Unfortunately the DS was a failed machanic that continues to fail mainly because it can’t scale without becoming a game breaking mechanic…
This, and the anti-synergy that DS has with the rest of my abilities, is why I was hoping for a significant revamp of Death Shroud in the expac. DS’s current form is almost impossible to balance without breaking to OP or UP. That leaves us stuck with minimal defense outside DS, and kludgy anti-synergy in DS.
IMO the entire class design is broken.
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I have seen many people complaining about the changes revealed on the stream. While these aren’t exactly enough to make us equal to other classes, they certainly aren’t nerfs.
I get that you wish they were better, but it’s been like that for a while. What exactly is everyone complaining about, or is it just them wishing for better changes?
What I find disappointing about the changes is that they do not address the core design problems that necros suffer from.
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I jumped through the event hoops on my guardian on the old system, going trait to trait and using daily reward tomes. I have very few skill points as a result of chasing the trait event guide to 80…
So now will I be screwed when they convert to this system,because I didn’t do many skill points since I was so busy chasing traits? If I did all of that hard work for traits not to keep them, I will be very displeased.
Per the ready-up: You get 400 hero points from leveling and need about 65 more from hero (skill) challenges to unlock everything. You cannot get hero points from consumables or additional bars of XP after 80. So if you unlocked your traits & skills by any method without doing at least 65 skill challenges, you will not be able to immediately unlock everything post-HoT.
But, remember that all the information we have is preliminary, and this would leave a great many non-PvE players unfairly penalized so I tend to think the devs will do something to prevent this issue.
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As far as I know, each player can only control their own character…
I’ve been on maps where 3 commanders (one on each side) were in the same guild and deliberately avoiding each other to run a karma train. It’s terribly boring, but there’s no rule against people collaborating. If you don’t like it, get a tag and start leading the way you want.
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The mentioned changing character baseline stats, gear and traits so that a combination of the 3 would make up for the difference. How that will work out in practice…. we’ll just have to wait and see.
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I agree that the entire set of Arcane Master traits needs to be reworked. The best one (Final Shielding) is made effectively redundant by the Adept Earth’s Embrace trait.
That’s just sad.
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On the other hand we are getting access to geomancer’s training (-33% duration on a number of crucial conditions) = less cleansing required, and we get geomancer’s defense = less heal required.
Considering this I would not mind if the devs reduced our cleaning and healing capabilities, as long as the alternative explained above is compensating enough. The idea is acceptable, the devs just need to work on the numbers.
I have one problem with the principle though. The devs stated that they want to nerf Arcane because it is “too strong”. The truth is that Fire, air, and earth were always way too weak. With the proposed changes earth will be more interesting, arcana will be less interesting (although still very desirable) but fire and air are still lacking. By the same token, many of our skills are terribly weak.
Geomancer’s defense is situational; I play staff and don’t want to be in 600 range.
The ready-up dev-speak sounded like they want to nerf D/D and are taking a ham-handed approach that will affect everything else by forcing a choice between EAs.
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Also compared to other classes the ele becomes alot weaker by seeing the all powerful traits of other professions.
This is however incorrect. A flat 20% damage-reduction more than negates the power-creep other classes will experience and will further solidify Celestial D/D into the meta.
Furthermore, even if Elementalists could take both Elemental Attunement and Evasive Arcana, 00666 Celestial D/D would still be the top PvP spec outshining all other Elementalist specs regardless just because of that flat 20% damage-reduction.
That said, I’m in no way advocating both Evasive Arcana and Elemental Attunement being Grandmaster traits. It’s my personal opinion that Elemental Contingency should be merged into Elemental Attunement with Evasive Arcana replacing Elemental Contingency as a Master trait.
That is just a potential for 20% damage reduction. Mesmers and rangers will be able to completely bypass that. Compared to other classes, ele got nothing.
It isn’t going to be much use for those of us who play staff either. I try to avoid being in 600 range…
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This issue has been raised in several threads; as I said there:
All 8 of my characters were created shortly after launch (pre-NPE) but about half were leveled almost exclusively in WvW (or EoTM more recently, a couple languished at low levels for years). Their skills were unlocked by additional levels of XP beyond 80 and skill point scrolls.
Due to a lack of PvE/world exploration on those characters, when the new system comes out they will not have enough ‘hero points’ to unlock all of the 5 trait lines + all skills which I have unlocked right now.
