done by stacking the shroud with SA and locust swarm. It’s not fantastic but in fact it allow you to endure a high amount of damage for a descent amount of time. And don’t say that it is not the case I’ve used it so much in zerg v zerg than I know that it rival guardian’s invuln skills.

For the support… In the necromancer’s community there is 2 kind of players. The one that defend the fact that conditions are the necromancer’s way to support and that shouldn’t be changed. And the one that think that this way to support is not fit with the game as a whole. I’m part of the later group. As the game stand, this support design does not work, with the tools that the necromancer have it just can’t work, it never worked until now and I highly doubt that it will ever work. The necromancer simply need better support tools.

As for outlasting your opponent, again, I agree that it’s not good enough and it doesn’t fit the whole game gameplay. Our tools for that are life siphon and life force generation. It’s a pain to say it but those 2 tools seem extremly difficult to balance and as soon as the necromancer seem to gain a better survivability thank to those tools, there is an uproar in pvp that lead to a nerf of these tools. Our design is to slowly rip life from our enemy and eat it up, strenghtening ourself throught slaughter. I know it doesn’t work but that’s our kittening design!

What I want, hope, is at least an e-spec that cut us off our 2 life bar. Simply put, instead of becoming the shroud, we would create a shroud beast and access a skillset design to control it. This done, there is no reason to not give 2-3 invuln skills to this e-spec and thus put us on the same “level” as all other professions.

As long as I get my pistol main hand at some point, I wouldn’t complain whatever other weapon they put on other e-spec. Pistol main hand please!!!!

You’d probably go :
- marksmanship for the longbow
- skirmishing if you like to often switch weapon
- wilderness survival for utility and resilience
- nature magic would also be a good choice if you are good at stacking boons on you
- beastmastery if you rely on your pet

Vitali.5039:

Dadnir.5038:

The only thing that could be expected would be a possibility for the necromancer to break the 25 stacks wall with a trait that would create a new unique debuff when you try to put vulnerability on a target that have already 25 vuln. Well… thought that might be a good idea…

We share the same thought.

I hope they add a 3sec pulsing condi to rending shroud that double vulnerability effect instead of pulseing vulnerability.

I was more thinking of a debuff that have the same properties than vulnerability but with a cap number at 5 stacks. (for balance)

A trait like :
Putrefactor: when you apply a new stack of vulnerability on a foe that have already 25 vuln stack you apply 1 stack of putrified for 5 second. ICD 1 second.

Putrefied : increase damage and condition damage by 1%. Stack in intensity. maximum 5 stacks.

This would allow a unique up to 5% damage buff on the necromancer. This way to do it fit the necromancer’s design and the limit only make this debuff strong in open PvE where hundred of people hit the same target. It would be balanced for raid, for fractal, for PvP and the only area where it could be bothersome would be on wvw doors. One shouldn’t be able to cleanse this debuff (like you can’t corrupt alacrity), no condi duration improvement.

The joke would be to replace parasitic contagion with putrefactor. This would create some competition in the curse traitline and a lot of player would complain that this trait ruin their dps build. Yup I feel that would be an awesome move! chosing between a barely ok support build or a barely ok dps build… So much fun!

IronPhoenix.2045:

My redesign is simple.

What is the theme of Necromancer? Weaken enemys.

What should a Necromancer bring the group? Boon remove and weaken enemys with vulnerability so the full dps classes deal more dmg. Necros got a high surviavability so the dont need the highest dps. But increase others dps with 25 stacks vulnerability fits to their playstyle and makes them a must have if the other classes get less access to vulnerability.

Necromancers 25 stacks vulnerability like ps are needed for 25 stacks might. Simple change high impact.

The necromancer can already do it guy… it’s just that all other profession can also do it on top of adding more real support to the party. vuln is probably the easiest condition to fart across all professions.

