I said i can farm 300+ dungeon tokens faster then i can farm 40000 karma… that’s what i said. I can’t get 40000 karma in 1-2 hours, but i sure can get 300+ dungeon tokens…
Not trying to misquote you, and I apologize if it came across that way! I’ve edited my original posting.
It simply wasn’t clear to me what you thought of Karma-bought gear in general, since in my case all the banked karma — from several characters I’ve leveled — is essentially free to me at this point. I wasn’t sure if you thought karma-bought gear also wasn’t all that great, or if karma could be better-spent elsewhere, or if it simply was a matter of your playstyle/time and that’s it.
(I’d still like to hear that part. If you suddenly got 250-500,000 karma on a character that just hit 80, would you use it on the Temple exotics or not?)
(edited by Druitt.7629)
In a thread a couple of months ago, someone asked Nemesis (I think) about karma gear and the answer was essentially, “I can farm 300+ dungeon tokens faster then I can farm 40000 karma”, so why get karma gear? But that raised a question in my mind, if anyone has good suggestions:
I have a Necro that’s now 76 and I’m beginning to plan for hitting 80. I have a level-71 character and several 30-40’ish characters and I’ve banked all of the karma jugs they’ve earned, plus some karma bonus tokens. So I should have a boatload of karma, if I want, when I hit 80. I’d been planning to go to one of the Orr temples and basically equip myself head-to-toe with karma exotic gear as a baseling level-80 set, then experiment with upgrades and play styles and eventually begin replacing the gear with best-in-slot for whatever build I decide on.
QUESTION: Is the Orr Temple Karma gear the best use of my karma stash? Or should I just grind for gold and buy stuff and use the karma for something else?
(If it matters, I’m open to most build styles and haven’t picked one particular style. I usually solo or duo PvE or jump into WvW. I like versatile builds where possible.)
Thanks!
(edited by Druitt.7629)
I found WoW to be very inconsistent as well, but perhaps they’ve smoothed it out since I left.
I’d totally disagree with the “level a Thief to 40 by crafting” theory. Get a sword and a pistol. Learn what they do (blind, evade, etc). Focus on melee mobs, think through the best way to handle ranged mobs — and when to avoid an encounter entirely. BAM, my Thief, even from fairly low levels (20’s, when I discovered S/P?) is my toughest character.
Put a shortbow as your alternative weapon and you can kite like no other.
@KarlaGrey: Again, I’d point to Shadowstep, which has a 50s cooldown (and 10s return window). Lengthening the recall window to 10s to match Shadowstep might make sense, but I think shortening the recharge to 40s is too much.
I agree it should be a bit longer. But if you want to compare, it’s a utility skill and thus more comparable to the Thief’s Shadowstep utility skill which only provides 10 seconds for a return.
Like Shadowstep, it’s not targeted, and it’s a 6-skill-point skill. Of course, Shadowstep teleports you there, while Spectral Walk requires you to walk, so a 10-12 second return time might be applicable.
Great comments all! Especially thanks @Dasorine for the full explanation. I’m going to do some experiments to see what kind of limitations Infiltrator’s Arrow has.
@Dasorine: Hmmm, gotta explore the targeted teleport idea. As an example, you mean something like Infiltrator’s Strike, correct?
Another thing to mention in this thread is that leaps are not teleports, so they can have terrain issues, but they don’t have to be targeted. Seems to me that Heartseeker is a nice tool for moving fast if you don’t have a target. The only complication is that it will strike things near your path so you can’t use it to go too close to creatures.
@Grimwolf: But I believe you can return from a shadow step to anywhere, right? I used it once on a very long jumping puzzle where there was a tricky jump about 80% through it. If you missed the jump you fell a survivable distance, so a Shadow Step to your current location allowed several seconds to try to make the actual jump, with a recall if you missed.
I don’t think all shadow steps are equal here. Seems to me that Shadowstep can recall across most anything, while Infiltrator’s Strike will not. Or maybe I’m remembering incorrectly.
(edited by Druitt.7629)
This is a general question regarding all teleport-like skills for all professions, but since I’m almost exclusively playing my Thief now (level 40-ish) and the Thief has several teleports, I’ll ask here.
What are the limitations of the various teleport skills/traits?
For example, Shadowstep doesn’t let me jump across a gap, but it will let me recall across a gap or with large height differences. (This makes sense to avoid exploits: it “breaks the rules” on return, but you’ve already been there somehow.)
