Guild Wars 2

Bhawb.7408:

and poison will destroy your healing.

Except it doesn’t because everyone runs a heal that clears conditions. The condition removal on these abilities occur before the heal itself does, so it makes poison a rather pointless condition to have.

Xynn.2748:

It’s funny that they succeeded on a completely new class, Mesmer, and failed so hard on a tried and true class, Necromancer.

Master of attrition fighting? With my 38hp heal on every attack? Sounds legit.

Pretty much this. Every class is going to have some issues. Some more than others, but necromancers? My god, what was ANet thinking?

“Hey, I have an idea. Lets design a game around mobility as its primary defense mechanic and then leave a class without any mobility skills. What? Won’t work? Bah, you don’t just don’t have vision my friend! Ok, ok, how about I give them some life steal to compensate. That should work… 38hp per attack sounds about right… but only if they go down a certain trait tree. Oh, hey guys, lets give thieves and warriors an attack that can do 10k damage. This will be the most balanced game ever, you’ll see!”

Sarcasm aside, regeneration and life steal abilities in this game are pathetic in the face of what people can dish out for damage. If ANet really wanted to make necromancers an attrition class they really need to take a hard look at allowing Necromancers to heal and give themselves protection better. Otherwise they need to revamp the necromancer and give them mobility skills. A really good example of this is the guardian. They only have one mobility skill and its on their greatsword. Even though they have really low base HP and low mobility, they’re one of the hardest targets to take down because of their healing and defensive boons. The guardian is the perfect example of an attrition class if I’ve ever seen one.

Then again, every bad class in every MMO has had their die hard fans that scream to the high heavens that their chosen profession is fine and we all just need to learn to play. This, of course, is despite the fact its one of the lowest, if not the lowest, populated classes in the game.

That said, one thing I do find necromancers good at is area denial in sPvP. But then again, sPvP is a joke and no one takes that seriously.

Bhawb.7408:

No. Staff as necro is fast and easy, unless you are terrible at aiming marks they are really reliable as well.

Other than Mark of Blood and the chill mark, no. The cool downs are way to long on the other marks and the auto attack moves way to slow to be considered reliable.

Bas.7406:

Softspoken.2410:

Kiriakulos.1690:

Softspoken.2410:

Kiriakulos.1690:

I think you’re confusing viable with mediocre. I’d rather use a single weapon that was extremely good instead of having my choices of kinda ok.

Could you please explain how this doesn’t create the “You have to use X weapon or you’re playing your class wrong” problem?

That’s a problem? You would be playing the class wrong.

Well, you’ve then created a lot of false options for players, and narrowed build variety to the point that people know exactly what to expect the moment they identify someone as a particular class.

That may not be a problem for you, but I like profession choices to be a starting point for what a character can do, rather than limiting them to one specific build if they want to be effective.

I read his comment and stopped at Warriors have great synergy.

The problem is they only have great synergy with GS. They are the absolute worst class at every other facet in the game, but hey 100b!!!!!!!!!

Anyone who things warriors have great synergy and multiple builds is playing a different game. Essentially if you are in a group with a warrior who isn’t carrying GS and claims to be dps he is not viable.

You should have given up hope on convincing him once he said the warrior and theif are the two most synergized classes, when every single tournament player and regular dungeon runner says they are the two bottom of the rung only one way to play.

Example Top Tournament teams – Zero Warriors unless you are really really good, and the whole team is built around making that warrior effeective. Zero Thieves because they have the least effect on a game, unless the theif is extremely good, and even then they are easily ignored or killed by a good player.

Elementalist, Necromancers, and Guardians on the other hand can completely change a game or map.

Have you even played a warrior? I’m guessing no. They have plenty of other builds other than GS. Shout Heal/Banner Heal builds are pretty popular in WvW. Those builds use hammers. I see plenty of axe warriors running around. You’ve also got your sniper builds, though not as popular. Are you even playing the same game I am? Warriors have plenty of synergy with their traits, but you go ahead and keep thinking otherwise. It doesn’t take smart person to figure it out. Especially since warriors offer more than just DPS. But hey, who am I to argue. I’ve only leveled one to 80 and PVPed with one to great success. Longbow and sword are kinda meh, but only because conditions are in such bad shape right now. If conditions were truly equal to direct damage, warrior sword and longbow would be on equal footing with their direct damage weapons. As it is, warriors do more damage in direct damage gear with both of these weapons than they do in condition damage gear.

Never said warriors and thieves are the “most synergized”, but you go ahead and keep putting words in my mouth that were never said. For the record, I said “solid synergistic”.

Also, no one cares about sPvP. sPvP has been dying a slow death since launch. I don’t know why ANet keeps wasting so many resources on it. There is nothing gained from it. Every time I see the listings theres a ton of empty rooms with only a few rooms at max capacity.

If necromancers are in fact fine, as some of you keep insisting, then why are there so few of them?

BoogerSammich.7189:

@kravick
a couple of your statements seem to indicate that maybe you just don’t quite fit with the playstyle of the class? i don’t mean that as an insult.

“I’ve seen what solid synergistic trait trees actually look like in the warrior and thief.”
It’s funny, my first toon was a necro. My second was a warrior. The first thing i said when i looked at the warrior traits was, “where’s the synergy?” lol. But i found it. and i enjoy warrior very much. but i wouldn’t say that it’s any better or worse in trait lines.

“All that time spent building up enough bleeds to make epidemic worth casting.”
Epidemic has a 15 second cooldown. So, pop it every 15 seconds. Also, if you are running a bleed build and you have to work that hard to get bleeds, Then you may want to take a look at your build.

