Guild Wars 2

This kinda bothers me. I’ve been asking for a Contagion like ability for the necromancer for ages now and the first I see of this sort of skill is with the new profession. Its cool, but the necromancer should really have this ability.

http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Contagion

A link to one of the coolest skills in GW1 that was extremely under used after suicide bomber was nerfed.

Thagyr.4136:

I’m sure that a toy pistol would be considered ‘legendary’ due to its actual lethal uses despite its appearance, but it doesn’t make an impressive image. It looks more like a holiday item or something awarded from birthdays.

I want a pistol that shoots freakin lazer beams. Not streamers and bubbles

I’m with you on that. I would like to see one that has a style that was inspired by those old sci-fi films. With glowing light up parts that don’t do anything and makes pew pew sounds.

Actually we have another weakness you aren’t taking into account. And its the major reason why I’ve been a major advocate for the necromancer being given easy access to stability. And that weakness is the lack of evasion, block and invulnerability. Now, I know we have the ability to dodge like any other profession, but be don’t have the ability to recover that bar quite as easily as other professions without sacrificing quite a bit to do so. And sigil of energy has been quite good to me. So, because we are expected to take the brunt of most attacks it only makes sense that we also should expect easy access to stability. You could argue that we have blind, but the guardian has just as much access to blind as we do and they get stability, blocks and invulnerability. So, I see no reason for the us having such low and short access to stability. Yeah, it does need to be buffed. All but our elite skill’s stability needs to be buffed. And its not like we have a large number of cover boons either, so removing it shouldn’t be terribly difficult for most professions.

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

The main problem is that changing life force from fueling death shroud to anything else requires a massive infusion of traits and skills for defense. More than I am willing to bet any specialization will deliver.

Don’t count it out yet. And besides, have a bit of fun and speculate.

With the expansion coming out we know that the profession mechanics are going to change. Although as time goes on I’m thinking that the change isn’t going to be as drastic as I’ve previously speculated. Such as I’ve speculated that it could be possible that the mesmer could lose their clones for the chronomancer’s mechanic. Now I still think that’s possible I don’t think it likely.

So I’m here going to ask you guys a question. Its been suggested by me and others before, asking for more unique ways to use life force besides just death shroud. And a few ideas have been floating around in the past for exactly what it could be used for. So I’d like to know what you guys think, if we lost death shroud for our specialization but kept life force, what would you think it would be used for in the coming expansion and what could it be used for in future expansions?

I’ll go ahead and start. A few ideas come to mind. The first idea is having death shroud being replaced by 4 rather short rechargeable f1-f4 skills that require either a payment in life force to activate or if you don’t have enough life force, actual life to activate. Scaling from low payment to much higher payment, as much as 50% of your life force.

Another idea I had was using it was summoning. We have the generic summoning with minions. But i think its possible to use this life force from fallen foes to summon more spammable minions or use it to heal them or allies.

These are just some ideas that have been rolling around in my head. Using it with utility as well was a possibility as well. And I wonder what you guys think.

Actually on a different note, I’d like to see a weapon that changes color. Not like bifrost. Starting the fight it should have a bright, glowing aura and as the fight progresses and your health goes down it should become darker with maybe a red hue. The weapon could change color as well. Give it a unique sigil that deals extra damage when below 50% health. A real nod to how some inscriptions worked in GW1.

a pistol like this http://lostrack.co.uk/images/pic_laser_gun.JPG

I got sad about the condi necromancer after the confusion buff. It just really showed me how weak the DPS of a condi necromancer really is. I made a dire/rabid mesmer and it can burn down foes far quicker then my sinister necromancer.

ronpierce.2760:

Thanks, Lily. I don’t mind disagreement, its the only way to see new perspectives. In fact, my own has changed just here with the “lighter” defense alternative that I was discussing earlier, and among other things. I think it really just comes down to perspectives and preferences, which is totally fine, they’ll never align 100%.

Unfortunately, I take a slightly “easier” or cop-out way of handling the situation (which I personally still would be a completely fair and honest change) instead of a huge rehaul alternative, simply because I realize that resources are limited as is and MM is only a single build, but secondly, it’s not a very popular class to play and it’s not a very favored enemy in battle (due to it having AI), and really no way you handle this will that likely change. But either way, it was great to have you in the discussion!

Bhawb.7408:

There is nothing wrong with disagreeing. It has sparked far more discussion about this topic than ever would happen if everyone just agreed, and it gives ANet far more feedback to work with. The offer to come on the podcast always stands, we should be starting back up once the expansion’s release date and Necromancer changes are a bit more formalized, and of course I always enjoy talking in game, where things end up being a bit more friendly and less argumentative.