People love Infiltrator’s Arrow, but I’ve found it to be meh: there’s an in-flight time and a short range, so it I’m firing in the direction I’m running it’s not a very large jump. It doesn’t fire across gaps or height differentials. What am I missing?
I’ve read somewhere that at least one of our teleports can jump through walls if someone else targets an enemy on the other side and we adopt their target.
What about other teleporting skills: what can they do on initial use, what can they do on recall (if any)?
Any class invited to reply.
(edited by Druitt.7629)
@legion: You need to think about avoiding damage. If you imagine the Thief as a duel-dagger-wielding killing machine that kills everything in range before dying you’ll have a hard time at lower levels. Dodge, circle strafe, use sword/pistol as your weapons.
With sword/pistol, you can use Blackpowder which damages and sets up a smoke field that will blind your opponents once a second for 4 seconds. So if you have 3 mobs standing in it and they only attack once a second, you’ll take zero damage. On top of this, you can use Pistol Whip on your main target, which does good damage and also stuns them for 1/2 second. (Which means any attack they were in the process of doing is interrupted, and you get a half second break from further attacks.) During the Pistol Whip, you are also evading all incoming damage as well!
At level 5 you get a skill point and can immediately get Blinding Powder, which also blinds in an AoE, and stealths, and can be used at any time including while stunned. Or save up/collect 3 skill points and get Caltrops, which is simply an amazing AoE cripple and bleed at lower levels. It even works against stealthed mobs, which are always annoying.
As you get to higher levels, you can collect more skills and specialize into a killing machine. But several core mechanics of the Thief involve damage avoidance (which can include being able to run if overwhelmed) and the profession forces you to learn these basics early on.
In terms of feeling weak at lower levels, that’s crazy. I was more powerful at lower levels than my Elementalist, Engineer, or Necromancer. The key is to avoid damage, and you have a lot of tools to do that.
First, equip an offhand pistol: that gives you a stun and a smoke bomb, which are lethal against melee mobs, since they won’t hit you very often. I used sword/pistol at lower levels. Get the 5-point trait that gives you haste when you dodge. Put Caltrops on your bar: they are absolutely amazing damage, they work against stealthed mobs, and they slow things down if you have to run. Choose the heal that stealths you, and use it to heal, but also as an opener or other move to get behind your target.
Perhaps at the first few levels you have to strafe circle a lot, but I was amazed by my Thief being able to stand toe-to-toe with mobs at lower levels (once I went sword/pistol). It was so easy that now, at level 35, I’m having to learn to get behind targets for stealth attacks.
I like Thief stealth a lot better than other games. It forces you to think and you can specialize in it or not.
In WoW, stealth was silly. You could use it to stealth all the way across a map to ambush someone picking flowers, but because of the many loopholes Blizzard had to insert because of its OPness, someone who knew you were there had a lot of tools to pull you out of stealth before you wanted. Sort of backwards, and really only attractive to people who can’t fight very well.
In GW, you stealth for brief, but critical moments, and you can’t be pulled out of stealth involuntarily. (Though you can be damaged in stealth, of course.) You can specialize in stealth with some traits, put stealthing abilities on your bar, and by the weapons you choose to equip. Even then, with Shadow Refuge you can get stealths that are long enough to serve to allow you to bypass many things you don’t want to mess with.
GW stealth works well to get away from things, to bypass things, and in fighting. It just doesn’t let you perma-stealth so you can pretend you’re a great fighter because no one knows you’re there until you unload on them. That class of players will hate it.
The higher level my Necro gets, the more I’m liking my little naked rats. I’ve found them to be useful in various situations.
BUT they can also be very disadvantageous at other times and if we have any points in Death Magic it’s forced on us.
As others have said, PvP can be a problem (though some say it’s been fixed), various boss fight mechanics can also be a problem, and pathing issues in dungeons can always cause problems for players with pets/minions out.
If our trait lines were reorganized in such a way that there was a Minions trait line, it might make sense there. (Even then, a Minion-based Necro might not want any minions out at certain points in time.) It might also make sense as a (more powerful) Major Trait that we could then swap out when appropriate. But as it stands, it’s an issue.
Weakness can mess up bursters. It’s really funny when a thief’s backstab gets weakened and their burst is ruined. But who weakness really shuts down is the bunker builds. They tend to operate on a power+defense+no-crit strategy. Against those bunker builds, weakness turns them into total pushovers unless they’re condition types.
