I think people are over dramatizing this change. Classes that can already disengage with ease will continue to disengage with ease. Classes that don’t still won’t. Nothing has changed.
Except that immobile professions (namely Necro) just lost any hope of locking anyone but a Necro into combat with them. Literally everyone will be able to escape a Necro with ease.
Because turning it into a mech demon stomper is more difficult.
Compare the amount of Cripple, Chills and Slows classes will have access to in HoT. Mind you, Stuns and Immobilize effects are still in the game.
Are melee classes, especially Thieves, suppose to be sitting ducks by not able to disengage/engage? It sounds like a game of Rock, Paper, Scissors. Scissors is complaining because Paper is getting away.
Again, Slow will have negligible effect on mobility. It only affects cast time, not movement.
And this is not a game of rock/paper/scissors where scissors is complaining paper is getting away. This is a case where scissors is complaining that both rock and paper can come and leave as they wish with scissors having very little they can do about it.
The reason for insta-death on falling damage would be to prevent people from jumping down to ridiculous places they shouldn’t be able to get to by simply jumping off and self-ressing.
this is pvp tho…. the only map like that would be skyhammer.
Instant death from fall damage should be absent in pvp, imho.
And Khylo, Spirit Watch, and Temple of the Silent Storm…
Can we try actually PLAYING the patch before we brandish our pitchforks please?
Here we go again.
When a game does balance updates only every six months and does not player test those updates, every single update is super high stakes. Six months of broken gameplay is a very long time.
Players have no choice but to speak out on their predictions.
In past updates they typically didn’t completely change the trait system and will soon add a new soft CC. Normally I would agree with you, but in this case we have no idea how slow will affect melee characters.
Slow won’t affect melee any worse than anyone else. It increases cast time of skills, it doesn’t hinder your ability to move.
I was thinking about this on my way home from work. Slow and quickness change the cast time of a skill by -+50%. For example if you cast rush with haste will you travel 1200 distance in 1.3s or only travel 923 distance. Same with slow. Will you travel 1200 distance in 3s or travel 1800 distance.
I think this is the actual reason for the changes to leaps, though ANet didn’t say as such. Right now, Slow would increase Leap distance because you would travel at the increased speed for a longer time. Quickness already reduces it.
I think the “speed boosts and reductions don’t affect leaps” is actually a byproduct of their work to normalize Quickness/Slow.
I already mentioned this to Bhawb, but I suspect this change is a side-effect of normalizing leaps with Quickness and Slow. Right now, using a leap with Quickness actually reduces the distance you travel because the movement speed is the same, but the time you move at that speed is lower.
Not the best way to code things.
Can we try actually PLAYING the patch before we brandish our pitchforks please?
Here we go again.
When a game does balance updates only every six months and does not player test those updates, every single update is super high stakes. Six months of broken gameplay is a very long time.
Players have no choice but to speak out on their predictions.
In past updates they typically didn’t completely change the trait system and will soon add a new soft CC. Normally I would agree with you, but in this case we have no idea how slow will affect melee characters.
Slow won’t affect melee any worse than anyone else. It increases cast time of skills, it doesn’t hinder your ability to move.
-91% cripple, chill, immob duration (i think it’s calculated that way)
All duration modifiers are added together, then applied to the base for the final result. Hoelbrak and Unstoppable Onslaught total an 86% reduction on Cripple, Chill and Immobilize while in Reaper’s Shroud. However, for example, another Reaper applying Chill would only have a -66% reduction (Cold Shoulder boosting Chill by 20%) (-66%-20%+20%=-66%)
and what logic are we using when you say it needs a change? Its a condi users tool to fend off a power class.
Vulnerable was a condition used to deal more dmg by power users.
Now its also for condi user > Roy words: issnt that fair?well is it fair that weakness ONLY punish power users?
It doesn’t only punish power users. The endurance regen effect is punishing for everyone.
Conditions ignoring Weakness helps offset the fact that they have no multipliers (Vulnerability will be the first). When conditions can crit, then a case may be made for Weakness also reducing them. A random boost in damage counteracted by a random decrease in damage.
Even after retreading it twice I was confused: They talk about “all of the damaging conditions,” but they neglect to mention chill (which will soon be a damaging condition) and fear.
That’s a good catch. We will certainly have to ask the Devs about this problem.