At the end of the day, a few pages of disagreement helps out everyone far more than if it didn’t exist in the first place.

Yep yep. I’ll be sure to work on getting over my speaking phobia. its something I struggle with and I’m too intimidated to even talk with my guild at the moment so that’s got to be first.

Also, we are going to be getting a lot of major changes with the expansion as well. Plus I’ve heard about Anet hiring someone to help with their AI to improve PvE encounters mostly, but Minions fall in the AI problems. And Minions aren’t the only ones who suffer this problem. Who knows, fixing the AI might go much further then any of us think. I’m anticipating changes for the basic necromancer as well as the necromancer specialization for the expansion. Until the expansion comes out, discussion on balancing old skills internally will be limited thanks to the addition of close to 10 new professions.

I look forward to talking with you guys in the future. I have some really cool ideas floating around in my head. One of which involves summoning as a whole. Not just for Necromancer as it isn’t really a viable strategy in PvE and I’d like to see it shine there for not just necromancer, but Guardians, engineers and other professions as well.

Over the years, Bawb. We’ve talked back and forth quite a bit. You’ve offered to have me on your podcast. Out of all that time we haven’t agreed on much. I think SoV being one of the only things we have. So I’m just going to agree to disagree with you. I still very much respect your opinion and I hope you feel the same way.

I hope we actually get to talk more on the subject of the necromancer. Perhaps in game so its not so impersonal. Over all, I do really like your guys’s post and despite my minor disagreement on part of it, its over all a great read. You guys did put a lot of thought into this and I respect that.

Tron.3471:

So i just watched it several times and the flash that looks like selfless daring actually appears to be a Human Guardian using MI to port to the asura. The asura is clearly wielding a longbow as well. The flash occurs and the human appears, which wasn’t previously there. And the human is unfortunately wielding a greatsword….. I took a snapshot of it.

Here is a shot while the asura is dodging, notice no human.
http://imgur.com/AKngIzW

Near the end of the dodge, the human guardian appears to port in.
http://imgur.com/sk9Vc3l

So I think you’re right and I’m wrong in this instance. Darn that’s confusing video editing. so we are back to square one then. hehe..

Well, looking through the trailer I noticed an asura guardian fighting a dragon. Its only a brief second but you can know it was a guardian because it had the trait Selfless Daring, which heals at the end of the roll. I recognized it and I looked at the trailer to see what weapon the guardian was using. It was non other then a pearl stinger. Aka, longbow.

Bhawb.7408:

Also worth mentioning, we already have active defense for minions with Transfusion. Even with that, I’ve had minions die while being healed by a cleric build.

healing is garbage in this game and consider the fact that giving minions a way to take little or not damage, even if it would be the same amount as transfusion it would be far far better. Proactive vs reactive. Proactive will always win out. Which is what I was suggesting.

Bhawb.7408:

Dhuumfire was different. People wanted burning, not nearly permanent burning and 4 different damaging conditions all on an auto attack. Current Dhuumfire isn’t an issue at all, and it is still burning, because burning wasn’t the issue, the implementation was.

We’re not giving generic solutions though. We are giving very specific ones that Anet can’t screw up the implementation of unless they change what we have said to do. And our specific changes are shown in game right at this very moment to work. Passive HP/armor have already shown themselves not to work, and active defenses simply do the same thing that HP/armor boosts do, but require timing to pull off.

And I’ve seen how passive immunities in other games dramatically hinder gameplay. Even in GW1 and GW2. And requiring timing to offset an intentional weakness is a GOOD THING! And condi still needs quite a bit of work. Its not at all at where it needs to be. Most of your guys’s solutions are great. I agree with them. Your defensive solutions are not. These will lead to bad design. Not might, not could, will.

I’d be in favor of more cosmetic options. Such as race specific minion skins. Like golems for asura or fungi for sylvari. Maybe zombie animals for Norn even. It could be really cool but I don’t see it happening unfortunately.

ronpierce.2760:

Sorry, lots of walls of text here, easy to miss or forget points. Part of discussion. You think I havebt had to repeat myself here? Either way, point stands, it would require SUBSTANTIAL redesign in order to even make it enough to make up for how extreme their weakness is to Aoe, especially condies.

never said it wouldn’t. Your suggestions would as well. But here is the thing. I’d rather it be done the hard way and be done right then have dozens of nerfs later. Did we all forget what happened with dhuumfire already? Everybody was calling out for burning and I was one of the few people who was like “Nope, not a good idea we should improve condi in other ways” and no one listened to me then. I’m getting a strong sense of deja vu here.

ronpierce.2760:

Are you suggesting adding new abilities? Because nothing we have currently comes close to helping them with a burning field or mass entanglement or anything else of the like that annihilates minions. As for traits, we’re already bloated enough…

Read my posts. Seriously, I’ve suggested potential traits that adjust weapon skills and improve death shroud to help. I don’t want to keep repeating myself.

