Guild Wars 2

Rym.1469:

Wow, consider formatting this stuff better. Spoilers, bolded text etc. It’s hard to get through it.

And I like your account name, reminds me of holidays.

Oh yeah, spoilers. That’s actually a really good idea.

Sigmoid.7082:

Your reaper changes are a step backwards rather than a step forward. Reaper actually doesn’t need any of the changes and on its own is pretty OK the way Gee has it going.

Step backwards how? Let’s see:

• Shouts deal a baby pittance packet of damage for no real reason (except in the case of the heal which actually justifies damage, although it could still mechanically and functionally get along without it); removed that superfluous tack-on “flavor” from many shouts and replaced it with secondary/conditional effect adjustments to offset the “loss.”
• “Rise!” is now a straight damage mitigation skill and a stun-break in addition to already being a trigger for Death Nova.
• Lower cooldowns on GS with adjusted coefficients and effect durations.
• Theme of “chill spam” is still preserved in the traits; the only difference now is that effects which apply and benefit from chill are much more active and within the responsibility of the player rather than something like “critically hit a guy with anything for free chill.”
• Nobody took Deathly Chill and it will never be good unless they just ramp the passive damage tick up to the point where everyone else starts complaining that it’s overpowered (that’s honestly just how GW2 works; "soft"counterplay doesn’t have a strong presence in the game). It’s either that or they entirely change how chill works JUST for the sake of this sub-par trait that no one else will get which seems like a waste of time and invites horrible potential balance problems with which I don’t see anet coping very well. The new Cold Shoulder’s potential party-wide damage boost is already more effective than Deathly Chill, and since it relies on spreading chill to dangerous or ideal targets, it again puts the emphasis on player decision making rather than just “EVERYONE WHO HAS CHILL NOW ALSO TAKES DAMAGE YAAY.”
• The whirl finisher traits take advantage of GS and reaper shroud as well as giving the reaper a GM that provides some chase ability that must be actively employed by the player (thankfully, the GS and reaper shroud each come with their own respective combo field in order to fuel the baseline effects). I feel like adding some whirl finishers to other skills just to promote synergy with these traits outside of the stock reaper weapon/DS.
• Reaper now has a trait option which helps mitigate 2 spam—I mean ranged projectile damage.
• Nobody needs 8 stacks of stability. Nobody needs 8 seconds of 8 stacks of stability. People have it, but that doesn’t mean that it isn’t incredibly overtuned and highly questionable. Remember when “control” was supposed to be one of the three sides to anet’s “soft triangle of Guild Wars 2?” Neither does stability. Defiant never even got the memo for that meeting. Break bar was told over the phone, but it’s always late to work.
• Soul Spiral now helps sponge damage if you choose to forego the reflection trait.
• Executioner’s Scythe already does enough damage to gib some players from ~30% HP. Having it stun is rather superfluous—especially on a 30 s CD. Adding a cleave function and letting the chill do the CC work (in addition to also just spreading more chill for trait benefits) will be a boost to the skill’s versatility rather than a drawback.

Silv.9207:

I’ve read only some of your proposed changes, but a large amount of them is more a nerf than a fix.
From the dagger that you want to make his slower, making it worst, expecially why it’s the only weapon we have to obtain “good” health with Vampiric Aura andi is our only chance to obtain a kind of heal while in dps mode.

Then something like that:
[Mighty Shroud]: Toughness bonus increased from +180 to +250 in order to earn its place as a taken trait choice.
[Dead Skin]: Toughness bonus per stack reduced from +300 to +150 in order to better balance it with [Mighty Shroud’s] toughness-to-power conversion effect.
Will really be a nerf. Expecially about your Death Skin (I can think that is Corrupter’s Fervor, right?), that change will make it a really worst trait to chose, making the traitline really a worst one, expecially for a MM. obtain +70 toughness while in DS and lose 150 toughness both in DS than in normal play? When the Scrapper specializzation will obtain a similar trait that will give him a +500 toughness and 20% condi reduction? Simply, why???

There’s some little (very little( good things, but all the other things will be a nerf more than a fix or a power up.

Since when did I say that necromancer needed a buff? What about “holistically conceived design” gives the impression that I was out to just pour mindless buffs onto the class?

Dead Skin/Mighty Shroud
That said, the idea behind the Dead Skin is over 2 years old now, and given that this redesign allows the Necromancer to begin a fight with death shroud available (as well as ways to ramp up the life force pool quickly at the beginning or leading into a fight), taking both traits would result in a titan at the simple press of F1: an instant juggernaut with (if we’re talking pvp zerker amulet) 19k HP, 3638 armor rating and 2954 power without might (did I mention that this was just with zerker ammy and nothing else?). The toughness reduction to Dead Skin and slight increase to Mighty Shroud finds a medium which also helps define the two individual traits: Mighty Shroud is a power booster trait; Dead Skin is a life force generation trait.

Dagger
As for the dagger part, I’ve already mentioned that these changes were made within the context of “balancing spam.” Tragically, anet went ahead with making autoattacks into actual skills instead of just generic non-skill filler spam. That move greatly complicated the act of balancing what happens when a player runs out of abilities to do, and in the case of GW2 in which mindlessly racing through a rotation is meta, it made what is meant to be mediocre filler damage/a last-resort finisher into the most effective thing that a lot of builds can do given that a typical rotation in GW2 relies heavily on instant or near-instant abilities/passive triggers.

While it’s not necessarily bad that autoattacks are unique, the fact that they often deal ludicrously high damage or effortlessly contribute to passive DoT spam makes their effectiveness very contrived (they aren’t good or bad in the way that one uses them, but rather they are super effective just by virtue of the player mashing 1). It’s also funny (and it says quite a bit about the raw over-effectiveness of autoattacks) that you didn’t mention the life force generation that the Necro dagger AA provides; you only focused on getting passive health back from mashing a fast-attacking 1 slot.

Autoattack tl/dr
All autoattacks need a serious toning down in order to put combat emphasis back into skills that actually require some semblance of timing or commitment in order to use. That, however, doesn’t mean that autoattacks need to lose everything about them which make them unique on a weapon-to-weapon basis—except for excessive condition spam (which is why the scepter AA has a projectile and a longer cast-time now in order to provide counterplay that isn’t just “be invulnerable,” “press the cleanse button that you may or may not even have,” or “passively regenerate health/heal yourself at an unnecessarily high rate”).

= REAPER TRAITS =
[Shroud Knight] (Core)

• You can equip greatswords and use reaper shouts. Death shroud is replaced with reaper’s shroud.

= REAPER SHROUD =

= GREATSWORD =

= SHOUTS =

Frost.1503:

No F1 and F2 for the Necro, They remove to us death shroud for give Reaping, but:
Thief: Daredevil’s mechanic is the increased endurance and dodging that can have a different effect depending on the active grandmaster trait. (Is a improvement, he has the same skill of before, also F1)
Warrior: Berserker is a warrior elite specialization that can wield torches and gains access to rage skills. After building enough adrenaline, they are able to enter berserk mode, granting a new set of burst skills. (F1 plus F2)
Chronomancer: Chronomancer is a mesmer elite specialization that can wield shields. They will be given a fifth shatter skill, Continuum Shift, and access to wells. (F1,F2,F3,F4 plus F5)
Elementalist: Tempest is an elementalist elite specialization that can wield warhorns. They’ll have the ability to overload attunements, and access to shout skills. (like before plus overload F1,F2,F3 and F4)
Why we can’t have bot when we need it…

Just because anet has demonstrated a (surprisingly high given their track record) 17% success rate with creating actual functional flavor, it doesn’t mean that you should actively wish for the compromise of that little sliver of not-utterly-contrived, boring, tack-on design just because “the other guys got it.”