Both only do damage due to Necro traits. In fact, the condition itself won’t deal any damage, rather the trait does.
That’s why we don’t have partial ticks on Terror.
A mixed bag of news
1. Doesn’t happen until specialization patch, aka HoT, aka August 30 if we are lucky
2. Intensity stacking for chill and cripple and immobilize and fear is a big nerf
3. They are keeping the 25 stack limit or vulnerability which means that vulnerability stacking weapons, aka axe, are still pointless
1. Not true, this is coming much sooner. Next patch, in fact. Keep up with the news.
2. Chill, Cripple, Fear, and Immobilize will still stack duration. They only said it was the damaging conditions that stack intensity now. The bigger nerf is that Cripple and Chill can’t reduce leap distance anymore.
3. Axe is pointless anyway, since it stacks too slowly. Plus, increasing Vulnerability cap would break balance so hard.
Givers weapons exist.
And “cc durations like fear?” Try only Fear.
Taunt is coming in HoT, so that’s two.
Taunt isn’t a condition, so condition duration has no effect.
What happens now when two armies are fighting near a lord in wvw with no other npc’s around and a necro epidemics the lord? Do conditions applied by his side get copied out to enemy players, do all conditions regardless of which side applied them get copied to enemy players or does it not do anything? Should be interesting if the lord in stonemist has an insane amount of conditions with the caps removed and two sides are fighting over the cap and epidemic works on him.
5 people get heavily loaded with conditions, I’d imagine. Cleansing is still rampant in zergs.
Edit:
To above poster there are 3 stats that effect condition dps. Damage, Duration and Precision. Prior to now the second two were worthless due to the cap. With it removed they will directly effect total dps now. We still need a gear set with those stats though.Precision only affects condi damage through a very small number of procs from traits that trigger on crit, which not all classes have. It is also in no way actually worthwhile, and is only gotten because there’s literally nothing else unless you want a defence stat.
Duration does not exist on gear and never will, since balancing it will be a nightmare given that it affects cc durations like fear.
Givers weapons exist.
And “cc durations like fear?” Try only Fear.
I’d like to see more play with the Necro’s own health thresholds, probably getting better and better as the Necro gets lower on health to generate a high-risk/high-reward playstyle option. Since Necros do, by default, have a lot of health, this can be more viable for us than other professions.
Sure burning does more damage, but with Reaper, chill uptime is more important.
Explain why..?
Chilling Force and Cold Shoulder.
Simpler than that. Chilling Force + Blighter’s Boon + Greatsword. Auto for the chill, then pop Gs3 for 24% life force per target. It hits 6 times in incredibly rapid succession.
And you get 6 stacks of Might yourself and 12 stacks of Vulnerability on your target.
Doesnt the bottom line disapear when you take repear? So no soul marks. Our one good minor trait in the game we lose too.
Where did you get that crazy idea? No. We have our current 5 traitlines plus elite specializations. You pick any 3, but no more than 1 Elite line.
Soul Reaping + Reaper is 100% kosher.
Minions, really. Their pathing issues don’t really exist underwater, so they’re actually pretty good there.
4. The GS currently only has LF generation on the pull skill. That is not enough, unless you consistently pull 3 targets, which proabably won’t happen, so you’ll need either dagger or staff with soul marks to keep up.
GS3 provides 2% life force per hit, hitting up to 3 targets 6 times each on a 10 second cooldown. 12%/target, max of 36%
GS5 provides 4% life force hit, hitting up to 5 targets. 4%/target, max of 20%.
I see my mistake and have edited my post. I was in too much of an internet range to read correctly.
Still 12% for a single target on a 10 second cooldown, which works out to be a bit faster (.25 seconds faster) than Axe 2 with identical life force gain. Less damage, though.
4. The GS currently only has LF generation on the pull skill. That is not enough, unless you consistently pull 3 targets, which proabably won’t happen, so you’ll need either dagger or staff with soul marks to keep up.
GS3 provides 2% life force per hit, hitting up to 3 targets 6 times each on a 10 second cooldown. 12%/target, max of 36%
GS5 provides 4% life force hit, hitting up to 5 targets. 4%/target, max of 20%.
I think that revenant will get it for their overall lack of stunbreaks outside of legend swap.