The only thing that could be expected would be a possibility for the necromancer to break the 25 stacks wall with a trait that would create a new unique debuff when you try to put vulnerability on a target that have already 25 vuln. Well… thought that might be a good idea…

No, as always the problem is that ANet is ignoring their own design goals.

If only they could ignore a tiny bit their design goal on necromancer… But I agree, something that’s supposed to be exclusive to an unique elite spec shouldn’t have spread to another profession. Especially on a revenant legend that have absolutely no relation with “time”. In my opinion Anet should have used a different “boon” (is alacrity even a boon?)

Iridi.8473:

Dadnir.5038:

Necro’s not bad, it’s just limited by it’s design.

The theory behind the design make the necromancer outstanding in the game with an unlimited amount of survivability through life siphon and life force generation and powerfull support via “curses” (soft conditions). Theoretically the necromancer rip off the strenght and life out of it’s enemy for a tyrannic and unyelding gameplay. The necromancer doesn’t need to dodge, he is the core of the battlefield, gaining strenght from the suffering of the surrounding allies and foes.

In game it’s not quite right but the design is everything so it seem that we have to deal with it.

So what you’re saying is they made the necro trash by design? And being limited by design is equivalent to being bad. Because when a limited hero goes up against a idk, a non-limited hero?, then we just insta lose? “Our intent is for the necro to be used in raids/groups”. Okay, then why are we so trash at it? Why do we practically 0 raid support? Why does something as simple as our warhorn 4 not give party quickness while the warrior warhorn 4 does? This limited by design, if true, isnt justification to why nobody should ever play the class.

Nop, it’s stupid but what I’m saying is that the design of the necromancer is theoretically overpowered and anet want to stick to this opness. The fact is that OP design do not fare well in the game but anet have proven throught all those year that they still want to stick to it.

- Defense? Necromancer is supposed to be a damage sponge.
- Support? Necromancer is supposed to debuff foes to do that.
- Offense? Necromancer is supposed to outlast it’s foes, not to burst them to death.

We are limited by the very area where we are supposed to be OP simply because our design is highly limied by the design of the game.

I know it doesn’t work well, ou know it, every player know it as well but we’ve been proven years after years that the design is everything for the necromancer. And when the actual game come close to this very design, like it once happen, the pvp crew can’t help but shed blood tears and Anet mercilessly give them justice by nerfing the necromancer.

What’s sure is that anet will stick to that design. Our only hope is that, one day, we will see strenght rise from our weakness (like how good we fare in high end fractal that are basically designed for necromancers)

In PvE necromancers are gods of selfishness capable of soloing all sorts of content that other classes struggle with.

That is not right… PvE solo display mostly feature skilled elementalist or warriors. After that would probably come thieves. Necromancers are, at best, middle tier when it come to solo PvE things.

Even high level fractals can be cheesed with quintuple necro comps.

High level fractal is probably the only content where necromancer’s inner quality (resilience/condi corruption) can correctly be displayed in this game’s PvE. It’s a breather for necromancers but it’s a shame for the game as a whole.

In PvP necromancers are completely dependent on team support and have the worst self-sustain of any class.

The difference with other professions in pvp is due to necromancer lacking way to nullify damage/attack. If I were to play the devil advocate and side with anet necromancer’s design, I’d say that players don’t rely enough on blind. Blind is supposed to be our “block”.

Necros have sustain problems because unlike everyone else’s sustain mechanics ours do not change with the content. Blocks and evades do not care if a incoming attack is 1k or 20k they negate it either way. Life Force however does care about the size of incoming attacks.

You contradict yourself, the issue is not sustain but the lack of way to nullify some incoming attacks. In reality necromancer’s sustain is high but it’s design that force him to endure attacks instead of warding them is responsible for this feeling of bad sustain.

For me, the solution is not some improvement in LF scaling or whatever, the solution lie in tweaks that could come with E-specs. I believe that anet can do change on the necromancer’s mechaism that are a lot more impactful than just changing the skill set of the shroud. And I hope that they will do it.