Thoughts like yours are why passive healing, stability, invulnerability spam and super-passive play is the only playstyle that this game promotes across every class.

Trade-offs and down-sides promote unique playstyles~
You’re wishing for more bland homogenization~

Reading over some things, I realized that the verge system was very shoehorned and honestly wasn’t necessarily generating as many unique playstyle options as it could without doing something even more drastic. It’s gone now. Deathly Fervor stayed.

Reminder that draw-backs promote playstyles and that you’re actually wishing for more boring homogenization.

Frost.1503:

Explain to me how you will fight a ranger with 1500 of range?

You don’t because you’re playing an mmorpg and the entire genre puts emphasis on in-game hard-counters over player “skill.”

Flumek.9043:

i think the solution for ranged is the upcoming work on axe.

Anet is going to just raise base range numbers, probably reduce the total cast-time on axe 2, and everyone is going to cheer as if it were all an actually unique ability udpate with legitimate forethought and effort put into it.

thrag.9740:

Every class plays the same? Ok let me see a warrior pop a group wide defense just at the right time to prevent a wipe. Let me see an ele manage the defiance on a boss so we can interrupt tactically. Show me an engineer who can insta res players at just the right moment to save the party.

While you have a point there, it’s a little strange that we gravitate toward 3 specific, individual skill buttons despite the fact that every player has anywhere between 16-35 unique skills to activate. Seems a little off-kilter if we’re trying to define the actions and roles of professions on the whole—a lot of homogenized bloat floating around in there.

thrag.9740:

Might stacking is planned.

Technically, yes, but it’s mostly planned before a fight ever begins. It’s not hard; it’s either rehearsed and executed before an engagement or it’s effectively entirely passive while a fight runs its course.

thrag.9740:

Good ps warriors use a specific rune, use one of 3 specific foods,

Yes, because consumables and runes are so unique to Warriors and maintaining a permanent/30-minute-long passive gear bonus is incredibly difficult in the heat of the 2-5 minute-long battle.

thrag.9740:

and run a specific build where they constantly keep literally every weapon skill on cooldown.

Oh, they have a rotation! That’s unique as well! I can’t imagine a single other class that doesn’t press what is effectively 15 (often fast-activating) buttons before going back to pressing 1!

thrag.9740:

They tactically position themselves constantly. They keep their heal skill on cool down. They have to actually be in melee range to do their job, so they actively dodge and avoid damage by carefully observing the boss and looking for tells.

They attack from melee range and press the dodge button! Truly unique to the class.

thrag.9740:

All this is planned. And it all comes at a noticeable personal dps loss. Might generation isn’t free.

That wasn’t the point. The point was how might generation is basically effortless in practice—which it is. That said, you’re right, it technically isn’t free, but the warrior still does an enormous amount of damage for what would otherwise be considered a “support” role in any other game. Moreover, since the warrior plays with 4 other allies at all times, it doesn’t matter in the end. If the party had to split up at any given point during a dungeon run, then running a build like PS might actually pose some level of risk or sacrifice, however, that doesn’t happen given how procedural and hallway-like every dungeon/fractal is.

thrag.9740:

The only difference necro having their own version of ps would make, is that at the start of the instance necros and warriors would coordinate to see who would run dps and who would run might. That and that necros would be more accepted in lfgs.

This is the only thing that you have said so far that isn’t utterly contrived. MMORPGs are numbers games. They aren’t necessarily driven by individual, active player skill because they don’t feature the mechanic base to foster that. Players plan what is going to happen before anything happens, enter an instance, press all of their buttons and press whatever back-up/panic buttons that they brought along to make sure everything goes exactly according to the sterile, excel-document plan.

Widebody.5071:

Oh crap… Let’s just have one profession for all races with all the exact same skills, boons traits and weapons, same class armour, no outside buffs, food, accessories or stacks.

Then maybe, just maybe this constant squabble about balance will go away.

It’s already kind of like that, though. Most things are inconsequential in the face of instant teleports and long invulnerability periods during which players can take action or devote to healing themselves. Every class plays like that already. Everyone takes the invulnerability/blocking/evasion, stealth, teleports, and stability options. It’s all just identical “take 0 damage”/“ignore the actions of other players” in the end.

= SKILL UPDATES =

• [Corrosive Poison Cloud]: Recharge reduced from 35 s to 30 s.
• [Lich Form] and [Plague]: Updated secondary descriptions to clarify that while in these forms, life force is utilized as the player’s active health pool.
• [Spectral Armor] and [Transfusion]: Now both respectively grant 1.5% life force if the user heals an ally (only triggers once every second/per pulse); this helps the player continue to build life force while still actively committing to a support role.

= TRAIT UPDATES =

• [Death Nova]: Minion summon cool-down reduced from 15 s to 10 s.
• [Order of Pain]: Cast-time slightly increased; might now granted independently of health threshold; health threshold life force gain increased to 200%.
• [Mighty Shroud]: Toughness bonus increased from +180 to +250 in order to earn its place as a taken trait choice.
• [Dead Skin]: Toughness bonus per stack reduced from +300 to +150 in order to better balance it with [Mighty Shroud’s] toughness-to-power conversion effect.
• [Flesh of the Master]: Protection proc now also affects the player as well as the minions; minion healing while in death shroud increased from 130 (0.12) to 180 (0.2).

thrag.9740:

Erasmus.1624:

thrag.9740:

You know what you should advocate? Making the game even more homogenized than it already is.

Anet level design.

Anet level design is gimping a class so horrendously that they are often explicitly forbidden in LFG’s for 3 years, and never actively trying to correct the situation. I guess that’s better.

Necromancer’s shortcomings are the only instance of functional flavor in the game at the moment. Down-sides promote playstyles (which seek to circumvent them). Every other class functions relatively identically and has no need for any specialized playstyle aside from “press the button.” Necromancer is the only one without excessive amounts of instant invulnerability periods and instant damage. There is much to be desired about the over-effectiveness of pressing 1, though.

If might stacking is to be unique or planned in any way, sustained examples of high might would be best kept solely in the hands of only one or two classes while a few specific gimmick mechanics would allow for high might stack bursts with very short uptimes on the rest of the classes.

Actually, thinking about it, Tempest wasn’t a bad way to do might-stacking as a class mechanic, but even then the little rotation for it was easy-mode effortless and was mainly just part of the class-universal brainless rush back to mashing 1.

thrag.9740:

You know what you should advocate? Making the game even more homogenized than it already is.

Anet level design.

Guild Wars 2’s content doesn’t warrant strict organization or intense gameplay training. Guilds are lax because the content is lax and easy. This isn’t going to change.

JoshuaRAWR.4653:

I don’t mean the effectiveness of might, i mean how easily might is obtained by many specs, it’s making the boon require absolutely no input at all, it’s just a ‘passive boon’ now.

That’s pretty much every boon now. Even the one’s that aren’t necessarily passive are just applied instantaneously. Investing into boons is a concept that doesn’t exist, and there are few boons that anyone cares about actually losing either since most are all just reapplied very quickly. Same often goes for conditions. The whole boon/condition system is goofed and needs to be brutally bottlenecked if classes or builds wish to have any actual functional flavor instead of just every class being “vomit out every condition ever while pressing 1 + (3-5 other buttons)” or “accidentally gain every boon ever because people are hitting you while you do your basic rotation” (both often occurring within the span of 2 seconds respectively).