Anet needs to provide some extra hero points for grandfathered characters so that players who have earned their unlocks through non-PvE methods aren’t screwed. Make the boost proportional to the % of traits & skills unlocked at expansion release.
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All 8 of my characters were created shortly after launch (pre-NPE) but about half were leveled almost exclusively in WvW (or EoTM more recently, a couple languished at low levels for years). Their skills were unlocked by additional levels of XP beyond 80 and skill point scrolls.
Due to a lack of PvE/world exploration on those characters, when the new system comes out they will not have enough ‘hero points’ to unlock all of the 5 trait lines + all skills which I have unlocked right now.
Anet needs to provide some extra hero points for grandfathered characters so that players who have earned their unlocks through non-PvE methods aren’t screwed. Make the boost proportional to the % of traits & skills unlocked at expansion release.
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Bob players WvW pretty exclusively. He also likes making alts. He made 2 alts under the new Trait system from April of last year and somehow got the gold and skill points (possibly through some PvP as well) to level those 2 toons to 80 and get one of them all of the traits and about 90% of the traits on the other one from trainers.
He has done zero map complete and maybe got 3 skill points from running around in WvW.
When the new system hits, since he only got 3 SP challenges done and up to level 80 from both running around and maybe a few tomes, will this mean that he will also only have enough hero points for someone who has done just that (even though he HAD all/most of the traits unlocked)? Furthermore, if that is the case, what about all of that gold he essentially wasted to play toons that he can now, not actually play anymore since his builds are non-existent?
Still no compensation or with Anet make sure to grandfather in anyone who had all the traits unlocked?
What about those toons made at the beginning of the game, but whom the player decided they didn’t want to world complete for the 3rd or 4th time on them and just got them maxed out without getting all the skill challenges in the world? Are they also getting their builds nerfed?
This is my concern. All 8 of my characters were created shortly after launch (pre-NPE) but about half were leveled almost exclusively in WvW (or EoTM more recently, a couple languished at low levels for years). Their skills were unlocked by additional levels of XP beyond 80 and skill point scrolls.
Due to a lack of PvE/world exploration on those characters, when the new system comes out they will not have enough ‘hero points’ to unlock all of the 5 trait lines + all skills which I have unlocked right now.
Anet needs to provide some extra hero points for grandfathered characters so that players who have earned their unlocks through non-PvE methods aren’t screwed. Make the boost proportional to the % of traits & skills unlocked at expansion release.
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The real issue here is how mouseover on the price would make your numbers go into price, rather than into the quantity field YOU ACTUALLY CLICKED.
The hover-select is the best feature of the current TP UI. Well, second-best, right under mousewheel to change values. The whole thing is so cripplingly slow as it is that requiring more clicks just to use it would be a far greater loss than that of the odd person who doesn’t pay attention to what they’re doing.
… omg. I had no idea i could mousewheel values, thank you!
I still disagree though, it’s not hard to click on the field you want, or use Tab if you’re keyboarding it. Mouseover select should be disabled simply because it’s not the way 99% of windowed interfaces work in the world today and that screws people up.
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The real issue here is how mouseover on the price would make your numbers go into price, rather than into the quantity field YOU ACTUALLY CLICKED.
100% agree. I’ve never lost money because of this, but I’ve been regularly annoyed by this ‘feature’. I click on quantity then start to type and my mouse moves down a bit… and suddenly I’m typing in the price box??!!
This is just bad UI design. The cursor should stay in the box I click on (unless I press Tab).
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It isn’t universally hated by any means in my opinion. Personally, I am all for it. In my opinion, the folks that dislike it, have created their own idea on how to do things, and chose to speak negatively about out of the personal bias of their subjective opinion.
Correct. Open field is not universally hated. There are plenty of people who have no fighting skills and siege is the best way for them to enjoy the game.
This pretty well sums it up: another form of silly elitism invented by people who feel the need.
That said, I wouldn’t bother using it most of the time because open field is, by definition, mobile and any intelligent opponent will just move out of range. There are zergs dumb enough to push into it though… then they complain about opponents with no skill.
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… I cannot see it co-exist with the current Conquest maps in the same queue. It’s not because the builds designed in conquest are not going to work here….
@ Anet: this is an issue for me. What are we expected to do? Change build/gear/runes/sigils/utilities every time a match starts? What if we want to play one class in conquest and a different one in stronghold?
The biggest reason I don’t pvp more is because I can’t choose what game mode I want to play. I freaking hate the Courtyard and I hate seeing players who wanted it play ‘deathmatch on mid’ and ignore everything else because they didn’t get their map.