My builds where fine. Its hard to screw up a condition build on a necromancer anyway. All you need is 30 points in curses. Runes are simple. 2x krait/centaur/afflicted or 3x krait/afflicted or 6x undead. Sigil of earth and agony. Tuning Crystals Vegi Pizzas for food. 1700 hours played on this account over the last 6 months. Over 1000 of them on the necromancer. I’ve done my research. I’ve tried the Juggermancer build, I’ve tried Nemesis’ hybrid build (OP damage in PVE I’ll admit), Lupi’s conditionmancer build (but that was a standard build long before she made a post about it). You name it, I’ve done it.

Necromancers have the slowest bleed stacking. If you’ve ever played another class that has a condition build you’d know this.

I’m also guessing you’re not familiar with the warriors shout heal build. Guardians have a similar build that does the same thing, but since I don’t have a guardian, I can’t give specifics.

6x runes of the soldier – Shouts remove conditions on yourself and allies.

“For Great Justice”, “On My Mark”, “Shake It Off” – Very short cool downs by themselves. When traited, can be 20 seconds. “Shake It Off” removes 2 conditions on yourself and others with the runes listed above. Shouts heal for about 1500 each with the proper trait.

“Charge” – Grant swiftness to yourself and allies, while curing chilled, crippled, and immobilized. When traited, also converts other conditions into boons for yourself and allies. 16 second cool down with this traited. With this trait, “Call to Arms” also converts conditions to boons on yourself and allies.

Mending – Heal yourself and cure two conditions.

You honestly believe they’re blowing ALL of these cool downs when conditions start flying around? Stagger these abilities out in 5 second intervals and you’ll never stick a condition long enough to mean anything, let alone stack your bleeds up to a respectable level. Any damage you do happen to do gets counteracted by the 1500 HP shout heal. Direct damage wins fights because you can’t cleanse direct damage.

“Zee conditions, zey do nossing!”

Don’t even get me started on my thief. Clearing a condition just by going into stealth, and if I remain in stealth it clears another one in 3 seconds. Shadowstep clearing 3 conditions. Infiltrator’s Strike being an on demand condition removal skill and stun breaker with no cool down, as a weapon skill no less. Hide In Shadows removing bleeding, burning, and poison all at the same time…

Oh hey, and then there are elementalists who also have crazy condition removal abilities that work on allies as well.

Conditions might actually be worth while if ANet didn’t see fit to give every class 50 ways to clear conditions. Well, except maybe rangers. I hear the only condition removal ability they have is to remove poison. Poor rangers… They get pooped on by everyone.

Now necromancer power builds are a lot more viable in PVP. Unfortunately, mobility is king in this game. If your class doesn’t have it, you are fodder for the classes that do have better mobility. Power based utility skills also suffer from having ridiculously long cool downs that other classes don’t have to suffer.

Everything does fine in PVE. PVP is another matter, though. You’ll get more millage out of another class for PVP.

Bhawb.7408:

The minion AI is not broken; period. I’ve spent probably 5 hours in the last few days just testing out their AI patterns. Just because you don’t understand how they work doesn’t mean they don’t work as they are supposed to. I’ll try to get a recording together, but in a general overall sense if you want your minions to attack, hit the target you want them to attack with two auto attacks, and if you ever want to change targets hit that target with a single auto attack; AoE won’t change aggro in general.

Flesh Golem sometimes gets stuck on old targets, and often one Bone Minion will stay on an old target while the other goes to the new one. Minion AI is very precise, they only have some issue in certain circumstances, and even that usually goes back to user error.

Nice contradiction. They sky is blue, no wait, its a bluish green.

I 100% agree with the OP. Especially since I’ve seen what solid synergistic trait trees actually look like in the warrior and thief.

I’ve dumped hundreds of gold into my necromancer. Even have a set of T3 armor for it. I have 6 different full exotic sets, including accessories. I’ve tried every build imaginable. Everything I’ve tried feels like I’m fighting with one hand and one leg tied behind my back. Without mobility skills, this class is at a huge disadvantage. It doesn’t matter how much vitality or toughness you have. In the end, the attrition class gets out attritioned by everyone else.

Condition mechanics in this game are also a serious WTF. PVE, it doesn’t matter, NPCs don’t clear em. PVP is an entirely different matter. There are so many traits, runes, and abilities that clear conditions its one of the weakest specs for PVP currently. Yeah, I’ve heard all the arguments on why I’m wrong. Simple fact of the matter is, conditions do not kill zergs. Direct damage, however, does. “But I just epidemiced that guy who had 10 stacks of bleeds on him. Now he and 4 other people are taking loads of damage!” Yeah, and his guardian and warrior friend standing next to him just cleared them all 3 seconds later. Your epidemic did nothing substantial. Lets also remember how going into downed state clears all conditions on someone. All that time spent building up enough bleeds to make epidemic worth casting. Then trying to land an epidemic before your target goes down before the cast time ends, only to have him go down at the last second. This has happened to me a lot. Wasted potential. Never have that problem on any other class I’ve played.

I’ve gotten more milage out of my other two level 80s and I’ve spent less gold, time, and effort while doing it. This class needs an overhaul to be viable.

Kyrion.2749:

Columba.9730:

That’s why most games don’t allow stealth to lose aggro. The change made great sense, and thieves are still very powerful.