= ACTIVATED SIGILS (with cast time) =
[Sigil of Renewal]
Cast-time: 1½ s; Recharge: 90 s

• Heal and partially revive allies in the area.
• Number of allies: 5
• Healing: 1440 (1.0)
• Revival percent: 10%
• Radius: 450

[Sigil of Doom]
Cast-time: 1 s; Recharge: 50 s

• The next time you strike a downed foe, that foe loses health.
• Downed health damage: 33%
• Sigil of Doom: 3 s

[Sigil of Cleansing]
Cast-time: ½ s; Recharge: 20 s

• Cure 2 damaging conditions; gain health for each condition cured.
• Conditions cured: 2
• Healing per condition: 440 (0.5)

[Sigil of Nullification]
Cast-time: ½ s; Recharge: 25 s

• Your next attack removes boons from your target.
• Boons removed: 2
• Sigil of Nullification: 3 s
  • Equivalent function as Thief venoms.

= ACTIVATED SIGILS (instant) =
[Sigil of Air]
Recharge: 15 s

• Gain super speed.
• Super speed: 2 s

[Sigil of Intelligence]
Recharge: 15 s

• Your next 2 attacks have a 100% critical chance.
• Sigil of Intelligence (2): 5 s

[Sigil of Impact]
Recharge: 30 s

• You take less falling damage; the next time you would take falling damage, you also damage and cripple nearby foes with the impact.
• Falling damaging reduction: 50%
• Number of foes: 5
• Damage: (0.5)
• Crippled: 4 s
• Radius: 360
• Sigil of Impact: 3 s
  • Damage coefficient uses the “utility skill” weapon damage base for calculations.
  • This ability can be used while in mid-air.

[Sigil of Malice]
Recharge: 10 s

• The next time you strike a foe with 25 stacks of vulnerability, you gain might.
• Might (10): 5 s
• Sigil of Malice: 3 s

[Sigil of Energy]
Recharge: 20 s

• Your next dodge returns endurance.
• Endurance returned: 35
• Sigil of Energy: 3 s

[Sigil of Paralyzation]
Recharge: 30 s

• The next time you successfully evade an attack, you immobilize your opponent if they are within range.
• Immobilized: 1 s
• Range: 450
• Sigil of Paralyzation: 3 s
  • Unblockable; cannot miss.

[Sigil of Smoldering]
Recharge: 40 s

• The next 3 times you inflict burning, you also reveal your target.
• Revealed: 2 s
• Sigil of Smoldering (3): 3 s
  • The multiple charges are only there to cover multiple targets in the case of an AoE.

= PASSIVE BONUS SIGILS =
[Sigil of Force]

• Improves power.
• Power: +100

[Sigil of Bursting]

• Improves condition damage.
• Condition damage: +100

[Sigil of Stamina]

• Improves vitality
• Vitality: +100

[Sigil of Accuracy]

• Improves precision.
• Precision: +150

[Sigil of Cruelty]

• Improves ferocity.
• Ferocity: +150

[Sigil of Strength]

• Improves toughness.
• Toughness: +150

[Sigil of Life]

• Improves healing power.
• Healing power: +200

[Sigil of Benevolence]

• Improves outgoing healing.
• Outgoing healing: +15%

Swap weapons to proc sigils? Why? Because weapon swapping is part of your “rotation?” If it’s just a rotation, why is it segregated into pieces like that? Why bind certain parts of a rotation to segregated cooldowns that only provide certain aspects of the whole skill bar? Why not just make certain things available for use at all times? Why deny a player parts of his/her own build just because of a single button on the screen that arbitrarily counts down from 10? Why doesn’t a single set of sigils constantly promote flexibility with a small pool of bonus combat options regardless of which weapon a player has active?

Why should sigils be so passive and inconsequential in their use by the player? Do conditions actually need help in being rapid/instant, ranged spam based on miniscule cooldowns (if limited in any real way at all)? Does damage need help in the same way given that most important/game-deciding damage is all instant (or outside the realm of consistent/telegraphed interruption) anyway despite still being an activated ability on a skillbar? Why can’t sigils be activated contributors to rotations or consciously taken as a future decision made within a niche moment or as part of a build/playstyle?

Why does a player need to equip four sigils when almost every “meta” build repeats at least 1 or 2 of them in every build anyway (and not for no good reason—passive instant damage and free endurance is an easy, obvious choice)? Why do sigils as gear have so much worthless bloat?

The same could all be asked of runes for the most part, but the point of this discussion is to clean the bloat from the sigil pool and leave only distinct, build-shaping, utility abilities as potential choices. Not much is left to be honest, but consider the following and feel free to make your own suggestions.

Well, I was going to just make an update to Spectral Armor and Transfusion in order to supply them with a source of active life force generation while still fulfilling a committed support role skill, but—

Zantmar.5406:

vital persistence being base line is just wrong, soul reaping uniquely is a line that focuse on shroud management and vital persistence is too powerful a trait to be baseline

Vital Persistence doesn’t change the way that any skill functions, though. People take it because it just makes their shroud heartier. It’s an obvious move to make (and a very common one given the prevalence of power-based necromancer builds), not an interesting one like a side-grade or something. The point of these changes were to force side-grade and decision making which help tailor playstyles and roles. Vital Persistence doesn’t do that; it just makes using 1 more effective by giving the player more time to use it. Something that bland might either be folded into baseline or not exist at all.

You’ll also notice that I don’t have any “Reduce recharge of X skills” traits. As mentioned before, everything was designed and calculated holistically so that little crutch traits such as that (or Soul Marks as another example) don’t need to exist.

Zantmar.5406:

Your work on dagger auto is terrible

Welcome to somewhat more balanced spam damage.

Zantmar.5406:

like your well of power which is basically making a skills cost life force while giving you life force back of you are on a mode that cost you more life, to me is just like wtf is happening

Technically, that is what happens when you use DS4. I don’t think that that’s too hard to comprehend.

Zantmar.5406:

you basically rose the skill floor of necro to sky high beyond elementalist levels and the payoff isn’t exactly great

I mentioned how the entire point was to actually implement risk/reward strategies in order to make aggro play a viable concept instead of everyone just being forced to play passive and slow around a monotonous, obvious revolving door of cooldowns.

Is a higher skill ceiling bad?
Elementalist never had that high of a skill ceiling. Managing a shallow rotation isn’t difficult or clever: it’s mundane muscle memory and a basic rhythm that anyone can internalize after an hour of casual drilling (at which point it becomes almost impossible to mess it up because of things like stability, the rapidity of skill casts and other elements like stability/modes of invulnerability). This all goes for Engineer as well.

Zantmar.5406:

Necro doesn’t need that much of flashy change. A couple simple rework can be done to make it more competitive and more syngerized with its own class.

Care to expand on those buzzwords? I can already tell by the postscript below your name that “simple rework” probably refers to the typical anet treatment—something along the lines of:

• Lower (a) number(s)
• Raise (a) number(s)
• Add a condition to it

A lot of updates. Minions received some changes (specifically to Bone Fiend and Flesh Wurm). The Blood Magic and Death Magic traits also experienced a lot of shuffling and replacement. Other changes include: scepter in general, Dark Pact, the Spectral Leap trait in Soul Reaping, and probably a few other things. BM and DM along with the minions were the focus, though.

Mesmer runes with Warhorn 4 results in 4 seconds of daze and on its own is almost enough to entirely deplete a break bar. It’s really, really dumb. Just right proper for combat in this game.

Actually, the way you mention Feline Grace makes me recall that I wrote that list and its adjustments consciously saying that so many of those traits shouldn’t exist. It’d be best if so many of them were just deleted and replaced with something more play-style defining than “I’m invincible for longer,” and then active endurance generation would just be placed into certain skills that players would actually be able to watch for and interrupt or help succeed.

Coulter.2315:

Increasing speed of regen is far less abusable and spikey in its rewards. We don’t want more Feline Graces (though that may come to pass anyway with Daredevil).