I personally cannot imagine swapping legend just to break stun. What do you guys think?You kidding? Legend swap is a stunbreak?
That’s like having a stunbreak on weapon swap.
That sounds amazing, I’d take that in a heartbeat and be happy with it!
A stunbreak on a 10 second cooldown? Sweet!(I assume the legend swap cooldown isn’t much higher than weapon swap cooldown.)
Only a stunbreak if they take the right traitline. Meaning that, from what we’ve seen so far, a Revenant must take Jallis and/or Invocation specialization to have any stunbreaks at all.
Plus, Renewing Blast is extremely high sustained healing. It isn’t hard to get it to heal 1k per blast, and that would be OP on Reaper’s Shroud with both greater ease of use and much faster attack speed.
it was mentioned in the thief forum that they can now do a range F2 on us by using their fear bundle + their F1 steal together to blink to us for the fear to connect
meaning they don’t need to be near us anymore to activate fear
your thoughts? too OP?
Why? That wastes a 3 second fear form the most part when you daze them. It’s not the best use of resources against a necro.
Fancy trick I guess but spreading out the cc is more valuable. Now, doing it against a warrior or guardian… that’s interesting.
Except that “fancy trick” can be done without traiting Steal at all. It will be baseline.
I’m surprised about the talk in Hidden Arcana:
“(…)Mallyx in particular is so offended at having his immense power borrowed by upstart mortals that using some of those powers will take health from the revenant(…)”
So Revenant will get health sacrafices. That’s something.
In the form of self-conditions. Their elite pulses Torment on themselves, after all.
You know what’s messed up? Nerf is relatively minor, but the amount of people who chose NOW to stop using axe kind of makes me think that the real reason that ANYONE used the axe was cause of Fashion Wars 2™.
Really kinda sad that aesthetics was the only reason some people used it and only now do we realize there’s no reason to use it at all.
I used it for a bit because I recently finished making Frostfang. Then this change hit and Frostfang has been sitting in my inventory ever since. I’d move it to my Ranger if she didn’t have a fire motif going with her armor and weapons. My Warrior isn’t 80 yet, so that’s a no-go as well.
Can you elaborate on how downing myself in what would be a clearly dodgeable skill solves all my necro problems?
Gets you to downed state quicker to use our OP damage :p
And the only thing that can directly counter that kind of stability use is boon corruption that instantly turns the stability into an interrupt, hint hint wink wink.
Or traited Steal
The “tanky condi builds” made up 2 or fewer of 5 slots on a team, even at their most popular point. Inclusion in a competitive scene does not make it a meta. Condi builds were included for a while, but they never defined the meta.
I can clearly remember a long lasting meta called “spirit ranger meta”, and another called “Dhuumfire meta”. I guess I dreamt it.
Those were metas for the profession, but not for PvP as a whole. Meta builds for Necromancers have, until recently, been condition builds, but Necromancers are not meta (and in fact, never have been outside of the short time after Dhuumfire’s initial release).
Hope that helps clarify. Again, the so called “condition meta” never existed.
Just a few problems here:
1. Dhuumfire was literally the only “condition on X” added to the game since launch that is available in PvP until Mesmers got their Torment on scepter auto and shatters. Thus, the application rate of conditions has not nearly gone up at anything close to the rate you are insinuating.
Sigils and runes, just like with air/fire, have increased the application rate of conditions to some crazy levels. Geomancy, balth runes, krait runes, nightmare runes, etc. have all been added which increase condition application rate to some silly levels. On many builds you can apply 5-6 condis with one hit, and for a while after the 4/15 patch (before everyone was running shoutbows), terrormancer had a very strong condition burst/ fear chain that made them one of the best 1v1-builds in-game. A lot of these conditions all proc on-hit, on-swap, and on-crit too, not from deliberate use of certain skills.
You mean those runes and sigils which have been available since launch? The only thing that has meaningfully changed since then that you listed was Krait runes, going from a useless 6 piece (+100 Power underwater) to inflicting conditions on elite use.
2. The “Condition meta” never existed. At most, we saw two condition builds on a team, more often only one, and frequently, none at all. That was when Dhuumfire was at its strongest!
I disagree with you here. There was a pretty long portion when everyone was running tanky condi builds before people swapped over to tanky super-cleanse builds. The scales really tipped when they introduced berserker’s stance and cleansing ire, which created hambow (that countered condi builds) and lead us into the hambow and tanky metas.