BTW, I bet that mobs reacting more ‘intelligently’ to stealth is only the first step Anet took in improving the AI. Next step will be probably making Mobs actively avoid heavy AoE areas, so let’s see how the community reacts when the problem affects several other classes.
I wonder if the change will also ‘make great sense’ and Eles, rangers and other clases depending on AoE will still be ‘very powerful’

They already did this in beta. Enemies would run out of AoE circles. Made abilities like Dragon Tooth never hit their targets. ANet reverted that change by release. Will never happen again.

Halo.8976:

So much crying, huh… Well, maybe it’s better that way. It’d be kinda scary to suddenly have a bunch of good necros in wvw. So, please, by all means, make yourself thieves since they’re really useful in large scale fights.

Seeing as how the really good ones can solo groups of 3-4 people, I wouldn’t go around telling people that.

Bhawb.7408:

The highest end PvE is down to very specific things, usually a time warp mesmer and huge damage sources like warriors. That said, I don’t care much for high end PvE, and I doubt ANet is too preoccupied with making everything balanced at that level of the game. Right now, PvE has nothing to do with the challenge. Any dungeon is incredibly easy if you have teamwork and know what to do.

The reality is that people don’t like challenges. Its a fact of life that the vast majority of people are too lazy to do the difficult thing unless they are absolutely forced into it, regardless of what the outcome of that hard work might be. That is a huge portion of why the necro isn’t played often, people just plain hate difficulty. Paired with things like misconceptions and lack of burst damage, necromancers are also not as fun as other difficult classes like elementalists, and so are played less often. It has absolutely nothing to do with how competitive we are.

Necromancers aren’t difficult. The problems are much worse than that. If it was just difficulty you’d see at least some people rising to the level of other classes, but they just can’t do it due to the class mechanics.

Also, unlike most other condition professions, restacking bleeds is nothing to a necro. Most of our bleed stacking is based on auto attacking with scepter and a few very low CD abilities. Its as easy to start over again as double clicking the next mob.

Are you serious? This is just wrong. Elementalists, thieves, warriors, engineers, and rangers all have a weapon with bleed damage on auto attack. Its just as easy for them to stack bleeds as necromancers.

Theres a lot of back and forth in this thread. I’d just like to point out one thing though. There is a reason that necromancers are one of the least played classes in this game. There is a reason that necromancers are not included in any of the end game metas (speed farm groups, higher level factals, etc). Its not a “learn to play” issue as many people claim, because if it was just that simple, eventually people would have learned to play. Sad fact is, this class, along with engineers, is just not up to par with the other classes.

I have a necromancer with over 1000 hours played on it. I have 6 different exotic sets for that character. I’ve tried countless builds attempting to find something that works beyond niche builds. In PVE, other than epidemic which is this classes one trick pony, necromancers offer nothing unique. Using epidemic as an argument for why necromancers don’t suck is also an extremely poor argument. Basing a class around a single ability is bad design and poor balance. Take epidemic away or nerf it in any way and this class falls flat on its face. In PVP, I don’t even wanna talk about it. Just… no. Other classes just do everything else better.

With that said, there is always going to be a small group of people that cling to this class telling everyone else to L2P. The numbers speak for themselves though. If this class was worthy of being played, a lot more people would be playing it.

Keyce.8137:

Lastly, why Valkyrie and Berserker gear? I’m curious as to why you take a mixture of the gear when you don’t really need the extra precision, or do ’zerker stats just have better power and crit damage?

I think I can answer that.

While the point of the build is to get the guaranteed critical backstab, you still spend a lot of time out of stealth. With valks and berserkers, you can still manage to achieve a >50% crit chance (>40% from front) from behind. Things like cluster bomb, auto attack chain, Dancing Dagger, Fire rune proc, and Heartseeker rely on critical hits to do respectable damage from outside of stealth.

I’ve also noticed that Yashi does the same thing I do. We time our CnD cool down to our auto attack chain. One full auto attack chain is just long enough to drop the revealed debuff. On the final stab of your auto attack chain immediately use CnD and you’ll go right back into stealth so long as you hit something. I figure its the same reason he doesn’t use the quickness on crit trait either. While nice, that trait throws off my timing and I tend to waste initiative on immune CnDs. This auto attack chain benefits greatly from having a sizable amount of crit chance. Supplements damage between backstabs very nicely.

Before I saw Yashi’s videos I ran Soldiers armor (power/tough/vit) and berserker’s everything else to similar effect. I’ve since found that trading toughness for crit damage to be much better so I switched to valk armor like he uses.

OMNIBUS.2913:

Theifs remove only 1 condition in stealth every 3 seconds. Conditionmancers apply more than just bleed. Theres about 4 other conditions you can use to cover your bleed. If that is the theifs only form of condition removal it wont help him much.

90% of thieves run Hide in Shadows as their heal. It removes all damage over time effects. Bleeds, poison, and burning all at once regardless of any other conditions on the thief. Because of the way condition removal prioritizes, you cannot “cover” your bleeds against a thief. Heal skills that remove conditions will also always remove the condition before the heal, so poison doesn’t cause 33% less healing.

Once all of this happens, the thief then goes stealth, and if traited for it, the thief condition removal in stealth now occurs. The trait is also miss worded. It removes one condition immediately on stealth, and another one 3 seconds later if you’re still in stealth. This basically makes CnD a condition removal skill the thief can use every 3 seconds.

Because of how easy it is to remove conditions in this game, and because of the ridiculous amounts of traits that remove conditions passively, condition builds in this game are really at a severe disadvantage in PVP. This is why I will never play one in PVP.