However, even in the case of thieves, people are far more dependent on taking 0 damage when outside of dodge periods than they are relying on dodge alone. If endurance gain were just flat bonuses, we could see a reduction in “Take 0 damage” skills and conversion into something more active and interesting.

WARRIOR
[Call to Arms] (Warhorn 5)
Cast-time: 1 s; Recharge: 15 s

• Grant endurance and fury to yourself and allies while weakening nearby foes.
• Number of allies: 5
• Number of foes: 5
• Endurance: 25
• Fury: 5 s
• Weakness: 5 s
• Radius: 600
• Combo Finisher: Blast
• Unblockable

[Last Stand] (Defense grandmaster major)

• Activates Balanced Stance when you suffer a control effect. Increase stance durations and gain endurance when you use a stance.
• Endurance gained: 25
• Duration increase: 25%

ELEMENTALIST
[Phoenix] (Scepter Fire 3)
Cast-time: ¾ s; Recharge: 15 s

• Release a fiery phoenix that attacks foes in a line before exploding and returning to you; this return grants you endurance and cures conditions.
• Number of foes: 5
• Flight damage: (0.75)
• Explosion damage: (1.7)
• Endurance: 25
• Conditions cured: 2
• Combo Finisher: Blast
• Range: 900

[Heat Wave] (Trident Fire 5)
Cast-time: 1 s; Recharge: 40 s

• Launch three waves of heat; each damages foes and grants endurance to allies.
• Number of allies: 5
• Number of foes: 5
• Damage: (1.0)
• Endurance: 20
• Range: 1200

MESMER
[Siren’s Call] (Trident 1)
Cast-time: ¾ s

• Unleash a piercing wave of sonic energy that ripples and affects nearby targets on impact with a target; this impact damages foes and grants might to allies.
• Number of foes per impact: 3
• Maximum number of impacts: 2
• Damage (0.5)
• Allied might: 4 s
• Impact radius: 150
• Range: 1200
  • This skill is now a piercing projectile attack that no longer bounces; each impact generates a 150 unit radius AoE around a struck target which also strikes up to 2 other targets (3 in total). If this effect is triggered twice before the projectile travels its maximum distance, the projectile instantly disappears without further effect.

[Critical Infusion] (Dueling adept minor)
Recharge: 10 s

• Gain endurance when you critically hit a target while you are at or below the endurance threshold.
• Endurance threshold: 70
• Endurance gained: 35

[Bountiful Disillusionment] (Chaos grandmaster major)

• Cry of Frustration now grants endurance (25 points) on use.
• Distortion now heals (808 (1.0)) on use.

GUARDIAN
[“Save Yourselves!”] (Shout utility)
Cast-time: 0; Recharge: 50 s

• Renew your Virtue of Courage and cure conditions on allies in the area. Immobilize yourself; taunt and grant super speed to foes in the area.
• Number of allies: 5
• Number of foes: 5
• Conditions cured on allies: 3
• Self immobilize: 1 s
• Taunt: 1 s
• Super speed: 1 s
• Radius: 600
  • Immobilize is applied after the condition cure.

[Vigorous Precision] (Honor adept minor)
Recharge: 10 s

• Gain endurance when you critically hit a target while you are at or below the endurance threshold.
• Endurance threshold: 70
• Endurance gained: 35

NECROMANCER
[Well of Power] (Well utility)

• Bleeding conversion now grants 20 endurance.

RANGER
[Lightning Reflexes] (Survival utility)
Cast-time: 0; Recharge: 40 s

• Evade backwards and gain endurance.
• Evade: ¾ s
• Endurance: 50
• Conditions cured: Immobilize
• Breaks stun

[Primal Reflexes] (Skirmishing adept major)
Recharge: 10 s

• Gain endurance when you successfully evade an attack.
• Endurance: 25

[Vigorous Training] (Nature Magic master major)

• Pets grant endurance to nearby allies when activated.
• Endurance: 25
• Radius: 600
• Combat Only

ENGINEER
[Eat Wurm Egg] (Norn tool belt skill with Call Wurm)
Cast-time: 1 s; Recharge: 30 s

• Eat a wurm’s egg to gain endurance and health.
• Healing: 808 (1.0)
• Endurance: 50

[Invigorating Roar] (Charr tool belt skill with Battle Roar)
Cast-time: 0; Recharge: 50 s

• Let out an inspiring roar, removing weakness and vulnerability from nearby allies while also granting endurance.
• Number of allies: 5
• Conditions removed: Weakness; Vulnerability
• Endurance: 50
• Radius: 600

[Toss Elixir H] (Tool belt skill with Elixir H)
Cast-time: ½ s; Recharge: 25 s

• Toss Elixir H and grant healing and endurance to allies.
• Number of allies: 5
• Healing: 808 (1.0)
• Endurance: 35
• Radius: 240
• Range: 900

[Experimental Turrets] (Inventions master major)

• Healing Turret’s presence now pulses endurance (15 points) at every interval).

[Invigorating Speed] (Alchemy adept major)
Recharge: 10 s

• Gain endurance if you gain swiftness while at or below the endurance threshold.
• Endurance threshold: 70
• Endurance gained: 35

[Optimized Activation] (Tools adept minor)

• Gain endurance when you use a tool belt skill.
• Endurance: 8

THIEF
[Feline Grace] (Acrobatics master minor)
Recharge: 1 s

• Gain endurance when you successfully evade an attack.
• Endurance: 10

[Endless Stamina] (Acrobatics grandmaster minor)
Recharge: 10 s

• When you gain endurance while below the endurance threshold, you gain an additional packet of endurance.
• Endurance threshold: 70
• Bonus endurance: 15

[Vigorous Recovery] (Acrobatics adept major)

• Gain endurance when you use a healing skill.
• Endurance: 50

UNLINKED
[Rune of the Baelfire] (rank 4)

• 25% chance to gain 25 endurance when struck. (Cooldown: 25 s)

This is something that Guild Wars 2 likes to deal in: passive, “over time” effects. What exactly is wrong with hard numbers raising bars up and down in chunks? Why not have a system which can promote effective conservation and usage vigor loss and gain instead of it just passively ticking up faster at all times?

Everyone is already running vigor traits (whether exclusively for the vigor or for tangential passive bonuses which also just happen to grant vigor) and energy sigils. Vigor is such an easy boon to have and it has such a flat effect which may not even necessarily be missed if removed prematurely due to every player’s excessive access to evasion, blocking and invulnerability periods combined with the fact that stripped vigor will probably be passively renewed only moments later as part of the unchanged, basic actions of the player. If endurance is going to be passively restored anyway or made irrelevant for a good portion of combat since many players don’t take damage anyway despite not actually using the dodge function, why not just make endurance gain into… actual direct endurance gain?

Below is every source of vigor in the game (not a very long list) except with vigor replaced with endurance gain. If you actually do read it, feel free to say how much would you actually miss it and why.

• Regeneration also easily fits into this vein of thought which is why all tangential regeneration procs originally listed in the have been replaced with direct healing. Same thought there: people are going to passively heal or use a healing skill anyway, why wait or make opponents think that they can really do something about it on a consistent basis? Stripped regeneration will be reapplied somehow or the player will just directly gain health in some other way along with most likely cleansing any results of the boon removal.
• Retaliation was also replaced because punishing a player for successfully striking another player is only a sign that the designers didn’t think that they could make a game in which a player could consistently avoid another player via skillful positioning and timing—either that or it’s just pandering to a flavor that is ultimately irrelevant to combat (neither of which is an acceptable balance concept). There is already a way to punish a player for successfully striking another player: take all of that potential damage away by means of a block, evade or invulnerability period. Now that player has lost time and a cool-down.