Except it doesn’t. I don’t think you understand how weakness works. If a hit rolls critical, weakness is completely ignored. Weakness is ONLY applied to 50% of NON critical hits. And your thief example is also rendered invalid since they have a trait that guarantees that any attack from stealth will have a 100% critical hit chance. Again, if a hit is a critical hit, weakness is not even factored. Name one burst build that has less than a 60% critical hit rate.
Hmmm. So maybe Weakness should be modified to make 50% of crits miss, and to make non-crits trigger in a short-duration self-chill. That would make it pretty powerful. Then make Weakness more of a Necro speciality (as Confusion is for Mesmers), and we’re good to go, right?
- The only profession without access to Vigor
- The only profession without a cleave style weapon attack
You have some good points, but your obsession with “only profession” is problematic for a couple of reasons. First, each profession is “the only profession” that’s missing something or other. Second, some of your statements don’t matter much. For example, Necros do have (indirect) access to Vigor via Well of Power (Bleed → Vigor), and Vigor isn’t at the top of my list of important things. (Less access to Vigor coupled with less access to other damage-mitigation does become an issue, but that’s not as sexy as the “only profession” claim you want to make.)
Cleave is (directionally) limited AoE, so talking about Cleave in isolation doesn’t make sense. Talk about AoE. You may still have a point there, but let’s talk about things in context, shall we?
- The profession with the fewest combo field/finishers in the game
Again, you go for overstatement. We do have the fewest finishers, and that needs to be remedied. We don’t have the fewest combo fields.
This post pretty much sums it up. As stated before, you can make the necro to be support with your traits spread out all over the trees, but, you can do it much better, and easier, with other classes. And while many think it’s awesome that you are the last to die or something, the fact that you’re judging it on your survivability and not your groups leaves something to be desired. Id sooner take a venom thief w/ some stealth traits than a support necro in my group for wvw/spvp/fractals.
I think you have to specifically consider the format (PvE, PvE Dungeons, PvE Fractals, WvW, sPvP, tPvP, etc) and also what classes you mean by “other classes”. I’ve seen Guardians mentioned, and they are face-roll easy as support. I’ve seen Elementalists mentioned, though I wonder if that reputation was before the huge nerf to rolling around in your own fields. You mention a particular Thief build. So perhaps we’re talking about a couple of Guardian builds, an Elementalist build, and a Thief build as being “great” and Necros don’t rise to that level. That leaves 4 entire professions and other Guardian/Thief/Elementalist builds that aren’t “great” and most of them probably don’t rise to the Necro level, as far as I can tell, in PvE anyhow.
Its not an exploit if the ability does that naturally. The tool tip says 1200, but its actually farther. This can be construed as either a bug, or a tool tip error. Not an exploit.
Personally, I think it’s ANet’s way of allowing you to get some pierce at max range. (And by my estimate, you can go around 1500 with manual attack.) But not an exploit.
Did you guys even bother reading my post before responding? Its not about how effective it is now, its that it has no variety at all.
Necros can swap weapons, so the staff doesn’t have to be unique all by itself. It’s our Marks weapon, mainly, and Marks are a nice mechanism.
Now the #1 audio is another matter… needs to be changed!
I have been reading the forums, for some advice on How to level up… and while I do find some interesting information… 4/5ths of the responders are basically QQ ing about how weak the necromancer is compared to other professions. " Three times as hard to underwhelm." I see a lot.
Love the class. There are some legitimate complaints about the profession — as there are for most professions — but this forum is unfortunately dominated by semi-serious PvP’ers and people who have strong and specific expectations about the class, who mostly don’t understand the class (or MMO’s apparently).
If you read down the Class Balance Philosophy list it’s obviously sorted in order of armor (heavy to light). But if you swap Elementalist and Mesmer, you also get an obvious descending order of clarity, coherence, and power of vision.
The Necro is at the bottom of the list and the description is a list of bullet points that don’t seem coherent or even compelling. Look at the Warrior: it’s obviously a strong melee, physical damage class that can dish out and take a lot of physical damage but is weaker against magic (boons & conditions) and at range.
The Necro, by contrast, is a list of bullet points that might add up to being a strong attrition class, but there isn’t really a concise, focused, coherent class description.