That was an amazing fight, Yashi. I’m honestly surprised I was able to survive against you. Its a shame that Blackgate group interrupted us. I would have loved to have continued that fight. Though, I have to admit, I think you had me. All of my CDs were down at that point.

Hopefully we’ll run into each other again soon. I would love to continue where we left off.

Your videos have been very educational for me, Yashi. I saw one of your videos a few weeks ago for the first time and have been actively seeking 1vX fights since then in an attempt to step up my game. I have to admit, at first it was pretty rough, but as I did them more and more, I started winning these fights. Today I won my first 1v4 where none of them were up leveled.

Since our two servers, TC and BG, are currently matched together right now, would you be interested in some friendly duels? I find that I learn better by fighting skilled opponents than I do by watching them.

Maugetarr.6823:

Necros need a buff, like more grab/control skills. Right now they seem to have a lack of build diversity. Eles can down more than 1 person easily. Guardians may not be able to kill people in a 1 v 3, but add in a teammate and they provide more than enough support to really turn the tide on a 2v3 or a 2v4.

We’re talking about one person soloing multiple people here, which should never happen unless you’re fighting a bunch of up leveled players. Adding a teammate changes things significantly and is not what we’re discussing.

A bunker ele does not down people “easily”. It requires effort on their part. Bunker builds lack damage output.

Only do max damage after a person is below 10%? That’s just ridiculous. So an average person with 20k health at 10% would have 2,000 health. So your saying heartseekers max damage should never really exceed 2k based on a 20k health pool.

Can’t put a cooldown on a wep ability for thieves, we go off initiative. One or the other, not both.

If someone lets a thief heartseeker them to death then they should die.

Is it spammable? Yes
Is it a cheap way to fight? Yes
Is it avoidable? Yes
Can it be evaded? Yes
Can you stun, immobilize, CC? Probably Yes

I disagree with all of these points. The balancing is seriously out of whack with this class. I don’t say this as someone who fights against thieves. I say this AS a thief. I should not be able to do what we can do against multiple foes. There is a reason so many people are complaining about us.

Heartseeker was designed to be a sort of execute skill. Everyone should be familiar with what Execute did in the game that should not be mentioned. Imagine if that skill worked at 25% instead of 10%. Now imagine it being spammable. Now also imagine that every time you used it, it automatically jumped you next to your target regardless of positioning. Now imagine that ability in the hands of that games thief class. Now imagine the outcry. Would be a lot like it is in this game, don’t you think?

Heartseeker is just way to easy to spam to victory with. I’ve done it. You’ve done it. Denying it doesn’t change the fact its so ridiculously effective. It needs its damaged toned down or a cool down added. As it is right now, its OP as all hell. It simply does to much. Especially for a paltry 3 initiative.

Maugetarr.6823:

That’s not minor change, its just not as big as you want. As for being able to take on 1v3, bunker guardians, eles, and engis can do it too. As for escaping, AN said the thief is a class that’s supposed to be hard to catch.

The change did very little to stop thieves from heartseeker spamming their way to victory. Yes, it is very minor since the nerf didn’t stop thieves from continuing to use heartseeker as they did before.

Bunker guardians, eles, and engies can survive 1v3, but I don’t see them killing the entire group like we can. Especially not engineers or guardians. The ele might down one person, but they’d have to run away before they could finish them in a 1v3.

AN also said that people are supposed to have a hard time escaping from necromancers, but we all know thats not the case with any class vs necromancers. AN says a lot of things. Doesn’t make it true or right. AN has a history of not knowing what the hell they’re doing when it comes to class balance. Especially with GW1.

Thieves are still OP as ever. Before anyone rages about what I’ve just said, I main a thief. We shouldn’t be able to 1v3+ groups of people and escape from large zergs like we do.

20% damage nerf off of the top range + an adjustment from a 66-33% range to a 50-25% is not a minor change.

In the grand scheme of things, yes, that is pretty minor. Personally, I’d make the adjustment so that heartseeker would only start doing bonus damage after someone is at 25% health and do its maximum damage after a person is below 10% health rather than 25% health. That, or keep it the way it is now but put a cooldown on the ability. As it is, its way to easy to heartseeker spam your way to victory.

Blueshield.6291:

CharrGirl.7896:

Where did you get it?

I got mine in the mail after completing all 4 tiers of the “Volunteer” achievement.

Fix those signs!

I just finished all 4 tiers and got nothing in the mail. Is it on a delayed timer or something?

EDIT: Nevermind. You get the mail after you zone.

Speaking as someone who has both a thief and a necromancer at level 80, and as someone who mained a necromancer for 3 solid months, don’t waste your time leveling a necromancer. It will just end in frustration and a general feeling if you having wasted your time.

This thread has convinced me to change my charr’s fur color. I didn’t realize how wide spread this was until I made a concious effort to pay attention to this phenomenon. In the span of a week I’ve seen no less than 15 individual charr all white or white tiger.

My charr is now using the Payne’s Grey color.

Wait, are you seriously complaining about this? Wow… just wow.

Its posts like this that makes me believe that stealth classes really do attract the worst kind of MMO player. If you can’t kill it with impunity, if it can counter you in any way, and if you can’t do it while getting away scott free, then it MUST be bugged/OP/broken/underpowered.

/facepalm

Not bad fights at all. One of my guild mates (the norn thief) fought you twice in that video. Necros aren’t very common in WvW so I rarely get a chance to fight them.

I’d like to duel you later, if you’re willing, while our servers are still in the same battle group.