More changes:

• Baseline life force decay set to 2%/s. Vital Persistance is almost always a given for Necromancer and especially Reaper. Since I already removed it from the new traits, I might as well just go all in and fully fold it into the DS rework. This should help your “sustain” concerns, and by making baseline an option that basically everyone is already considering, it opens up a lot more room for more niche choices. It’s also a little tempting to fold the health regeneration from Unholy Sanctuary into baseline Necromancer and making the trait just grant that sort of healing on an AoE basis, but that’s a different discussion.
• Plague Form got a fat rework. Given that it was already just a melee-range face-tank blob form, I embraced that and turned it into a condition brawler with some condition-related team support that also provides a little bit of life force generation to soak up incoming damage or just provide a backline role while healing itself a bit. On the topic of Plague Form, Lich Form also received the same sort of changes to its recharge: both of the skills are now effectively Engineer kits regarding their activation and recharge—the only real difference is that both elites are still “forms,” and therefore overwrite all skill slots with their abilities and can be activated mid-air due to their instant cast. I still feel like the two of them deserve something like a 10-second recharge just to give enemies a bit of a reprieve from the form-swapping, but that’s up to discussion.

Just delete the yet another attempt at shoving passive damage into the game and replace it with something more active and interesting.

Alright, so I adjusted a lot of the damage coefficients for the skills. Also, you’ll notice that the damage coefficients are now the primary focus of the “Damage” tool-tips for every respective skill.

• Life Blast damage coefficients remain untouched. Damage now simply hits up to 3 targets in a 150 unit radius upon impact.
• Dagger AA coefficients’ total has been preserved.
• Soul Salvo (Deathly Fervor 1) has had its recharge increased due to its potential damage.

I’ll add the minion adjustments in a bit.

Bhawb.7408:

That isn’t the main problem of [Blood Feind] right now, and it makes it conflict with Well of Blood.

The AoE tiny healing field with a base 12.5% up-time conflicts with the passive AI unit which draws health to its summoner with every attack that it lands? Or are we talking within the scope of this thread’s contents? Even then, a single packet PBAoE heal that counts as a blast finisher is rather distinct when compared to a ranged, GTAoE healing water field, no?

Bhawb.7408:

the primary problem is that Blood Fiend is built to be a healing over time skill like the various other profession’s signets, yet it doesn’t scale with your healing power

Healing signet passives actually don’t really scale with healing power very well either. Their base healing amount or ability to spam their triggers is normally what carries them. There’s a reason why healing power is mostly abandoned in all combat: your allies passively heal and stay invulnerable without HP investment or anyone else’s help, out-going healing is never consistent due to oppressive cool-down periods (something that this Necromancer design changed) and therefore is effective primarily because the numbers are inflated, and regeneration exists. While HP investment does still impact many passive healing tics, many players invest instead into more zerker-related stats, toughness/vitality (which negate incoming damage better than a slightly increased passive healing tick) or condition damage. The only situation in which players would debate taking HP as a primary stat is if they plan to effortlessly bathe themselves in passively triggered regeneration.

Bhawb.7408:

nor is it either reliable or have a high payoff for being less reliable.

I already said that this rework was designed with soft counterplay in mind. I also mentioned that I did not apply this ideology to only the Necromancer within a vacuum separate from the rest of GW2. Honestly, soft counters are already pretty absent in combat, which is why you’re lobbying for a more rewarding version of an already perfectly passive effect. It’s not impossible to go the other way with it, and it would result in a much more active game that wasn’t governed entirely by instant abilities and cooldown periods.

Bhawb.7408:

Until the over time healing is fixed, the skill is a bad version of SoV, or in your case a bad version of what WoB should be.

What makes you say that then? What should those skills be according to you and why?

Bhawb.7408:

8s of immobilize isn’t clutch?

Is eight seconds a “clutch” time interval in a game in which people can die instantly from range and stealth? Eight seconds is an extraordinarily wide window of time in GW2 during which anyone can easily be killed simply because they can’t move due to a debuff applied by a ranged, passive AI unit. That easy denies the concept of it being a skillful or interesting play. It’s not unique, clever or interesting: it’s the obvious thing to do. There is no build up; there is no real commitment to anything; the player is just pressing a button in hopes that the selected target just doesn’t get to move for the next 8 seconds. Even if it does land, that immobilize will probably be tangentially cleansed by a the target just healing itself or negated to an extent by teleports and invulnerability periods.

Bhawb.7408:

You are replacing the strongest non-elite immobilize in the game for something that MM builds don’t want or need, just to provide a utility to non-MM players.

A very strong utility that can change the tide of combat for a moment. That said, you’re right in how it sort of lacks a benefit to the actual minionmancer. EVEN SO, there is something very important when designing abilities with an innate sense of altruism. If a player’s active ability doesn’t necessarily benefit him or benefits him in a different way than it benefits his allies, there exists a very unique playstyle to which the player often must adhere in order to be effective.

However, I will be adding something that benefits minions. Just got an idea.

Bhawb.7408:

Blood Magic’s support is all healing based, that’s the point of it as a line. If Death Magic gets support, it would need distinctly different support.

“Support” in GW2 is viciously bottlenecked in the presence of excessive invulnerability periods and stability. Conditions are primarily straight damage and free additional shots for the player applying them rather than something used to preserve another ally. Players, again, take care of themselves passively. Nobody actually NEEDS outside support. Moreover, protection (aside from RNG weakness) is the only consistent way to reduce incoming damage, and it’s set at a flat amount with no interesting triggers or secondary effects.

The way in which one heals (along with any potential secondary effects) might as well entirely comprise support in GW2 at the moment. Death Magic and Blood Magic have different options for that sort of concept, and yet again, it’s still all just healing. They are distinct, but still interchangable. The only reason that they are separated is due to balance reasons rather than some irrelevant flavor—just the way that it should be.

Updated the staff notes.

• Autoattack life force gain per target struck reduced to compensate for increased life force generation across the other skills.
• Putrid Mark separated into two chain skills in order to both simplify the coding and allow the player not necessarily have the skill’s damage tied to a target ally’s location; also received a buff to damage.

Arche.7326:

Even if you made the damage D#1 final blow have a coeff of 2.1 it would still be weaker than a the current AA, as one blow is easier to dodge than many smaller.

That was actually the point. People get to spam AAs. If they are dangerous at all, they might as well be well cued, so that landing one is not only punishing, but something that might not happen without sound play, support skill investment or just as a side-effect of a drawn out encounter with resources running low on both sides.

Arche.7326:

Unless you are completly out of the loop you should know that what you try to do with the Dagger AA is found on the Greatsword, slow attacks that hit hard.

That is an option, but I want to stick to the idea that the lead-up attacks should be rather whimpy not only as a set-up for the bigger, final attack, but also as an investment for the attacking player who wants to open up that final attack’s usage. It’s about commitment and risk.

Arche.7326:

Instead of standardising the necro, which I belive you tried to do, with adding mobility and some support, see what the necro is good at, look at what it is supposed to do and how it is designed right now. Improve the strengths of the necro and make the drawbacks clear but balanced.

This new design gives Necromancer access to some of the most consistent out-going sources of healing in the game. Nobody else has that. Even Revenant staff can pick up his own health orbs. Much of the Necromancer healing is entirely altruistic with only certain self bonuses that don’t necessarily manifest in the form of pure health gain.

Arche.7326:

Instead of thinking “Necro has no mobility, so we give it mobility” think “What of the existing aspects of necromancer can we improve upon to make it a fair drawback”.