I’d add that many of our “movement inhibiting” skills are snares which slow running, but most classes have multiple leaps/teleports to open up gaps even if they’re snared. Not to mention that we’re a caster class so keeping an enemy in melee range is only one possible build/strategy.
(edited by Druitt.7629)
It’s great that this thread has gotten ANet attention, but it’s still a thread about Minion AI bugs — specifically those that keep minions out of combat or cause them to attack the wrong target — not every minion problem we can imagine. Please don’t derail it.
I dislike the fact that sometimes my minions can be easily crushed(even with the +50% hp trait) …
From another thread:
KirinDave.6451:I sometimes wonder if the reason Necro pets go running off is that at one point in a fight we were spamming attacks and tab targetting and accidentally had one out-of-range attack on the remote mob.
I could reliably get my flesh golem to go running off by doing this on purpose, and I know in the heat of battle sometimes I mistarget… and if they remember that enemy was targeted they may run off to it after the more immediate threat is dead.
Druitt, I don’t agree.
As I said, the JH isn’t as bad as some of us think, BUT it would be best if we could choose to have no pets out when we want to and Reanimator, being non-optional, doesn’t allow that choice.
Greater Marks is way too powerful to not put 10 into the traitline, but Reanimator should be changed to do something else. (My proposal in another thread was to give health regeneration to deployed pets, as a percentage of your Life Force accumulated. No pets out, no benefit, but you don’t have a pet forced on you.)
YEAH! Making DS consistent with Plague, Lich, and all of the other transforms in the game will make a big difference. The question, of course, is will that mean adding a fifth skill to the bar?
Flesh Golem currently has issues where you rez his body to serve you but most of his mind does not follow. So he has… issues. Like he can charge an opponent, knocking them down, but then can’t seem to find the opponent for a while. (“He wuz right there in fronta me! Where’d he go? Oh, he’s behind me now, cause I ran over him and kept running. Silly enemy!”)
Enter Plague Form and press 2 (one time is all you need to do it, don’t mash it) and you’re doing an AoE attack and blind every second for 20 seconds. Plus you get bonuses to your health and armor while you’re in there. And stability (thanks Abigor).
Enter Lich Form and you get bonuses to your attack and you get stability. And you look good doing it, floating above the ground.
I can’t speak to PvP, but basically the choice I see is: Plague for defense/support, Lich for offense. Flesh Golem when you’re not on defense, offense, or support.
(edited by Druitt.7629)
again you arent getting it. There are tons of variations in rift, so having 5 specs to swap to does not cover everything. you have a set 5 to choose from, if you dont like one of those you have to re-spec, which costs coin. gw2 has limited skill trees with very little variation and almost pointless cost to respec, it is a mere annoyance to have to travel to LA for 1 second to re-train and port back..
I get it and I disagree with you. And the only reason I replied in the first place was to suggest why, perhaps, GW2 (and many other games) did something in a particular manner. You don’t agree with that reasoning.
EDIT:
As I see it, an FPS is all about the guy sitting in the chair, and the in-game character is generic and disposable. Every time you fire up a pure FPS, your in-game character is the same: same capabilities, same gear, etc. At the same time, you can radically change your playstyle in an instant: pick up a new weapon, enter a land or air vehicle, etc. And moment-by-moment you can change from sniper to tank driver to pilot to shotgun-wielding maniac.
You have no attachment to your character, and in fact never see yourself, which wouldn’t matter because they all look and work alike.
An RPG (and MMORPG) is basically the opposite: every time you fire up the game, your in-game character is different from the last time: you’ve gotten new gear, leveled up a skill, leveled up overall, enhanced your gear, etc, etc. And change is in general slow: radical changes in playstyle may require weeks of preparation and achievement. Your character doesn’t look like everyone else’s and it’s not throw-away. You may not go full-on role-playing, but your character in all of its aspects is a reflection of you and your choices over time.
Of course, lines get blurred. I love Team Fortress 2, and that’s an FPS that has classes. But even there, you can’t change classes on a whim. You can’t choose to be a Scout while running to the front lines, then switch to a Heavy once you get there, then decide that the opposition’s too hot so switch to an Engineer to drop turrets and then back to a Scout to run. You choose a class at respawn and have to live with the tradeoffs until you die again.
You mentioned that Rift lets you switch “on the fly” so you could be a Rogue-ish character but switch to one build to chase someone down, then switch to an assassin to attack from stealth, then switch to a tank spec when his buddy comes to help, then switch to a support/healer when a couple of your buddies show up. The only decision you’ve made that you have to stick with is to be a Rogue. Perhaps I’m misunderstanding, but that’s what I get from your description.