Sidewinder.2047:

No longer removes boons, but now states “inflicts vulnerability on your foe”, which it actually does not do (at least mine does not). I couldn’t find any mention of this change as a patch note or a bug. Any one know what’s going on here?

Still removes boons. Just tested it in WvW. Even works on stability.

OP, are you using magic find gear or just berserkers?

I’m kind of the opposite really. I can’t seem to be able to give up this class no matter how hard I try. My first level 80 was a necromancer. Deleted it because I was disgusted with the state of the class. Leveled a warrior to 80. Got bored of how one dimensional that class is. Leveled a new necromancer to 80. Played that for a while, but became frustrated at how easy conditions are removed in PVP. Went back to warrior for a bit. Remembered why I stopped playing the warrior. Leveled an engineer to 64. Got sick of spamming 1 over and over (Seriously, kitten kits. What a class design clusterkitten that is. Interesting concept, horrible implementation). Played my necromancer again for a bit. Remembered why condition builds are terrible in PVP. Leveled a thief to 80 exclusively in WvW. Got bored of how easy it was to face roll everything in PVP (C&D backstab 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 win OHGODWTFDIDTHATZERGCOMEFROMSHADOWREFUGELOLCANTFINDMEGETAWAYSCOTTFREE). Went back to necromancer. FINALLY decided to give a power build a try. Realized I totally underestimated power builds on a necro, and they aren’t as bad as I thought. In fact they’re pretty kitten awesome.

For the last month I’ve been trying various power based builds, trying to find my niche. I’ve build up 5 different sets of gear. ATM, I’m experimenting with a hybrid build that was posted on these forums. DPS is downright amazing in PVE, and a hell of a lot of fun being able to condition spam and burst at the same time. However, the build suffers from the same problem as condition builds do in PVP.

Now if only the class balance philosophy ANet envisioned for necromancers was actually in effect in this game.

Isslair.4908:

Kravick.4906:

I’ll get maybe 10 feet before the thief is on top of me again, with the thief back at nearly full health.

If the thief is at full health, so are you. I can’t see the problem. Unless you decided to kill some mobs while he is healing.

And no I don’t play thief. But players who prefer to blame the game instead of changing their playstyle really annoy me.

I hate repeating myself. People who selectively ignore whats already been said really annoy me.

I can survive the initial burst easily enough thanks to death shroud and other assorted cool downs, but I cannot outlast thieves. They’ll just reset the fight and come back to finish me off once they’ve forced me to use up everything I have just staying alive. Like clockwork, as soon as I start getting the upper hand, they disappear, heal to full, and come right back. Without those cool downs and my death shroud depleted, I get utterly destroyed even in full soldiers gear. So much for “trouble getting away from” and “attrition”.

TLDR: Cool downs and depleted resources. Initiative is a constantly renewing resource that allows abilities to be spammed over and over.

Isslair.4908:

Kravick.4906:

They’ll just reset the fight and come back to finish me off once they’ve forced me to use up everything I have just staying alive.

So you basically won the fight. Thief runs away. And you, knowing that he will return still decide to stay and wait for him and give him another advantage?
Why not run to your zerg, to the keep. simply run away. That’s clearly not a thief fault.

As to your second point of being strong in WvW. I’ve done my monthly (50 kills) on my underleveled warrior and died like two times due to culling issues.

Does it mean warrior is OP? No. Does it mean I have great skill? No. It means that average WvW player is really bad. In some cases I felt like I was fighting a mob, same running around in circles just out of reach. And that’s what thieves are made for, to punish loners and bad players.

You clearly don’t know your class very well. The thief backs off with the full intention of resuming the fight merely a few seconds later. There is no “running”. There was no “winning” the fight, because its not over yet. Just because a thief goes stealth doesn’t mean hes running away. I’ll get maybe 10 feet before the thief is on top of me again, with the thief back at nearly full health.

TheUndefined.1720:

Grr! I didn’t want to continue to respond to this thread since I felt I had already made my point… but I have a very deep love for Necro’s (I could never truly master them in GW1, but absolutely adored their whole tone since then!), and you brought up Necro.. so I have to comment!

Buff Necromancers!!! This class has so much potential. Every time I try to play Necro in general I just faceplant, same with engineer. These two classes are the most underpowered imo.

So really… the solution here isn’t nerf nerf nerf, instead we should be calling for buuuuffs!

Ok sorry.. I’m done now XD

Now that we can agree on. The current class philosophy ANet has for necromancers does not currently match the class as it is right now.

Isslair.4908:

All I can see on the forums is people complaining on how you can’t kill a thief when he is fleeing from you.

Think about it. Can you really call OP a class that runs away from you?

Thieves are only dangerous to glass cannons – and they are designed to counter them ya know.

If you have some survaivability you can outlast thief easily. Hence thieves escaping with stealth.

I don’t see a problem here.

Until they turn around, and face plant someone. The problem is, thieves don’t have any cool downs on their weapon skills save for initiative. The running away thing is only to build initiative back up, which takes very little time. Meanwhile, every other class is bound by some pretty long cool downs on their abilities.

I main a necromancer. The supposed “attrition (lol)” class. The class that people have “a hard time running away from (more lol)”. You cannot attrition a thief. You cannot CATCH a thief, unless the thief is bad. Thieves do attrition better, AND combine it with insane burst damage. Thieves can catch and finish people off WAY better.. You know what kind of gear I use on my necromancer? Soldiers. Power, vitality, toughness. Its been coined the Juggermancer build on the necro forums. Go look it up. Its about as tanky as a necro can get. I can still get burst down quite easily. I can survive the initial burst easily enough thanks to death shroud and other assorted cool downs, but I cannot outlast thieves. They’ll just reset the fight and come back to finish me off once they’ve forced me to use up everything I have just staying alive. Like clockwork, as soon as I start getting the upper hand, they disappear, heal to full, and come right back. Without those cool downs and my death shroud depleted, I get utterly destroyed even in full soldiers gear. So much for “trouble getting away from” and “attrition”.