An E-spec in which the shroud is not a second life bar should be easy to implement (Druid is a live version of this!), Anet just need to add a few skills in this spec that can ward off attack to make this viable.

Honestly, I think it’s a bad move from anet to give alacrity to a core legend of the revenant. It belittle the credibility of their statement when they released the elite specializations. Another thing is that Ventari have no relation with “time” which is the thematic behind alacrity. It would have been ok if this boon had been introduced on a legend that have a link with a “time” thematic because revenant are literally sponge that release the essence of their legend throught skills.

As for the difference between professions, I believe that more than skills or effects, the real difference lie in gameplay. The mesmer possess an unique gameplay that I personnally enjoy, you could even that say “love”. Alacrity do almost nothing to this gameplay, alacrity along with slow just add a “time” thematic to it. Alacrity to ventari just add incoherence to a legend that was struggling to find a place in the game. Anet could probably have fixed the issue in a different way but they chose the easy way without care for coherence.

You know… when a bunker build is succefull in PvP, it usually don’t last long before entering into the nerf zone. Most likely, after what’s been said in this thread, we will see a patch making the revenant unable to use ventari’s skills when CCed.

Necro’s not bad, it’s just limited by it’s design.

The theory behind the design make the necromancer outstanding in the game with an unlimited amount of survivability through life siphon and life force generation and powerfull support via “curses” (soft conditions). Theoretically the necromancer rip off the strenght and life out of it’s enemy for a tyrannic and unyelding gameplay. The necromancer doesn’t need to dodge, he is the core of the battlefield, gaining strenght from the suffering of the surrounding allies and foes.

In game it’s not quite right but the design is everything so it seem that we have to deal with it.

I won’t argue with you demoria but fact is that the necromancer is stuck to the same old issue : They add no usefull support in PvE and especially in group content.

This simple statement is what held back the necromancer. Fun fact is that the engineer that can fart boons like crazy gain even more usefull support through a trait while the necromancer is still forced onto it’s slow design with barely any support at all. As for condi ranger… it’s sad but even they have more room than a necromancer to fart support to a party (like providing fire and poison field, spirits or traits). If you want to cover any possibility to lack might, fury, regen, swiftness r even protection it will always be safer to take a ranger instead of a necromancer.

However, there is still one good thing in this patch, that is that Anet finally gave us some leeway to unleash some condi burst while in reaper (restricted to PvE). The fact that they tacitally acknowledge that it was needed is like a gleem of hope that they are aware of our issues.

NeXeD.3042:

Famine.7915:

NeXeD.3042:

EremiteAngel.9765:

wow reapers stack bleed like crazy now. I took a short burst from an enemy reaper on my dragon hunter and in a few seconds, he stacked around 27 stacks of bleed on me with many covering condis =/
I still cleared it with a single wings of resolve though and proceeded to kite and burst and own him.
I’m just amazed reapers can dish out so much bleed stacks now.

Im a little confused because there is nothing different about reapers in pvp. There was no condi buff. Most likely it was just a shout condi reaper using reaper runes staff gs

Deathly chill now applies 3 stacks of bleed per chill in pve and wvw.

Sweeet thank you for telling me that! Now if only i didnt specifically say PvP your comment would be relevant! Thank You come again.

But it’s comment was relevant… it’s you that specifically assumed that it was about pvp while this buff apply to wvw where there are instance of fight between players. Eremitangel never specified PvP… thus maybe it’s your comment that is not relevant.

Well… the bright side is that now reaper have a way to push for some condi burst (at least in wvw and pve if I understand correctly). This feel like a pretty huge improvement, this mean that now the reaper can condi burst the same ay that other profession condi burst albeit with bleed stacks. I guess anet fullfilled one of the wish of the necromancer’s community.