The “tanky condi builds” made up 2 or fewer of 5 slots on a team, even at their most popular point. Inclusion in a competitive scene does not make it a meta. Condi builds were included for a while, but they never defined the meta.
3. Upcoming trait changes don’t really impact the situation of conditions, other than possibly making it even harder to stack. Engineer and Necromancer are known to be getting some additional reworks.
There are a lot of traits being added that give a large amount of condis on instant procs, on-hit, etc. being added. Combined with decoupling stats from trait-lines and re-aligning trait-lines so that you can make more sensible (and consistent) condi choices, might help make condi builds stronger. Finally, letting burning stack and increasing the bleed cap above 25 (which can impact a few niche builds) might impact the landscape of condi-builds. However, access to very strong sustain lines might keep the arms-race in favor of high-cleanse builds that can keep all condis off everything. I’m not sure which way it will go, but I can assure it won’t be balanced on way or the other (condi builds will either be OP or useless).
Care to list the ones that are coming that aren’t already here? Outside of the reworks coming for Engineer and Necro traits/skills (where we don’t know what they will bring), I really am not seeing it.
Its always so funny seeing people get upset about passive procmancers doing their thing when you don’t acknowledge that the necromancer has been pushed out of the meta as a whole by the cele meta, and even terrormancer can’t compete anymore because the condi clease of shoutbow/guard/ele/engi comps is just too much to warrant using necromancer for conditions anymore.
Yea, this is the fault of power-creep, and it might just swing the other way with the trait revamp. For quite a while, the game had SKILLFULL application of conditions, where you had to build up your bleed stacks, then cover them to protect from cleanse. Likewise, cleanse wasn’t quite as prevalent. Then, they decided to start putting conditions on almost everything, with huge procs from runes, traits, sigils, etc. (such as dhuumfire) which allowed condition builds to just burst out a million conditions with one hit…leading to the condi meta. Rather than reel that back in, they decided to give a bunch of really strong condition cleanse options to classes such as warrior and eles so that they could keep up with the condition-spam created previously. This is where we are now, where cleanse slightly out-paces application, making condi builds worthless.
With the upcoming trait change, conditions might be able to be applied in very large bursts and far outstrip the cleanse capabilities (or maybe not). But regardless, the state of that side of the game is the results of an arms race that has actually made the interplay between condis and cleanse very boring and skill-less.
Just a few problems here:
1. Dhuumfire was literally the only “condition on X” added to the game since launch that is available in PvP until Mesmers got their Torment on scepter auto and shatters. Thus, the application rate of conditions has not nearly gone up at anything close to the rate you are insinuating.
2. The “Condition meta” never existed. At most, we saw two condition builds on a team, more often only one, and frequently, none at all. That was when Dhuumfire was at its strongest!
3. Upcoming trait changes don’t really impact the situation of conditions, other than possibly making it even harder to stack. Engineer and Necromancer are known to be getting some additional reworks.
Only problem with Plague becoming a corruption is that it doesn’t inflict a condition on yourself, which is literally the only thing the corruption skills have in common.
My expectation is that Plague will become a Well skill, since it pulses an effect in an AoE.
Defiant Stance is the only stance with a cast time. Renewed Focus and Litany of Wrath have cast times, unlike every other meditation.
Just because a feature is common on a skill type does not make it mandatory for a skill to be of that type.
Not a whole lot of options, really. Longbow Ranger is a strong counter to any Necro build because of a lack of ways to close that long of a distance. If you have no life force, the best option is dropping Reaper’s Mark, but that is a much longer cooldown. Spectral Grasp can work well, though. Rangers rarely expect it.
Or they are internally determining what to do, and won’t mention anything until they’ve figured it out and know what to do.
Probably, but they could at least say “Yeah, we’re trying to figure something out to improve the situation.”
Any stun breaks that would fit in well with the general idea of my build that come to mind?
Spectral Armor. It does a great job of helping to make your health and life force go further with the Protection, but also is our best defensive skill combined with Death Shroud. Since you’re deep into Death Magic anyway, the boon duration gets put to good use.
Swap out Signet of Spite for it.