Conditions do not stick to thieves, or anyone else for that matter, so don’t bother bringing that up. I learned a long time ago that you don’t PVP with condition builds. Conditions never stay on long enough to mean anything.

Typical thief fight goes like this:

“Find a target, alternate C&D and backstab until 50% HP. Spam 2. If you lose at least 50% HP before they do, just Shadow Refuge and reset the fight. While your opponent blew all his cool downs just trying to prevent you from bursting him down in a matter of seconds, all you’ve used is 1 cool down. Shadow Refuge. Now that you’ve reset the fight, and healed back to full, you can just go back in and mop up. Your opponents cool downs are all used. You have nothing to worry about unless there happens to be a zerg hiding behind that rock. You did check your surroundings first, right?”

This is how all of my fights went while playing my thief. I rarely died. When I did, it was because I screwed up, and I paid for it. There is very, very, VERY little risk when playing a thief. Glass cannon or not, you’d have to be completely reckless to get yourself killed. I leveled to 10 in PVE and then exclusively in WvW there after, all the way to 80. Thieves, even down leveled, are insane. Thieves become the true “death incarnate” once they hit 80 and get exotic gear. I stopped playing my thief because it provided no challenge. Pretty much everyone was fodder. Well, except dagger/dagger elementalists. They’re the only class, besides other thieves of course, that can actually get away from a thief if the fight isn’t going their way.

TheUndefined.1720:

Honestly, we could argue our points for years without a resolve. I guess at the end of the day we’re all going to hold our opinions, and stay very stubborn in consequence to our experiences.

I could keep arguing against the last two posts, but really I’d just like to suggest to anyone that is having trouble against killing a thief; please play the class for a short time.

I used to think Guardians were ridiculously OP in PvE (still kinda do lol), then I played them. Anyone that can suffer that boring gameplay kinda deserves to smash their face at the keyboard (just teasing ;P)

It’s amazing what will happen if we all tried to walk in each other’s shoes for a short time.

Anyhow, thanks for indulging a carebear in this conversation for so long!

I have an 80 thief. They’re ridiculous. I’m not even joking when I tell you that I’ve killed people by just pressing 2 on my keyboard. Yeah, its bad, and requires no skill, but its easy to kill a lot of people by doing it. There isn’t any other class in the game I’ve been able to do that with.

Even knowing how thieves work, I still have trouble against them. The fact that they can disengage at will, and heal to full while in stealth, without the use of their healing skill, should be evidence enough. Throw in their healing skill, that ALSO turns them invisible, and stacks with all the OTHER invisible abilities… well, kitten. I know the heal in stealth is a trait, but every thief is running it because of how powerful it is. The only way a thief dies is because they screwed up in a bad way. Not because of any one particular class or ability.

Of course people who play thieves as their main are going to defend it. It was the same way in WoW. Yet in every single game with high burst/invisibility classes this is always, ALWAYS a hotly debated topic. It never ceases to amaze me how anyone can call this combination anything but a steaming pile of poop in regards to balance. I would not call a high burst class with the ability to go invisible at will “balance” in any game, though.

TheUndefined.1720:

I understand this is a thief’s discussion in regards to stealth, and honestly I feel like it should be in the thief sub-forum.

However, I’m curious as to why I see so many posts regarding thieves. Do people truly have so much trouble with thieves in PvP to warrant all this attention? If so, shouldn’t those claiming over-powered here, and nerf there keep it focused towards PvP play?

Maybe I’m a bad thief (which is entirely possible), but in PvE my HP gets eaten away extremely often. I also like to think I run a very balanced vitality build too.

The main mechanic I see used in dungeons that just destroy players is condition damage. I mean… players will drop if they get more than 1 debuff on them. So often times I feel there is a very unfair lean towards Guardians, since they have such a huge amount of condition removal. Yet, as frustrated as this makes me, since I absolutely detest playing a guardian, and personally find condition removal somewhat lacking on other job classes in comparison; I accept that mechanic. Guardians are known for their party support, so should they not shine in that aspect?

Thieves are known for their mobility in this game. That’s their defense. Mobility is the pure lifeline of a thief. This game has proven stealth, and mobility go hand in hand. They balance this with the very low HP pool of a thief.

So every time I see discussion like this, really what I read is ‘nerf the defense of thief.’ I definitely feel there needs to be balance, but really should we not focus our discussion to the real problem here, PvP?

Let me put it to you this way. Because of stealth, thieves out attrition the “attrition class”.

I will never understand MMO developers and the insistence of adding a class that can stealth/become invisible at will and have extreme high burst damage at the same time. Rogues, and every other MMO after WoW that copied that bullkitten, has always been one of the most complained about topics.

You cannot balance a class that can go invisible at will and have the ability to take out any target with impunity.

Orion the Cursed.1206:

Is it me or do necros only have 1 underwater Elite Skill? The fact that wells dont work underwater doesn’t help me at all.

Not whining, just wondering what are my options for underwater elites as a human necro? My necro is my 4th lv 80 avatar.