Don’t get me wrong, that actually appeals to me. But I think it’s a legitimate concern that this is more like an FPS in feel (quick switches, no choices you have to live with) than an RPG. And I believe that’s part of ANet’s calculus: change weapons on the fly, change skills on the fly (OOC), change major trait options on the fly (OOC), but what trait options are available to you cannot be be changed on the fly. You have to make a decision and stick with it for a while.
(edited by Druitt.7629)
the respec cost is very little in gw2, its nothing but an annoyance to travel somewhere, respec, and go back to where you were. Like I said, there was still a respec cost in Rift, but they allowed you to atleast save a few favorite builds. And actually with the diverse possibility of builds in Rift people re-spec’d much more often despite having saved sets.
GW2 you can just go to the mists try out whatever build you want at no cost.
so what i dont understand is what you say sounds bad in rift is worse in gw2
Is I understood you, you were saying that you could save multiple builds and switch between them on the fly. Maybe you were suggesting that crossing Rift with GW2 so you could do that would be cool. At any rate, being able to change builds moment-by-moment makes the choices you make mean less, in my opinion.
And I think that’s what GW2 was trying to achieve by requiring you to go somewhere and buy something to refund your trait points and respec. As opposed to your trait choices, which you can change from moment to moment, or your weapons.
You can trait for Vital Persistence, which does slow down LF degen.
You get 25 seconds max (31 with Vital Persistence), decreased by how much damage you take. 30% more LF means damage shortens your DS time by 25% less than it otherwise would.
(edited by Druitt.7629)
I haven’t found a way to see it in the combat log. I believe minion/pet damage is also not listed. (That’s the only way I could tell if my Jagged Horror was hitting anything: I’ve never been able to pull his numbers out of the cloud above my target’s head, so I’m not sure what he does, if anything.)
I don’t understand what you mean by a collection of stats, again it’s nothing like that.
What I mean by “a collection of stats” goes back to my original comment in this thread. In order to make a world feel real and your character feel real, some of your decisions need to have a sense of weight to them. If you can change any decision you make at any time, on a moment’s notice, you’re playing an FPS.
Having a respec cost to change your trait allocation is an attempt at this. How you spend your trait points matters. It’s not something you can change second-by-second as you’re flying around the world, it’s something you think about and experiment with and make a tough choice.
Obviously, the total hardcore approach may be challenging, but not really fun. Something like a game where traits can never be changed once chosen, where death is permanent, where a choice in a quest might forever lock you out of particular areas in the game, etc.
But being able to come up with as many alternative specs and gearing as you can think of — or read about here — and switching between them on-the-fly at no cost to yourself makes the game world just a screen on which you — the guy in the chair — matters and your “character” is simply a toon.
Sounds like Rift is fun in many ways, but it doesn’t sound like there’s any weight to your decisions either. If so, it risks becoming a game of collecting stats and listing enough options in advance, then switching all you want as if you were in an FPS running over a power-up.
Personally, I like Skyrim’s approach: you get good at what you do a lot, and you have a limited number of perk points you can spread in a huge range of options. You can choose to concentrate perks, or try to cherry-pick ones that build a unique character. For example, I developed a Magical Ninja (offensive spells, long bow, stealth, and enhanced sensory skills). Not sure that could ever work in an MMO, but it was flexible, BUT if I decided that I wanted to drop bows and concentrate on healing spells instead, it would take working at those spells, not using bows, and I forget if reallocating perk points is even possible. Flexibility, but your choices have significance and weight.
(edited by Druitt.7629)
So for example if Rift had WvW like GW2 I could be in Marksman spec and pew pew from top of a keep, then soul change to a sin spec on the fly and go run around and gank people trickling out of their portal keep, then switch again to bard if our group was short on healing. It is a great system.
This sounds like a FPS which has an RPG/MMO feel, but I think it’s too much for an RPG/MMO: your character is just a collection of stats. Which is OK in an FPS, because an FPS is all about you at the keyboard, not your character.
OP only really has a point if you want to swap between only two attunements and if you only want to fire off an auto-attack and maybe one other. Then the attunement-swapping cooldown inteferes. If you move between three attunements, with throwing in a fourth once in a while, and use several abilities in each, the swapping cooldown doesn’t matter.