Truthfully mat, you don’t have to play with different character to understand the plot. However, it help to do so in the sense that you got somewhat of a biger picture of what happen. If we talk of the story from a charr viewpoint here is how it happen :

- First, you are mobilized to fight against the threat of the ascalian ghost and gan some merit from your prowess.
- You are then tangled into a plot linked to your family/specialty. In this plot you resurect your old troup and it most likely lead you to stop a burning legion raid on the black citadel. Again, your name and reputation sore to higher height.
- After this, since you are so dependable, the higher up introduce you to the 3 orders who each like to handle thing differently. After a few mission they ask you to chose for who you want to work.
- You then gain a mentor in this order that you have to help throught some tribulations that lead you to the explosion of zaithan threat on the island. This is where you encounter Trahern whose fate/dream is tied to the death of Zaithan (whatever your race, if you carefully listen to the plot you should have understood that the 1st sylvariis have a “fate” which they discover while they “dream” just before their awakening)
- In the plot, you help Trahern to understand it’s fate and with your support he soon unify the 3 order and lead the war against zaithan to purify Orr. In the process you become a hero of the pact and have a pretty high rank in it. (I’m not saying that we do everything but it’s close…)
- Then come season 1. It start with some disturbance in the north and some charr territories. It’s here that we first encounter the stupid norn brat and the wise lil’ ranger’s charr. After resolving the first trouble we were asked to look for clues about why all this happen. Along the way we had to resolve some disturbance and we encounter all the companions that “support” us since then. Sadly, the mastermind behind the disturbance achieve it’s goal or at least a part of it’s goal before dying.
- Here start season 2. At the begining of this season, great disturbance affect tyria and again you are asked to look at what’s happening. Clue after clue, we understand that Mordremoth have awaken and he is quite good at bothering us. After a big event, the different race decide that it’s necessary to unify against this threat and the pact is sent at the frontlines. Obviously you can only help yours brothers in arm from the zaithan campain.
- Alas (here come HoT) when the pact start pushing onto mordremoth they got nearly anihilated. So you follow the plot of HoT and end up suppresing this big guy high spirit. This come along with a few sacrifice.
- And season 3 start. New disturbances arise and political faction start to want to tie you to the pact. Fed up you decide to create your own guild (lol) in order to move freely. The stupid brat go out of control and human internal politic plots as well. Well… that’s probably the worst plot Anet cooked up until now. It’s so ridiculous…

PS.: It also help to do dungeons story mode to understand the history of tyria (especially for the main plot of the core game : Zaithan arc)

The next specialization should be something related to plant, with stuf like vine that root, plant dogs summoning, plant turrets… wait! no! that’s sylvarii… sorry!

Then the next specialization should be something that allow physical transformation into animals and pet summoning… wait! no! that’s norn… sorry!

Then let’s be original and try something more related to science! The next specialization should be focus around mechanic pets like golem… Og god! that’s Asura…

Else it could be something… Urgh! I almost suggested something with skill close to human racial skills… That’s no good…

Let’s just hope for some speicalization that make use of our weapons movement skills. Something that add effect on movement skills should be pretty safe balance wise, not really difficult to implement (since warrior already have a trait or 2 that make use of it) and could promote an interesting gameplay. It would benefit SB, dagger off-hand, sword, GS and lightning reflex so there almost no area to cover with a specific weapon… I think a melee MH dagger focused on condi or hybrid damage would fit it perfectly. Special mechanisms or utility could feature some movement… Let’s give it a nae for fun : tracker.

Is the day that they will allow us to prevent the pet from using their God d***kitten*** extra utilities on which we have currently no say on when they are used or whatever.

Please either remove them from the game (easier for Anet) or just allow us to block them via this almost useless window that is the pet UI.

I think this is not a ranger spec… Never forget that pets are imbeded in the core traitline and a very important tool when we are down. You just can’t get rid of it this way. Wich mean that you designed these few skills for another profession.

Thought the idea of having 2 e-spec for the same core profession with the same weapon but different skills is interesting.

bearshaman.3421:

Anchoku.8142:

Reaper and wells…

Will condi-copter be good enough for a raid slot?

condi-copter?