Thieves can’t use anything but basilisk poison underwater as well. Warriors can use 2 of their elites, but the war banner is impractical because it requires solid ground to place it. So if you’re above it, you won’t get any benefit. Realistically the only elite warriors can use and still get a benefit from is Signet of Rage.

Not sure about other classes.

This build is great in PVE. In PVP, its extremely squishy. There would need to be some modifications, namely adding toughness, in order to use this build in PVP.

I don’t like reanimator for a couple of reasons. Most have to do with minions themselves being broken. First and foremost, when I spec into the death tree, its for defense, not minions. Minions as it stands are broken beyond use. Half the time they don’t even work, just standing around while a fight is going on. They don’t regenerate health, which combined with the long recast timer, means that when they inevitably die you can’t bring them back for a long time. Every time I need to go in water, they despawn, leaving you without the minions you’ve traited for.

On certain occasions, the jagged horror will keep you in combat, even after its death. You can still see numbers flying off its dead corpse, which I am to assume is the source of this bug. Only when the corpse despawns, and the damage numbers stop flying off the corpse, do you actually come out of combat.

There are many instances where having a pet is detrimental to your party. Giganticus Lupicus will spawn grubs off the jagged horrors. The “Lightning Ramp” in the Rata Sum fractal. You can dodge the lightning sliding down the ramp easily enough, but if it hits your jagged horror, which can’t dodge the lightning, it will not only knock you back, but other party members as well. Rangers have this problem as well with their pets. During the Jade Maw fight, jagged horrors often get targeted by the green laser beam, prolonging the fight. Even while they’re dead they can still be targeted. Again, rangers have this problem too.

The minion itself is weak. Now if you could get multiple to spawn instead of just one (off multiple enemy deaths of course), maybe I could see the value in them. As it is right now, having only one of them is meaningless. They do next to no damage and that does not justify the frustration you have to put up with just to get certain traits in the death tree (greater marks for example).

They don’t last long enough. Even with the buff to their duration, they never last long enough to do anything useful.

They can rally downed players. This problem still hasn’t been fixed 100%, and I don’t know how to reproduce it. Sometimes they rally, sometimes they don’t. I don’t know whats causing it, but I have personally had it happen to me more than once. No, nothing else was around for them to rally off of. Nobody else was around to res them. It wasn’t a warrior using Vengeance. The only thing that happened is they killed my jagged horror with their downed skills.

This is why this is happening: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/support/bugs/Cannot-Dye-Coat-Removing-crashes-game/first#post1084614

TLDR: This has been a bug since beta. This bug only affects transmuted armor. You cannot use the default colors of the visible armor set (remove dye) or it reverts to the default colors (remove dye of that item) of the armor that was transmuted (stats) into your visible armor. If you unequip the item while the reverted colors are showing, your game will crash.

I asked this in the other thread. Did you transmute your armor?

Darkheart.7436:

Whenever I use black dye, it changes the dye color but then when I exit the hero screen it turns into “dye remover” on my hero.

Anyone else have this issue?

I can’t find anything related to this happening?

Is the item you’re dying transmuted?

Because Chrystin Cox, Monetization Producer, person in charge of the gem store, and former employee of Nexon, made it that way. When Nexon acquired 15% of NCSofts stock and became a majority share holder, they put Mrs. Cox in charge of the GW2 gem store to protect their investment.

A couple weeks later, certain aspects of the game start changing, and not for the better. Mrs. Cox first announcement was to change the way dyes worked. They would no longer be unlocked across all characters on your account, but rather on individual characters. Furthermore, dyes were now soulbound. Unidentified dyes were still tradeable, but once you identified a dye, the dye was soulbound. At the exact same time this announcement was made, dye packs showed up in the gem store.

There was a massive backlash, and eventually Mrs. Cox caved in and compromised and allowed unidentified dyes to be tradeable. Later ANet “accidentally” increased the drop rate of unidentified dyes in an attempt to justify nerfing the drop rate to even lower than what it used to be.

Does anyone even buy dye packs? I’m curious as to whether this strategy worked or if its just making the game that much more unappealing.

Ramiah.5648:

I actually wasn’t aware Necromancers could go power and deal straight DPS. Everyone says Condition Damage is the only viable damage. That’s fun to hear.

Thats a huge misconception about this class. I still have people from my guild mistake me for condition damage when we group up. Power necros are just as viable as condition spec.

Gluttony.2017:

They are probably going to nerf wells and staff(and all other aoe) because thiefs are complaining that they cant stealth res or stealth stomp when playing against competent players. But hey, mention that stealth is op and you get shouted down and told to l2p lol. all hail JS so that we one day master death shroud and show all those noobs how to properly play the game.

I know this is meant to be sarcastic, but I can’t help think that this is actually whats happening. I kid you not, the biggest complaint thieves have in my guild is the fact they can get hit by AoE and people spamming their auto attack while they’re stealthed.

Zenith.7301:

Huh? Since when is Corrupt Boon not used? I would think it to be the one utility skill that every necro is required to have considering the current potency of boon spam in the game.

The guy is full of kitten. Going by what he has said so far on these forums, its questionable if he has ever set foot in WvW or SPvP at all. Experience trumps theorycrafting, and thus far thats all hes even willing to show us. The “my computer can’t handle it” excuse is typical for this type of personality as well.

I also agree with the Corrupt Boon statement. What necromancer doesn’t have Corrupt Boon by default in a utility slot in PVP? This brings to question the validity of anything he has to say at this point.

A thief that runs from a point, camp, dolyak, or gate has lost. You, as a defender, have won. If you want to melt individual noobs in a flash of blood and steel, you’re playing the wrong class. Or at least the wrong build.