Someone else mentioned that it looks like the traits were intended to let you stick in a particular attunement, and I’d agree that’s what it looks like. However, if it actually worked that way, how OP Elementalists would be! Using only 1/4 of your weapon skills and still doing fine? Yeah, that’d be OP for anyone who could be bothered to actually swap attunements. (It might be a different matter if traits not only strengthened an attunement but also weakened the other three, but that’s obviously not the case.)
I have actually parked my Elementalist for a while and am playing a Necro. (Tried one for a few levels and found them boring, but then picked one up recently and love him.) Feels Elementalist-like to me, though different: not nearly as mobile as a D/D Elementalist which is arguably the most mobile character in the game, but lots of fast-casting options.
Hint: the class isn’t obvious. I’d recommend not using minions for now (AI issues), though you’ll find that one thing you’ll need for WvW for mobility is the Frost Wurm (teleport to his location, blowing him up in the process).
The game was designed for everyone to be self reliant to a pretty large extent. It actually forces every char to pack a burst self heal.
What I really ask myself now is:
What’s the sense of building groups for dungeons??
Why, why on earth should I group up with 4 others if everyone is doing his own stuff? What’s the sense of being together if… there’s nothing to do for each other?
Each character is doing something for every other character: you can swap off aggro, throw down fields, throw out finishers, throw out AoE heals, debuffs, buffs, etc. All the while, contributing to DPS and crowd control. In other words, like a real team, not the artificially made-up teams that Sony made years ago.
Any time you were in a town or outpost, you could move your attribute points and change your skills. However, once you left said town or outpost, your skills were set (unless you learned a new one, in which case you could swap that one in) and your attributes could not be decreased (however, you could throw more points in, usually done when leveling up). Even changing your secondary profession could be done freely in a town or outpost.
Sounds like they made some reasonable changes in GW2: utility skills freely changeable anywhere OOC, specific Major traits changeable anywhere OOC, but trait point allocation requires spending some coin in larger cities.
You may need to define “looks better”. For example, my Thief is the smallest Asura I could make because it’s absolutely awesome to have a cute little fellow with floppy ears suddenly whip out two daggers and start frenzying all over something. Sort of like that scene from Galaxy Quest, if you’ve seen it. Very satisfying.
Though I imagine you mean, “looks scary and tough, and wears robes well”.
If I had to do a Necro again, I’d make the smallest possible Norn, and would end up with a character that has seven possible Forms. (The four Norn racials, one of which features a stealth skill, Lich, Plague, and of course DS.)
The best suggestion for improvement I’ve seen is that the JH should have an invisible Confusion condition so that it damages itself as it attacks. So it still won’t be permanent, but it also doesn’t just die on its way to your second target.
I agree with Drarnor Kunoram that you have to be level 30 before it lives long enough to get even a single hit in against a second target that’s very close. I’m guessing a lot of us get terrible impressions of the JH because we (involuntarily) try it at lower levels and it literally does nothing.
@NecropsY: I think the issue is when you get Reanimator. If it’s literally your first five trait points, you have it at level 16, and at that level it does die in about 3 or 4 seconds, having done nothing. It wasn’t until I hit level 40 that I started seeing any effects at all — mobs would waste a swing killing the JH instead of hitting me sometimes. I’m persuaded that it wasn’t until at least level 30 that it actually lived long enough to strike anything.
I can see how, at level 80 it’ll be fairly strong, but most of us get a negative impression of it at much lower levels.
I’d also say that I have yet to play an RPG or MMO where there were not situations (places, boss mechanics, etc) where you simply do not want any kind of pet or minion out. Reanimator is non-optional if you want to put any points in the trait line, and it guarantees you will have a minion out in any fight that involves more than one enemy.
So I’d be happy if that trait position was changed to something else, but I’ll also be reasonably happy with Reanimator. I’ll always have it because I’ll always have 10 in Death Magic, so it’s a bit of a moot point.
One of the problems with JH is that at low player levels it literally dies before it can do anything. You can get it as early as level 16, but I never saw it do anything for me until finally when I hit 40 or so. Then I finally began to see mobs waste a hit on it instead of me — which is quite nice, actually. I can’t tell if it actually gets any hits in, but if it can mitigate 100% of one swing, that’s a nice little bonus.