The drawbacks are in the form of the verge mechanic and cast-times on many of the skills. Aside from cool-downs, the only real resource in GW2 is time cost (how long it takes to activate an ability). Most things that actually matter in GW2 combat are instant. By slowing those things down, we add legible intervals during which counterplay can be made and during which casting individuals are deliberately vulnerable as they wind up or channel an ability. This Necromancer design embraces that.

The idea about how Necromancer shouldn’t be mobile isn’t a decent concept for combat given that every other class is often obliged to fit long ranged attacks, scripted movement or teleports into their skill bars. Keep in mind that death shroud used to be Necromancer’s replacement for downed state in the alpha, but was later changed to effectively just be a second health pool. While that latter idea seems interesting and has potential to open up a lot of new playstyles as a resource, it really just stayed as nothing but that: a second health bar. Necromancer needs a second health bar because it’s a slow meat puppet without stability. I’ve made the comparison to a PvE veteran enemy before. A class without stability isn’t necessarily a bad concept or something that can’t be worked around, but in exchange, that class is going to need some form of mobility in order to function in and around active combat. The only catch now is that something must come from the necro in exchange for the mobility and more combat options: that ended up being some baseline HP.

Arche.7326:

For the support part, ask the question what is the necro thematiclay trying to do?

Designing wholly off of flavor is dangerous territory that can lead into useless, irrelevant abilities. For instance, the original Engineer Rocket Boots were entirely designed around pandering some vaguely defined “goofy inventor” flavor.

Arche.7326:

Our support does not come from buffing our allies alot, but from inflicting debilitating conditions on our foes

If you want to talk about debilitating out-going effects as support, hexes actually provided a very real and functional flavor to encountering a Necromancer in Guild Wars 1. Since Guild Wars 2 was gutted of mechanics, “inflicting debilitating conditions” is something that can pervade from any given class. It’s not worth designing a class around that concept if everyone already does it.

Arche.7326:

and corrupting boons

Players can remove the conditions, reapply many of the boons, and typically do heal away any sort of boon conversion consequence (often while blinking away or using a scripted movement ability).

Arche.7326:

as well as transferring allies conditions to the enemy instead.

That actually is a thing that is mostly monopolized by Necromancers, but again, it’s not something that is super defining given that there are only a handful of skills that perform such a function, and again players can just heal away the consequences of transferred conditions provided that they have the buttons off recharge.

Arche.7326:

Does it work in theory? Yes, it does, if you have high uptime on weakness, chill, blind, poison

Thief has all of those barring chill, but they can just teleport to people or shoot them with condition pistol from range, so the CC aspects of chill are relatively moot. We’re back in the “Is it really profession flavor if other classes can do it too?” territory. More importantly, the conditions in the outset of combat are often healed away to some extent by any class of their own will.

Arche.7326:

and resonable amounts of fear as well as sending conditions to foes as well as boon corruption you have a scary support.

No, you have a scary single element of damage on the field (just like any other player, only difference being that this one can sometimes return out-going conditions; Mesmers can do boon hate just as well as Necromancer, and the fact that they’re often invulnerable while they use instant spike damage that also inflicts conditions that include blind, we could argue that the Necromancer’s boon conversion factor is outclassed).

A Foul Feast/Plague Sending Necromancer was actual scary support because he actually had a direct and consistent investment in specifically targeted allies regarding keeping their conditions cleared and also bouncing them back at foes (at intervals of 2 and 10 seconds respectively); the player meanwhile continued to apply dangerous de-buffs specific to the Necromancer class. A necromancer in GW2 has to hope that he gets hit with strong conditions by foes or passively inherits them from nearby allies faffing about if the Necro wants to have that sort of direct, targeted impact on but another, single ally. Or the Necro could just put a massive-sized well circle on top of an ally and tell them to stand in it (once every 32-50 seconds).

Keep in mind, this isn’t a GW1 vs GW2 discussion, it’s to make a point about GW2’s lack of real, defined support roles. GW2 support is vague, floaty and mostly selfish anyway with little control in the hands of the player. That can be easily adjusted with better conceptual design.

I’ll get back to you on the rest of your comments, but one of the things that you mentioned about Axe stealing the ripped conditions made me think about what I did with the staff Putrid Mark and its bleeding effects along with some of the traits. It’s honestly much better to have single boon rips be targeted to specific boons. As I’ve said before, boon totals in combat typically exceed 5 (and build rapidly as well as passively while also renewing throughout combat without any real effort or input from the boon beneficiary). If you really want to hurt boons with a single boon rip, make it target a specific boon, and then design secondary effects around that sort of removal which would make up for the fact that the guy still probably has 6 other boons.

Although, truth be told, boons also need a tone-down as much as conditions do. The whole game is a mess of flashing “over time” effects on the screen rather than legible combat.

Bhawb.7408:

Blood Fiend doesn’t need that kind of change

It doesn’t need a mild team-support function that also provides an extra blast? Why not?

Bhawb.7408:

we certainly don’t need nerfs to minion HP without any compensation

Fold in the rest of the trait HP, then. Let traits be things for skill side-grades, trade-offs and new play-style options; keep boring, direct-upgrades out of them. Let skills be something taken for the sake of potential combat options rather than potential combat options only after they are traited with flat, passive bonuses.

Bhawb.7408:

or nerfs to Bone Fiend CC

Given how minions move and attack pretty effectively now, their mob mentality is rather effective without one of them potentially immobilizing someone. Instead, now you the player get more clutch counterplay options. The recharges on minions also remain low in order to get them up faster after sacrificing them for any specific reason. They don’t always just have to be little AI units that run about and strike targets. They are utility abilities. Let them have some support and counterplay functions. The player can still continue to fight.

Bhawb.7408:

or losing the amazing functionality that Flesh Wurm has

While I’m more of a fan of the player actually moving his/her character, reverting the change back to “Teleport to your Flesh Wurm” is perfectly fine. The skill would remain instant-cast.

Bhawb.7408:

some of the trait changes were really misguided (Last Rites has no point being in Death Magic).

It was somewhat arbitrary, but since the new Blood Magic and Death Magic lines both have a lot of potential party support in them, the distinction between them softened. Swapping two traits around for the sake of your forced flavor isn’t a difficult feat.

Misguided.5139:

You wrote off my favorite weapon as “uninspired”

Well, as insensitive as that was (and I apologize for that, I suppose), it’s not untrue. The weapon is an autoattack and 4 circles which are all mechanically identical. The changes give it more area control, support applications and life force play options. That said, I’m going to actually change two skills on it to make them a little more effective for the user while also helping with life force generation.

Misguided.5139:

and completely overhauled it while acknowledging that other people enjoy using it, removing the ability to transfer any condition but bleed in the process.

Yes, but it is a 5-man, ranged, AoE single condition removal skill on an 8 second recharge. It also effectively converts burning into a single stack of bleeding (even on yourself should you choose to cast the ability on top of your own hitbox). The fact that it centers around bleeding transfers is just to help streamline conditions in general since conditions in combat is an utter mess at the moment, and we really don’t need the 9 or whatever we have now given that so many of them are effectively “Bleeding X.0” at this point after that last update.

Misguided.5139:

You’ve removed the damage from Blood is Power not only from the ability itself (outside of the verge mechanic, but why on earth would I want to be forced into shroud just to apply damage with this ability?)

I think you’re either getting confused or you meant something other than the Blood is Power skill.

Misguided.5139:

but also by removing Master of Corruption.

Most of the corruption skills have received lowered cool-downs that have been balanced around those corruption’s effects.

Misguided.5139:

While I appreciate that CPC destroys projectiles, the 15 sec increase on the recharge (again, w/o MoC) is not.

It’s also instant, a stun-break and a PBAoE form of mitigating incoming direct damage that isn’t necessarily a projectile. I was debating on putting it at 30 s, though. Oh, I was also lobbying for weakness just being a flatline 33% reduction to outgoing damage, by the way.