Gravedigger spam -> copter.
Gravedigger spam in dark field -> condi-copter

Answer to Anchoku : most likely “no”

Wondrouswall.7169:

The charts and tests from Guild Wars Hub should still be valid. Last I recall, the only changes done to pets from the time it was published was Jaguar’s F2 cooldown was reduced from 30s to 24s and Spider’s poison lob was buffed. It’d be safe to assume a small DPS increase for those pets.

Well you forgot about the moa change which should make them slightly better against moving target.

Agree that we need pet fix for next update… well we will probably need also pet fix for more than the next update. Also I do not agree with all the thing that the op suggest, I won’t comment on it and I wil just suggest one thing that is not here :

- Please, allow us to disable some of our pets utility skills.

Yes, just that. I just want to be able to prevent my pet from using an unneeded skill the same way I could in GW1, except, I’m not even asking to be able to change this in combat or control it. No, I just want to durably stop any wild use of some skill from my pet.

This will only allow me to freely optimize my synergy with my pet. That all, almost nothing but at the same time… so much.

Xenon.4537:

If they add ritualist I hope they add some slight synergy to minions. In gw1 ritualists had the spawning power stat which greatly increased the health of summons, including necro minions. They also had spells like explosive growth and boon of creation to augment minion creation.

Well… In guild wars 1 necromancers could control a lot of minions, they had really good support as well and siphons used to be something. The profession evolved into something… different.

What ritualists used to do is dealing with the spirit of the deceased. They mainly used these deceased to borrow their strenght by various mean (sumoning them, putting them into the weapon of their allies or simply borrowing their remain). Revenant are very close to that since they basically borrow the strenght of a few strong characters from the past. They are also far from the ritualist, the same way that necromancers are far from the old necromancers in the way that they lost the ability they got to bestow the power of the spirits to their allies. They’ve become more straitforward and selfish in their approach by deepening their link with the spirits where the necromancer became also more straitforward and selfish in their approach by trepassing the boundary between life and death and thus creating the “shroud”.

“In this balance patch we wanted to push reaper more in line with the core necromancer and free the necromancer from being gutted into taking vital persistance, therefore we removed this trait from the game and are happy to introduce a new exciting trait.”

“We found out that Reaper’s might was overperforming while in reaper shroud. Therefore we decided to put a 1 second ICD on the effect.”

“We understand that vital persistance is an issue in the game and need to be tuned done, we’ve heard you! We then chose to merge the cool down reduction into gluttony which is now :

Gluttony : increase life force gain from skills : 5%. Shroud skills recharge faster : 10%.

We then created a new trait that we feel very exciting : Taste of corruption which will grant you some life force whenever you take condition damage while in shroud.

Taste of corruption : grant you 2% life force whenever you take condition damage while in shroud."

3 hours after patch release :

“Due to an unintended bug we decided to disable taste of corruption until we got some time to fix it”

A few weeks after release :

“We discovered an unintended bug with tatse of corruption leading to an endless amount of life force generated while taking condition damage. A 1 second ICD has been implemented on the trait to corrected it.”

Weapon: Duel Swords (get both an offhand weapon and main-hand weapon)

2 things :
- On an e-spec, weapon is merely flavor while traits and mechanisms are important.
- Forgot about getting 2 new weapons for an unique e-spec. This is the most unlikely thing that’s gonna happen, to much balance work for the devs.

Am I unaware of some vampiric invasion going on?

There are those weird winged things in maguma forest that are a pain to kill because of excessive life stealing and are conveniently called vampir. Maybe it’s that, however I’m not sure it’s necessary to dedicated a whole profession to to the eradication of those pest.

You’re joking, right? E-specs are not optional, they are mandatory.