… The only sensible reason I can think of for this is that there aren’t enough players to support separate queues. Maybe you’d get more players if we could play the game we want.
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1) development resources are limited and I don’t want them spent reinventing a tool that already exists. especially given how many other things in game need work.
2) while voice communication can be superior, it is only as good as the people using it. in my experience from other games w/ voip pug voice communication is about as good as pug text chat communication (it sucks). and its far more intrusive.
3) of course people will insist that everyone in the group join because the tool exists, then refuse to use text chat while jabbering inanely about nothing i want to hear. and if I mute the intrusive jabberer, then I cant hear them on the rare occasion they do say something useful.
4) voip is a great tool; voip is not for pugs.
[edit: and this is assuming all the technical issues are dealt with; in other games I’ve seen in-game voip cause disconnects and massive lagspikes. anet’s record of dealing with technical problems has not impressed me.]
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This post was more of a plea to Arena Net that if they are working a population balance fix they get out there…
You do realize that any ‘population balance fix’ will necessarily remove player choice somewhere, right? Because players have the tool to fix the population imbalance (transfer) and we’ve used it to break things further.
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I just hope people realize that the cap was only 1 part of the problem. condition builds still do 20-40% less damage overall than zerker builds for various reasons. Plus they still don’t work on objects, can’t crit, and scale 3-4x slower than zerker stats.
If everyone flocks to condi builds things are not going to get easier.
But the cap is the biggest hurdle. As long as it remained there was no chance conditions would be viable in a group setting. The other things can be adjusted.
Even the problem with objects could be fixed without being too immersion breaking. Something like: all conditions applied to objects will be transformed into a new condition ‘deteriorating’ that will tick for the same duration and damage as the original condition.
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… it now says who is initiating a vote to kick and who is leaving.
I haven’t seen that part yet. I kind of expected a message saying someone has quit when someone quits. “No longer in the party” could mean a lot of things.
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Step out of your zergs people…this is a great change. Learn to play a new style. Adapt. Try a new build. You know…think a little bit. Too many sheep.
Why do some people think playing in a large group = mindless? Sure there are disorganized pug zergs, but organized WvW raiding is far harder than roaming because getting 20+ good players organized and on the same page is harder than doing it with 5.
Joke reply.
Then use your “superior organization” to take advantage of the stability changes. Everyone is playing with the same mechanics, play better.
Could it be that your inflated, self-defined skill was largely predicated on a broken mechanic? If not, step up to the plate and adapt. The good players will still be the good players.
Serious non-sequitur there. Either you quoted me by accident or you are replying to your own assumptions.
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Only in an MMO could an ability that simply lets you reliably control your own character be considered overpowered.
Only in an MMO could people pretend that one button push cancelling 20-30 other player’s button pushes isn’t overpowered.
You’re acting like it was ok, even good, that a power was so arbitrarily binary that it made other people idiots for even thinking of playing with CC skills.
Why do people who argue this fail to see that CC is binary? It is a hard counter to actually playing the game.
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Step out of your zergs people…this is a great change. Learn to play a new style. Adapt. Try a new build. You know…think a little bit. Too many sheep.
Why do some people think playing in a large group = mindless? Sure there are disorganized pug zergs, but organized WvW raiding is far harder than roaming because getting 20+ good players organized and on the same page is harder than doing it with 5.
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Everyone is screaming because we were complaining about how zergs and blobs were able to streamroll everything AND THEN THE MADE IT EVEN WORSE.
Nothing “leveled” the field. Now you either blob, or you get blobbed, and if you run into another blob you stare at each other slinging AOEs and ranged attacks until one side gets bored and either builds siege, runs away, or suicidally pushes into you and dies.
EXACTLY. I find all these posts who say that stab change is the end of blobbing, totally ridiculous.
What stability change killed is Guild Raids. Like 15v15, 20v20. Now you need to be a massive blob to have enough ppl to survive ACs, or be blobbed by the other server.
And with that, the last thing left that I enjoyed in this game, that wasn’t nerfed or removed, is gone.
RIP Guild raiding and enjoyable open fights 2012-2015
After spending some time playing after the patch, I’m sorry to have to agree with this. Organized large scale combat is why I play this game – because doing it well takes work and is crazy fun. The new ranged/kiting zerg meta is just plain boring. I really love this game, so I’ll hang around for a while and see if it improves, but….
well, lets just hope it improves.