Misguided.5139:

Dhuumfire on shroud 2 instead of 1 is absolutely horrible (I’m assuming you intended the same 15s cooldown, since none is listed), no thank you.

Nope. DS2 has no cool-down whatsoever. It’s balanced by life force consumption. The fact that Dhuumfire’s effect also boost damage vs burning foes while in shroud also allows the player to focus on other attacks after one or two DS2s.

Misguided.5139:

No soul marks.

Soul marks only exists as a trait because staff is so underwhelming that it needs a passive crutch in order to make the necromancer actually live longer while the player races through those 4 skills on his/her way back to spamming 1 until he/she can swap back to the other weapon set. Besides, I already said that I would be working on increasing staff’s life force generation potential. Channeled blocks are also innately overpowered based on what they do and how little typically gets through them; they should be culled/limited in the same way that Elementalist Arcane Shield works.

Misguided.5139:

No parasitic contagion.

Why should passive effects trump or determine the selection of active abilities?

Misguided.5139:

Conditions may need a nerf, but destroying Epidemic isn’t the way to do it. Leave my Epidemic alone.

I debated on making a trait called Contagion which would just reset the above Epidemic to what it is now. The reason why I did away with it was mainly because of how it is reliant on the awful targeting system. You having your Epidemic back is fine. The rework was mainly just an experimental concept which circumvents this game’s targeting while still introducing a unique effect onto the field for a brief period of time.

Misguided.5139:

Plague…I don’t even know where to begin. Why in the world would anyone use this version? It’s terrible. Drains health and life force,

It uses life force as health. It doesn’t use the health pool at all.

Misguided.5139:

and you’ve removed the single best thing about it (stability).

I know that stability is overpowered and everybody wants it, but the boon should really see much less action in general. It’s anti-fun in how it cancels out so much potential counterplay (not that CC doesn’t need a great deal of toning down either).

To make you feel a little better, I was planning on adding two more skills to Plague to make it less of a waddling meat puppet while in effect.

Misguided.5139:

Are you seriously going to sit there and tell me that condition Necromancer is too effective? How often have you actually encountered one in PvP? You’ve nerfed the hell out of something that didn’t need nerfing, simply because you don’t find it interesting. I happen to find it great fun.

Passive damage has gotten out of control in GW2. It’s a pressure mechanic, but anet wanted to try to force it as something as strong as direct damage. I know that GW2’s design doesn’t accommodate “support” and “pressure” concepts very well, but they are important to have otherwise we end up with the current meta: invulnerability, instant damage, instant/scripted movement and rapid/passive self-healing (it’s basically just rock-paper-scissors that revolves around cool-downs and player numbers). Support and pressure mechanics allow for more soft-counters rather than just someone winning out because of gear stats or a specific button.

Misguided.5139:

Re: verge, interesting idea, but telegraphing that you will be entering shroud in 4 seconds doesn’t seem very wise.

It’s more risk/reward mechanics. It puts the player at a risk while rewarding them with special effects that they can choose to access at will for a potentially dangerous price. The fact that it’s also deliberately a trigger mechanic opens up a lot more potential for the Necromancer’s combat options on a skill-by-skill basis.

Misguided.5139:

One last thing: I appreciate that you feel that the game as a whole needs some changes in how it works. But making those changes to one class in isolation is a problem.

I already told you that this is a holistically conceived work. Just because the Necromancer is the only class that I’ve actually done to this full extent doesn’t mean that I haven’t considered this design within the scope of the rest of the game in addition to the rest of the game itself and how its many combat problems and contradictions can be resolved in the interest of more risk/reward and soft-counter combat. However, can you imagine if I showed up in any other profession forum and dropped a class re-work thread on them saying, “Hey, guys! Imagine if you had to actually make a choice or commit to a risk when doing ANYTHING AT ALL IN GW2!!” I chose Necromancer first because of how utterly subpar and one-dimensional (even moreso than the already shallow combat styles across all classes in this game) it currently is in most modes when it comes to initiating and dominating combat.

Misguided.5139:

Work within the framework of what the game is now.

If I were to do that, I would have just added invulnerability periods to like 5 arbitrary skills and called it a day.

Misguided.5139:

For instance, trying to make changes to conditions within a single profession is a disaster because they still exist within the same game as the other professions.

Again, who’s to say that I don’t already have a framework in place for all classes?

Arche.7326:

First of all, I can say that I wouldn’t play necromancer if these changes were implemented, apart from very low damage on auto attacks and skills, there are no damage multipliers among the traits. There is also heavily reduced sustain and self buffing but increased mobility.

What you gutted was our ability to do damage. Yes I agree, the spamming 1 thing is bad, but you do not solve the problem by gutting the damage and not giving any alternatives, look at dagger, it went from 1,33 coeff/s to 0.95 coeff/s, with no damage multipliers you are going to hit like a wet noodle. Life Blast got the same treatment.

Your point about the damage coefficients makes me wonder if I was a bit harsh on curbing brainless damage. That said, I’ve mentioned how the concept is a holistic idea; no class deserves crazy high damage on autoattacks as they exist now and I was working to stack all powerful AA effects either into a single, well-cued attack with a long attack cycle or on the last skill of a chain proceeded by generic, low damage abilities. The only reason that autoattacks deal so much damage right now is that most offensive skills are on cooldown at any given time. The game needs a finisher, and unfortunately due to its shallow, cooldown-centric combat design, that finisher became the attack that everyone uses all the time instead of something that one builds up to or uses for a specific situation.

I was never a fan of damage bonus traits or sigils not only because of how uninspired they are, but also because they are yet another example of uncued, passive offensive capabilities without any real counter. I mentioned above that that’s what I removed here as best as I could. If someone is going to deal or take damage, it’s because they committed with an activated skill or ate an otherwise cued hit by their own fault. To solve the problem of those traits going missing, it’s again, very easy to just fold that missing damage into active abilities, but again, I think I dropped the ball just out of fear of making damage too easy to do. I mean, it’s an MMORPG; damage is automatically going to be easy to deal. I should probably just get over that and address reestablishing more recognizable DPS numbers.

My only concern about retaining the current dagger AA DPS was the idea of slapping something like close-range blunderbuss damage on dagger 1c just to make up for the reduced damage on the lead-up attacks (even if its new 1-second activation time helps cue the danger for foes). Instead of just keeping the same damage totals and just frontloading it onto “well cued spam,” the idea was to spread damage out through multiple skills which could be layered and used in ways that weren’t necessarily governed wholly by a brutal and boring flat cooldown period. Feel free to give me more specifics about the damage and what it would take to actually preserve the current dagger AA DPS, though. I would appreciate it, and it would help me retain the Necromancer as a direct damage combat threat if it invested into that (I’m a fan of direct damage anyway more than anything else). A total damage packet of 101 (0.3) is low as a baseline (it’s a single bullet from Unload, if I’m not mistaken), so given that it is melee, it could maybe stand a slight increase, but the vast majority of the damage needs to stay on the final chain skill just to preserve that very real risk/reward factor for the player and high threat to opponents.

Moreover, in the case of dagger, it’s ideal to catch foes with Dark Pact and layer damage by opening with Life Siphon AoEs while following up with dagger autoattacks. This isn’t counting additional damage and CC from off-hand/utility abilities. Life Blast was getting limited AoE, which spreads the damage out in fights, but yes, makes it weaker in 1v1s. I debated about just giving it 3-target cleave like fireball has and changing the projectile pathing to match.

There is also actually another somewhat unaccounted benefit of a lot of the skills: many of them can be manually aimed (including the AoE “splash” projectiles which aren’t specifically GTAoEs). This provides player-centric options when it comes to soft-countering stealth, teleports and capitalizing on good positioning which might otherwise obscure your own line of sight.