Also, swap out Spiteful Marks for Chill of Death. Spiteful Marks is pretty worthless due to how terrible the coefficients are on everything but Putrid Mark. Chill of Death is good on literally every build (not necessarily best, but it’s always good).
(edited by Drarnor Kunoram.5180)
Life Blast doesn’t always cancel when you run out of life force, strangely.
I’m willing to bet this is from back from when they changed siphon values and reduced Bloodthirst to 20% increase. My guess is that they did not change the base value for “when Bloodthirst is equipped” and apply the 20% to that value.
With the proposed specialization changes coming up, I am more in favor of all-out healing, but I still think the best course is adding it in piecemeal. The only real issue with that stance is ANet’s absolutely glacial balance pacing, but it would make sure we get into the best spot possible. It is possible for us to get too much sustain.
Pretty sure people who have been saying no to “all healing in death shroud” but have been advocating siphons have been saying “all traits that heal you and Regeneration”
If Mark of Evasion heals you, all Regeneration boons should heal you.
What you just outlined, flow, is a great example of the steps that can be taken by ANet in giving us more and more healing in death shroud.
a lot of reading comprehension fails here…. dps hasn’t changed. Mesmer GS and Ele lightning whip have already had skill cancel nerfs.
DPS has changed, unfortunately. The aftercast is the same as it was before (.2 seconds) and the cast time was increased to 1 second from 3/4 seconds.
We can achieve 100% or 96% in PvP:
RS: 66 – Melandru: 25 – Fire Aura: 10
RS: 66 – Hoelbrack: 20 – Fire Aura: 10Since we’ll have a leap finisher on a VERY LOW CD (6s – 15% if traited) we can COMMUNICATE with any ele/warrior when they’re going to drop a fire field and leap through it Kappa
Fire Auras don’t grant reduced condi duration, only the actual skill Fire Shield.
Any skill with a 1/2 second cast or less is difficult to dodge. Average human reaction time is .25 seconds, and once you factor in latency (~150 ping is still considered fairly good), you only have ~.1 seconds to recognize the skill and decide to dodge.
It’s going to be tough. Anything with a 1/4 second or faster cast requires prediction to avoid, normally.
Wait a sec. I thought the Relentless Pursiut trait was 99% immunity. 33% for GS + 66% for shroud. Go into shroud wielding GS and you should be at 99%.
I guess its in how you read it, not sure. Most of us seem to assume its 66% in knight.
Considering the trait description says “the bonus is doubled in Reaper’s Shroud”, it’s a pretty safe bet that you do not add them together, since doubling 33% is 66%.
Must be looking at old info here:
http://dulfy.net/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/gw2-reaper-traits1.jpg
Are you getting your info from the beta or something?
My mistake, I quoted the devs on the reveal stream, not the tooltip.
@nektraal: The trait gives 33% reduction all the time, unconditionally. When in Reaper’s Shroud, you will have even further reduction for a total of 66%.
There is also a bug that we only get 1 pulsing stability stack instead of 3 , please fix this !
That is completely intended.
Wait a sec. I thought the Relentless Pursiut trait was 99% immunity. 33% for GS + 66% for shroud. Go into shroud wielding GS and you should be at 99%.
I guess its in how you read it, not sure. Most of us seem to assume its 66% in knight.
Considering the trait description says “the bonus is doubled in Reaper’s Shroud”, it’s a pretty safe bet that you do not add them together, since doubling 33% is 66%.
solid hp leech on #2
I kept reading after this but please don’t go so carefree with adjectives. :p
The heal on dagger 2 is quite strong. The only thing bad about that skill is that the cast time is so long.
The condition transfer shout looks really weak.
You Are All Weaklings, on the other hand, looks good and it will be our shortest cooldown stunbreak skill. Yeah, short Might duration, but good AoE weakness and on a short cooldown.
I wouldn’t say Banshee’s Wail is out of the question for PvE condi builds. It’s actually fairly strong for them.
But yes, Reaper’s Precision really needs to be replaced with…well, anything else.
Oh. In that case, you probably shouldn’t be going condi at all, so Banshee’s Wail is the best choice. Warhorn is good there. Consider that traited Locust Swarm has an effective power coefficient of 3.0 (though crits factor in differently than one big hit) and is AoE. For reference, Backstab is only a 2.4
(edited by Drarnor Kunoram.5180)