Still, I’d rather it be changed. There are situations where having any kind of pet/minion out causes problems, and we should be able to be 100% minionless for a fight if we want to. Reanimator’s not optional if we put points into its trait line, and I think that’s bad design.
Keep in mind the offhand Dagger #4 is not exactly an aoe blind. The locusts are a bounce attack. And they will transfer one condition per bounce. So the first target receives one of your conditions and the second target receives your 2nd condition..etc. I believe there is a 3 target maximum.
I’m pretty sure it’s three bounces for a max of four targets. If there’s only one target, no bounce. If there are two targets, each gets hit twice. Not sure about three targets.
I started with a Mesmer, took him to about 25, then an Engineer and took him to about 25, then an Elementalist and took him to about 55, then a Thief and took him to about 25, and finally tried Necro and love it! I deleted the Mesmer and am not sure about the Engineer, but will definitely take the Necro, Elementalist, and Thief to 80.
The Necro’s way tougher than the Elementalist, and I feel like he spends less time casting as well. The Elementalist has a HUGE range of abilities, of course, and more finishers than a Necro, but I haven’t put any time in on my Elementalist (except to level up crafting) since starting on my Necro.
I deleted the Mesmer to try a Guardian, and they do have some nice tricks. Like casting the ring that keeps enemies from moving out of it, then smash them back with the Hammer … hilarious! (I wish it did additional damage, but don’t think it does.)
It is true that everything IS NOT BROKEN but it is equally true that everything IS NOT RIGHT. We are pigeonholed into a narrow selection of builds and roles at the moment.
I’d agree. This is a reasonable statement.
The next reasonable statement is that this is true for most professions. I have found the same complaints among Elementalists, Thieves, and Engineers. “We’ve got issues, other professions have it easier than us, we’re pigeonholed into a single viable build, our trait lines are organized wrong, our elite is the worst…” (The exceptions are Warriors and Guardians in general, and Mesmers in PvP.)
No one is “cheerleading” that Necromancers are perfect. Some of us are saying that people who claim we’re broken — UNIQUELY among all professions broken — are creating a lot of negative feedback problems that will overwhelm the class even if the devs suddenly make us perfect and OP. It’s happened in other games and will happen in this game if we insist on letting whiners (“we’re totally and uniquely BROKEN!!!!!”) dominate our forums.
I simply can’t understand how people will take opposition to over-the-top, unjustified ranting complaints as some kind of mindless opposition to critisicm of the class or mindless cheerleading.
For a game that was trying to break the standard MMO mold for many aspects I’m surprised they stuck with the lame old pay for respec system.
My guess would be that they were trying to still provide a certain weight to your spec decisions.
Your description of Rift sounds intriguing to me, but also like it might be more of a collect-the-whole-set kind of mentality where your build choices really don’t carry much weight. Where does it stop? Should we be able to have gear enhancement sets, distinct from our gear sets? Should we be able to swap characters on the fly? (I’m getting beat on with my Necro, so I swap in my Warrior?) At some point there need to be decision points that are irreversible or at least cost us something to change our minds, I think.
I think I like the idea that we’re stuck with the trait points we’ve allocated to each trait line, but within each trait line we’re free to modify specific trait decisions. Some decisions-that-matter and some flexibility, combined. It also means a little less carrying of all kinds of armor, since our trait stat bonuses are fixed. (I do carry one of each weapon, though, since weapons equate to skills.)
a TRUE competitor takes the changes in stride, and makes those changes WORK… takes the “competitiveness” to a whole new level, making things work that others cant.
and why couldnt this thread be about tpvp? the same things others whine about can be said for tpvp too dude.
I think we agree: serious competitors don’t whine in a class forum that “we’re broke, we’re broke, we’re useless!!!!!”. They adapt and move on. If that involves stepping up their Necro game or moving to a Warrior, that’s what they do.
I disagree about tPvP (or any other sub-area) dominating this thread, though. The thread is entitled “On necros being ‘broken’”. Not “On necros being hard in PvP”, and it’s a direct response to folks who spam the forum with “Necros is broken!!!!!” messages, which are: a) leading non-Necros to avoid trying the profession, b) leading non-Necros to shun Necro players in their groups, c) leading the devs to want to minimize their interaction with us in the forums, and d) forcing those who do choose to play Necros to wade through the whining to find useful information.
Someone is free to start a “Necros still need help in tPvP” or whatever topic they want, but that’s not this topic.