Pick one. Drawbacks promote playstyles. Direct upgrades don’t provide anything new to gameplay at all, and GW2 has so little going for it that any change-ups would be ideal. Although, Reaper doesn’t necessarily do anything unique within the scope of this game’s mechanics anyway.

It’s like how Revenant was cool because it had to commit to a single weapon which would strongly define its playstyle and also passively provide a very strong cue to enemies who saw that player approaching. However, everyone cried until one of the only genuinely unique things about the Revenant’s design was taken away from it. With only one weapon, it would have been easy to keep skill cooldowns very low for that class as well in order to prevent them from defaulting to 1 (and sometimes 2) for 10-15 seconds at the relative outset of any engagement.

Misguided.5139:

I can appreciate that you spent a lot of time on this, but you pretty much gutted everything I love about my necromancer.

What did you love that has gone missing? Bear in mind that what I “gutted” was effectively:

• Certain autoattack spam being consistently too effective
• Passive damage spam (conditions) being entirely effortless to apply (and often without projectile-related counterplay)
• Passive/instant offensive procs and skills; direct damage has a fair cue in order to promote counterplay that isn’t just protracted invulnerability periods.

Cecilia.5179:

Wow, that is a lot of changes. However, right off the bat, I don’t like the nerfs to our hp pool. It breaks the hp pool symmetry.

If you take a look at what happened to the life force pool, you’ll notice that if the Necromancer starts at medium health (baseline of 15,922), that extra 3,000 HP effectively puts Necromancer back up to within 300 HP of the “high” health pool class (18,922 out of 19,212 HP). The only drastic change is to the Necromancer’s potential maximum health pool given how it will fluctuate as the player builds, consumes and loses life force in addition to health through any single encounter since it’s no longer possible to just build to 100% life force and walk around with 30k+ HP.

All that said, I don’t even begin to know what you mean by “hp pool symmetry” when the HP pools in GW2 are already so arbitrarily disparate. The only reason Necromancer and Warrior have such high HP pools is because they are effectively PvE Veteran-level enemies with steering wheels for a player. Both of them were helpless/suicidal meatbags (as are all PvE mobs when pitted against players) until Warrior got extended immunity to all game effects and intense passive health regeneration. In an MMORPG like this, that disparity is justified only as a crutch for a poorly conceived design within what should have been conceptual whole, incorporating all classes and their abilities accordingly.

I took a look at a thread with a big survey on the necromancer. When I got to staff skills, it seemed that the people taking the survey were pretty satisfied with its current set up. It’s a little jarring considering that staff was one of the easiest things that I found adjusting/re-working given how the entire set is:

• Autoattack
• Circle that bleeds
• Circle that chills and poisons (long recharge)
• Circle that deals high damage and is a blast finisher (very long recharge)
• Circle that fears (very long recharge)

It’s so utterly uninspired. The reason why I went with some of the above designs was because Guild Wars 2 in general is often a race back to autoattack. Everyone has these very easy skills that they can get off effectively whenever they want barring some out-of-rotation stun locking during which they get to stare at the screen or go get a sandwhich while they wait for a guy to kill someone who is forced to stand still. However, beyond that initial burst of one’s shallow rotation, one is left with nothing but a MASSIVE downtime and an autoattack button. It’s not engaging or thoughtful; it’s “cool-down based combat,” which really puts the player in a bind if the skills themselves don’t actually consume time to use but are put into a huge recharge after use.

The design above helps alleviate that by redesiging skills to have a longer lasting impact on the battle either with their permanence, by longer channels, by being a multi-use chain, or by having just longer cast times—all this in combination with shorter recharges. In doing so, combat can have more layers to it as recharges begin to overlap throughout protracted encounters instead of every single fight just being a trade of cool-downs before two or more players back off to let everything recharge while spamming 1.

Zenith.7301:

Condition is one of the weakest conditions anyways. Even with a gimmick video of a mesmer doing 30+ confusion stacks it’s still less damage than 14 stacks of burning or poison.

It’s still worthless in PvE at least.

In general, burning is stupidly strong, Poison is OKAY, and Bleeding>Torment>Confusion are terrible.

“Damage over time” does not mean “damage right now.” The concept of conditions have always been in the vein of “pressure” mechanics. Allowing them to deal rapid, lethal damage (considering how easy it is to apply them) was a nonsensical idea that just shows again how easy anet caves to the whims of players who don’t really know what they want or have no concern for the holistic design of an entire system.

nightwulf.1986:

This was a response from Robert Gee to the mesmer forum on why mesmers don’t have a bunch of blast finishers (sound familiar?).

Robert Gee.9246:

From a design perspective, Mesmers are more about providing fields and less about activating them. It’s not just blast finishers, Mesmers lack reliable sources of many other finishers too. Necromancers fill a similar role. By contrast you might notice that Warriors have lots of finishers but not many fields.

We don’t always get this balance right

Yeah, one fire field and no real blasts on a meta set, but Warrior always effortlessly has +20 might even just in PvP. If they’re going to let this happen, they might as well not even pretend to know what they’re doing or have any real plan aside from caving to people who want more instant/passive damage and invulnerability periods.

People don’t understand that might and fury are the only really worthwhile boons when it comes to directly impacting combat (outside of PvP which is also dominated by stability and invulnerability states in order to sustain combat while passive damage ticks each second). There’s nothing to do in this game but damage. If they wanted people to have roles or classes to have a unique feel or purpose, they would have severely limited class options regarding what any given class brings to combat in terms of support. They didn’t do that, so now obviously many classes are subpar when compared to others, and dungeons can easily be optimally completed by a party of nothing but Elementalists and Guardians.

manveruppd.7601:

Someone’s been getting beaten by condi mesmers too much lately? :p

Haha, not with all of this passive and instant condition removal. However, it’s not like combat is difficult or aggressive. All I do is face tank everything while the guy freely presses his buttons as he simultaneously phases in and out of invulnerability while (sometimes instantly) attacking, dazing and passively applying conditions until eventually he runs out of buttons to press (30 pointless seconds) later, at which I get to press all of my buttons. It’s thrilling. Honestly.

Good counterpoint about how so many boons and conditions are actually worthwhile, influential, and deserve to exist in combat due to their uniqueness and fairness.

The role of necromancer in raids is to pull the special raid-specific lever, or use the special raid-specific turret, or pick up the special raid-specific bundle. You know that anet can’t design raids with a game as shallow as this with reference to its lack of defined player roles and super fluid and vague class purpose; so to make up for it, every encounter needs a very obvious gimmick that can only be bypassed by a gimmick solution that is specific to that very encounter and found nowhere outside of it. Since, as you mentioned, necromancer doesn’t do one of the 5 things to do in this game as effectively as any other class (other classes who—like the necromancer—do all 5 simultaneously, just slightly better than necro), he will be the utility guy that is relegated to the raid-specific gimmick if your raid party is going to go super try-kitten its expeditions into “Dungeons but slightly bigger this time.”

manveruppd.7601:

Confusion TOTALLY makes sense on a necromancer!

Confusion is a terribly generic addition to the game which very poorly homogenizes all potential forms of activity punishment. In order to preserve any sort of minuscule unique field presence it has at all, it should have best just been left on the Mesmer class. There are honestly plenty of boons and conditions which don’t need to exist in Guild Wars 2, but do only due to flavor reasons, as pandering, gutted leftovers from Guild Wars 1, or because someone erroneously thought that their respective inclusion was a good idea.

= SOUL REAPING =

= BLOOD MAGIC =

= DEATH MAGIC =

= CURSES =

= SPITE =

= DOWNED =