Just saying this is wrong in itself. E-specs as long as there are many of them are de facto optional and not mandatory. Simply because you can only select one e-spec at a time. Druid may be mandatory if you are glued to the meta but in fact core ranger spec are also in a good place atm (at least when it come to condi dps).

again, why they’ve made changes to things like “Call of the Wild”

Nope, Call of the wild being making the pet unblockable is not a testimony of anet wanting to make the pet’s dps worthwhile. An unblockable pet is a pet that continue to buff it’s master and continue to proc what he is supposed to proc (traits effects). To make it simple it’s the very bad way anet found to say : “Now shut up! We’ve done something about pets not being able to hit their target, we won’t do anything else because we feel that it would make the ranger imbalanced”.

I’ll say it again, I don’t disagree with all of your ideas, merely the one that makes pets non-DPS, moble utility slots.

Again, a pet doing dps or not doesn’t change the fact that you play a summoner, play along with your pet or whatever. It’s just a different approach of how to interact along with a pet, a different way to play the same class. From my point of view, you should be more wary of :

1st E-spec : add an F5 skill tat seal the pet into your weapon. The pet is somehow stowed but is still affected by the boons and different buff you share. It’s auto attack/damage happen on an on hit extra effect with your weapon. You have access to F2 which affect you instead of your pet and F4 may be traited in order to directly summon a sealed pet. When you are downed or killed the seal broke.

since the sealing effect remove your pet and effectively get rid of it.

Than an e-spec that merely remove the dps of your summoned pet.

Why indeed? The answer is “design”.

What held down the necromancer is and have always been it’s design. Anet designed the reaper as a slow inescapable monster on top off the necromancer’s design as the character that is supposed to outlast through a large health pool all other profession. That’s it for the design, in practice it may be slightly different and even have a hard time working but… we are tied to this design.

The greatsword is slow (which is not a design that work well in game due to dodge being the true way to survive in most of the situation) and chill make for the inescapable part.

The best thing to do is still to wait for an e-spec with a different design. Let’s all try our best to think of a kind of nightmare monster that don’t take it’s time while dealing with it’s prey… perhaps we will find hope…

The problem is more that you lose a lot of damage not from the gear but from the traits/skills that you have to take to reach a good amount of precision because you lost it from your gear. In practice, 10k health amount to nothing in survivability versus a higher dps. The number of time you have to hit your foe to get rid of it is more important than your health pool. Well, this is one of the paradox of gw2 where defensive stat are more than often overshadowed by offensive stats.

Substance E.4852:

OGDeadHead.8326:

It’s too late now. They won’t ever really improve the core issues at this stage. Some band-aid fixes slapped on is what we can hope for at most, but I doubt even that will happen.

Literally the best we can hope for is another 1-2 good pets in the next expansion that will then be nerfed down to barely passable after enough pleb tears flood the pvp forum.

You got it perfectly!

As for me I still have hope that they will somewhat make the effort to try to do something through e-specs. This is probably just a dream and they will most likely continue to avoid the problem by doing cowardly e-spec like “druid” but, I still have hope (the In game legendary gun indeed).

This thread feel like nonsense…

Weak spot have it’s uses i it’s state, there is no reason to change it just to satisfy some kind of tempest fetish. Core elementalist fresh air would probably lose substantial dps potential with a change to this trait.

Harmonious conduit improve substancially your survivability while you are under the effect of the boon “protection”. I’m pretty sure you’d feel the difference in survivability if you were to change this trait like what you want. More likely, you’d die faster.

As for SoW, the passive effect is normalized and you shouldn’t belittle the strenght of a 4 second chill effect. Afterall, players felt that chill was so strong on necromancer (even without damage trait) that they litterally beged anet to nerf the duration. For an elementalist, chilling a foe is usefull in many way.

The reason why scepter builds ain’t made/showcased for pve is very simple.
- In open pve, nobody care about what build you use, it only impact you yourself.
- In group content (fractal/raid/dungeon) players look for max damage which are usually stave or dagger build. Warrior are in charge of might stack since phallanx strenght has been implemented.

NB.: dagger and scepter are the same when it come to might stacking, just dagger is less cluncky, also, I higly recommend you to forget about dagger off hand for might stackin, focus is ways better.