@Kardiamond: Yeah, it was a pain. In previous games I’ve played, you had to respec, which involved some kind of pain (go to a particular location, pay an NPC, buy a book, etc) to “give your choices weight”. Some, like WoW eventually allowed dual specs. (Even before dual specs, there were guilds who were fanatic enough to do respecing or even swap players/characters before a big boss fight.) So I assumed that changing my trait choices would involve a trait point refund. :-(
So I’m really rethinking builds in terms of what trait lines and how many points in them will give me the bonus stats that best fit my goals and work with my gear, plus give me the options I want to choose from in different situations.
Your example of 50% fall damage is perfect. It seems like a great idea for WvW or for PvE map completion, but I couldn’t see a non-gimmicky way to use it in PvE fights.
Heck, I’m a big non-fan of the Focus, for example, but now that I might be able to actually swap some traits to enhance it for a particular encounter, it even makes me reconsider weapon choices.
So I posted this in case others had overlooked the option. Was this the way GW1 was? Are there other similar MMO/RPG games that work similarly?
(Call me lazy, but I’m never going to respec — in the sense of trait point refunds — on a daily basis, unless there is some kind of dual-spec or spec memory system. But changing Adept, Master, and GrandMaster choices? Yep, I’ll do that several times in an evening.)
(edited by Druitt.7629)
Maybe I’m the only person who didn’t notice this, but last night it was pointed out to me that you can change your Major Trait choices when you’re out of combat (OOC). You don’t have to “respec” in order to make other choices. (This isn’t changing your trait point allocation, just your Adept, Master, and GrandMaster choices.)
No other MMO or RPG I’ve played in the past allowed you to do this kind of thing, so I never even thought to try it. It totally changes my conception of traits.
For one thing, it changes the idea of trait line organization. I’ve seen complaints in these forums that traits aren’t organized as people expect. Traits that strengthen the staff or that enhance minions are scattered among different trait lines. But given that you can switch, the organization makes a lot more sense: With points in Spite, you can choose to increase the damage of your marks, minions, yourself while downed, or to increase your damage against foes with low health, etc.
If you like to use your staff, 10 points in Death Magic increases the area of your marks and makes them unblockable (Greater Marks). But if you don’t generally use your staff in dungeons because you feel the cooldowns are too long, you can switch to having 3 seconds of protection when you cast a well (Ritual of Protection) for most of the run, and have staff skills recharge 20% faster for select fights (Staff Mastery).
ANet really did re-think things in GW2 compared to other games. I really like that.
Even if all the Necro bugged traits and mechanics get fixed, it’d still be a bottom tier class.
Come 14/12/12, Rangers won’t be the most terrible class. You Necros will.
Note the “You Necros” and not “us Necros”.
This again makes my point that as the over-the-top whiners go far and wide saying, “Necros are broken!!!!!!” people who have no real experience with Necros will believe it. And repeat it.
Still waiting for those screen shots showing all of you claiming Necro is ‘fine’ have actually done a fair amount of tpvp.
I’ve already mentioned this attitude once and I simply cannot understand it.
No professional athlete would stick with a losing team because they liked the uniforms or the cheerleaders. If they were good enough and had options, they’d move to a winning team or at least a team that clearly had the potential to win.
But the majority of complaints I’ve read about balance in MMO’s I’ve played come from folks who want to come across as being serious competitors, but who also insist on sticking with a particular class. (I’m assuming because the class emotionally appeals to them: they like the uniform and cheerleaders.)
The vast majority of players either: a) don’t care about serious competitive PvP, or b) play the profession that it takes to win.
If you’re serious about competitive PvP, you’re going to play several professions seriously, so you know what your opponent is thinking. You’ll also have several level 80’s because you know that MMO’s can be rebalanced with no notice and suddenly the class you’re currently playing is no longer competitive. A true competitor takes that in stride and shifts to their level 80 that got buffed to OP status.
Perhaps Necros aren’t great in tPvP. I’ll have to weigh your word against others who tPvP, because I don’t. But this thread is about a class being “broken”, not about tPvP.
… by making adjustments to your major traits and utility skills out of combat.
Whoa, whoa, whoa! Is this literally true? Can you change your major traits at any time?
Yes, u can.
The sound you just heard was my mind boggling. Very good news, which pretty much means 50% of my thinking on builds has been inadequate!
Thanks for the incredible tip @chaosgrimm and the confirmation @Thion.