Again, not having all the facts. Remember when the developers said we, as the necro class, are supposed to be the class people have a hard time running away from? Draw your own conclusions from that statement. Name one class that can’t disengage and run away from us at will. Thieves certainly have the single target burst that the developers envisioned. Wheres the necros ability to chase people down?

You have multiple people telling you how it actually is, yet you still cling to raw numbers like that actually means anything in the face of actual experience. Your numbers are not telling you the whole truth, nor are they showing you the bigger picture, and if you had actually been in WvW or SPvP you wouldn’t be saying any of this useless stuff.

Necromancers aren’t gimped by any means, but thieves put down bunker builds like nobodies business.

Zenith.7301:

1800 toughness tough/prec/condi damage amulet necro, and a thief with basilisk venom combo can still take 60% my health out in 2-3 seconds.

Toughness doesn’t do kitten. Dragging out a fight against a thief does nothing because with their current traits they can easily regenerate their inititative for another high damage sequence much faster than your wimpy skills recharge.

With stealth, they remove conditions constantly, plus regenning health, plus regenning initiative. And you know what? Poison doesn’t matter at all because their heal skill removes it. Don’t you love when a condition your class is balanced around as an “attrition” class is made obsolete by some classes’s baseline heal?

Every class that has a condition removal on heal does this. You’re right. It is a bullkitten mechanic.

KirinDave.6451:

Kravick.4906:

KirinDave.6451:

The only time I’ve had this seem to happen was with culling issues: a culled thief’s damage can render unreliably and this can give the appearance of a much bigger burst because they’ve actually had longer to work on you than you realized.

Yeah you’re not aware of whats actually happening. I figured as much.

I know how to crunch the numbers. Shall we? Before we begin, let’s have you set the parameters:

1. How much toughness do you have with 30k vitality?
2. How long is the burst? In seconds. There is a big difference between what a thief can do in 4 seconds vs what a thief can do in 1. In 3-4 seconds, 30k of damage is not only possible, it’s easy (and not just for thief). In 1s, you have 1 mug, 1 C&D, 1 AA double attack or maybe 1 heartseeker and possibly an air proc? Under assassin’s signet. The other 3 attacks need to put you below 50% before heartseeker makes sense to use.
3. Should we ignore all necromancer traits?

I’ll even make a repeatable program you can run to plug different numbers in. The raw data is easy to find. And example builds are not exactly trade secrets.

And I’m able to read people. You, my friend, are an open book. You hide behind theorycrafting because you have limited or no actual experience in PVP. I’ve run the Juggermancer build. Its pure defense. Vitality and toughness as high as you can get it. Talking 2k+ in both here. I’ve been destroyed by burst thieves in a matter of seconds using that build when caught unware. If I see them coming, I usually come out on top, but its not a long and drawn out affair by any means. The fight is usually over rather quickly. However, when I start winning, they just run away and reset the fight. I can never actually kill them. That is not a victory. That is a stalemate. The object is to win, not draw. We’re supposed to be the class that everyone has a hard time running from, remember? This isn’t the case and even you have to admit that much.

You cannot quantify an experience. Theres a hell of a lot more to these things than just numbers and data. I’m sorry, but you know nothing of whats actually happening. Your programs mean nothing to me, or anyone else, for that matter. As shown in other threads you’ve posted in, you need to get your head out of the numbers and play the game like the rest of us are. Theorycrafting and reality are two completely different things.

Aenesthesia.1697:

Kravick.4906:

What necromancers really have a hard time at is mobility. Mobility is king when it comes to survival.

What do you mean? A scepter necromancer is as mobile as anything else in this game! the only problem is using wells while moving (because the enemy is also on the move)

Mobility, as in abilities that teleport, leap, shadow step, charge abilities, backwards movement abilities, etc. Ride the Lightning, Savage Leap, Bladetrail, Burning Speed, Earthshaker, Death Blossom, Heartseeker, Bulls Charge, Leap of Faith, Rush, Swoop, etc. Most, but not all, of these abilities also have a hidden evade mechanic not tied to endurance. They also allow the player to travel great distances avoiding combat, or closing the gap, if necessary. All we have is the wurm shadow step, which has a cast time. The wurm cannot be used as a gap closer because of this cast time.

Necromancers have no mobility that counts.

Not only that, but your guardian is capable of hitting up to THREE targets with his weapon at that damage.

ANet, why is axe auto attack so bad? Why did you feel you had to nerf it so badly?

Axe auto attack is bad. Very bad. If you want to do damage as a power necro, use dagger main hand. The only reason anyone would use axe is for the #2 ability as a finisher or the #3 ability at the start of a fight when you have multiple opponents (the retaliation stacks its duration per target hit). Never stay in axe long enough to use its auto attack. Its extremely bad.

I really don’t understand how people can say necromancers should only be played for their condition damage. Necromancers are actually not that good at stacking bleeds, which is the primary source of condition damage. The only thing that we can do condition wise that other classes cannot is transfer and spread conditions from one object to another. My warrior, thief, ranger and engineer do condition stacking way better than my necromancer. As a result, they do far more condition based damage. What they can’t do is transfer those conditions to another target. Thats where necromancers shine.

Meanwhile, I don’t have any problem ripping groups of mobs apart in PVE and beating people in PVP as a power based necromancer. What necromancers really have a hard time at is mobility. Mobility is king when it comes to survival. Its how thieves can go pure glass cannon and still survive so easily.