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Added chat logging to indicate who is kicking whom in parties and who is leaving.
Has anyone seen this? When someone leaves my party now it says “<name> is no longer in the party.” Says the same thing when I quit. This is the exact opposite of what I expected when I read the patch notes. It’s ambiguous.
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Not really the norm. I’ve been playing WvW since near launch and can count on one hand the number of times some troll has messaged me (usually mad because they died).
Just block and move on.
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Hearing voices can be an overwhelming experience, making it very hard for the voice hearer to manage their life.
These are some of the things voice hearers say can be helpful.
Talk to other voice hearers – this gives you the opportunity to share experiences and to learn from one another. You can join or set up a self-help groups…..
Hey lets form our own GW2 self help group! I know a peacekeeper warden in Rata Sum who will let me use a meeting room near the jail. I’m sure the drunken bear won’t disturb us much.
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I’m glad they got fixed, but the fact that necros had 16 traits lacking basic functionality for 2.5 years is an unfortunate commentary on the developer attention we get.
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Spectral walk still works around corners and jumping off ledges. I’m curious about a PvP necro’s opinion on wurm though.
I view the blink/shadowstep changes as a bug fix since they were clearly intended to be pathed/LoS and only worked (buggishly) in certain spots. Wurm I always considered a genuine teleport, like spectral walk.
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Meh. It’s a bug fix. The fix is very late, but so is the one for falling damage from walking down a hill. It’s not like we can’t teleport, just not to a place that we can’t run straight over to.
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This needs to be play tested by over 200 person battles before the features are finalized. WvW is an entirely different game when you have more than a few dozen which is what it looks like they designed the map with.
I’m excited about the new map, can’t wait to see how it plays out. That said, I couldn’t avoid a few prickles of concern; the dev expectations of how things will play out seem reasonable for 20v20 battles but not for 40+ zergs. They sounded out of touch.
And I’ve yet to understand how any of this will ‘break up zergs’; its not like they’ve implemented player collisions. Certainly the stab changes will make zergs less safe, but smaller groups will be even more at risk.
I guess we’ll see….
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I had a top-of-the-line machine performing terribly due to CPU overheating (heatsink issue). You will also want to check your main processor temp/clock/etc in addition to the graphics hardware, GW2 is very CPU intensive.
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SYG grants stability to 5 people. If you’re stacked tight, frontline guards can easily roll 25 stacks before pushing. I know I have a crapton of stability uptime already now as a frontliner.
Stability stacks duration right now and it won’t after the change. It will stack intensity (stacks). So yes, you can roll 25 stacks at the start of a push, but then you’ll have no stab after the first 6 seconds.
If it stacks both duration and intensity, that makes absolutely zero sense. I’m not going to bother doing the math for you on duration. Figure it out.
Oh for goodness sake, read the news. You aren’t understanding how the new stability works. Duration will be the SAME as now, no math required.
Before change:
2x guardians use SYG at the same time = 5 seconds + 5 seconds = 10 seconds of stab.
After change:
2x guardians use SYG at the same time = 5 stacks + 5 stacks = 10 stacks of stab FOR 5 SECONDS.
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SYG grants stability to 5 people. If you’re stacked tight, frontline guards can easily roll 25 stacks before pushing. I know I have a crapton of stability uptime already now as a frontliner.
Stability stacks duration right now and it won’t after the change. It will stack intensity (stacks). So yes, you can roll 25 stacks at the start of a push, but then you’ll have no stab after the first 6 seconds.
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Basically this will change nothing for frontliners in zerg v. zerg or zerg busting or raids, IMO. Guards will pop SYG, Warriors balanced stance (although this may now be changing with Dolyak Signet having only an extra 8s CD with traited stances and a bonus 5 stacks of stab), everyone rolls in with 25 stacks and that’s a lot of CC required to strip that many, especially over a period of ~10 seconds or so…
I’m not sure where you’re getting 25 stacks for ~10 seconds for everyone. Realistically it will be 5 stacks for 6 seconds from SYG for most frontliners with warriors having more. ZvZ fights against decent opponents take longer than 6 seconds, so guardians will need to rotate since stability will not stack duration. Either way, frontline will be operating with far less stability under pretty extreme conditions.
I don’t think melee is going away, but I’ve been predicting an increase in staff eles since this news came out; WvW meta has been trending towards ranged damage for some time, this will just push it along faster.
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Please emergency fix!