In another note, I have been saying for years that necromancer needs greater support options anyway and a support weapon, but people fight me on that too.

Cogbyrn.7283:

Haha, I was going to post about WD pet builds, because I remembered them being absolutely insane in RoS.

Anywho, @Lily: how do you suggest they give you “micromanage” abilities with pets in a game like GW2 with its controls/interface? All you really have to work with right now is the active. The best they could do, in my opinion, is give F2 – F4 abilities for Necros, and when you raise a minion via utility (not healing or elite), it changes your F2 – F4 to be pet defensives. That leaves out the Healing and Elite abilities though, which doesn’t seem “fair”.

I’m not sure how else they can let you micromanage pet with the current control scheme without introducing entirely new controls just for a subset of utilities (which I guarantee they don’t want to do).

weapon skills and death shroud. Honestly, with GW2’s combat system it makes the solution easier then in GW1.

ronpierce.2760:

Without significant changes, no amount of “active” play is going to save minions from being AOEd down in the current state of the game, not just on the necromancers end, but how other classes are built as well. We’d need some unusually potent active play to keep pets from being killed in single burning fields, a few Crits of a hammer warrior, a standard rotation of Ele, etc. there’s nothing fundamentaly wrong with passive defenses for pets, especially if an entire build is based around their survival. More than anything, lack of Aoe protection feels like a lack of planning on the devs part from the beginning. Like I said, in many games pets have substantial AOE protection (way more than I’m asking for here) to make up for AI incompetencies.

Allowing pets to survive purely on the will of the necromancer is a long shot away as it stands, in game game where practically everything cleaves or is AoE. Pets absolutely have to be able to survive though when a build is literally 50+% their pets. Like I said, every trait goes into minions, we have horrible defenses, and without traits are damage and deathshroud is rather insignificant, so let’s dying in a single attack is far beyond a counter at this point.

I’m willing to hear you out though on “active play” that’s going to keep pets alive against a single Aoe class though, that will also keep them alive in a midfight where they basically go in and get vaporized.

You should really read my posts because I mentioned how death shroud isn’t being used with minions. I said that we could have traits the allow death shroud to help minions as well as something that could help them out through weapons. You seem to think its not possible, but using the very system we have know its the best way of going about it. The advantage of GW2 over GW1 is that we do have a ground targeting system. We don’t need to have a special UI like in GW1. I’ve experimented with using a few wells with minions with minimal success. It did show a few things that it had some potential to work, though the wells were not enough. The best way to get active play is to allow it through weapons and death shroud. You can have half the bar for minions and a few other skills to support said minions.

I was actually going to make a large comprehensive suggestion involving all summons(excluding clones) in the game, not just minions. Including familiars, turrets, spirit weapons, spirits and other miscellaneous summoned creatures. But it was going to be an updated ritualist suggestion. With the announcement of the Revenant and the specialization system I’ve been waiting and re-adapting my skill ideas to further fit the necromancer’s theme. But I don’t want to make the suggestion until after we get more information because they might include the active play that I’m suggesting with the expansion.

ronpierce.2760:

I’m not sure if you realize it or not, but lower HP but crit/condi immunity does more for everyone involved. Pets could still be killed by more builds (Power builds entirely) and most condition builds still do some form of power damage. The difference being pets wouldn’t be getting AOEd down. They’d still die in team fights, just slower, and they wouldn’t be instantly gibbed in 1v1 but still able to die.

Your alternative for “Just give them more health” means if you buff them enough to be good in team fights (just based on HP) no one would be able to realistically kill them in 1v1 situations ever. More builds could handle pets with our method over yours, and it actually fixes the AOE issues rather than just adjusting the amount of AOE needed to basically do the same thing, wipe them all out.

With out method, power and zerkers would kill them at a similar rate, but with lower HP that rate would be sufficient enough that critting wouldn’t be necessary, and in fact would be overkill. Conditions, well I provided a separate alternative to that, but you seem so strangely against defenses against conditions, even if its partial (As if hp and toughness isn’t partial defenses against power?).

I never EVER said “Just give them more health” that is actually a straw man of my argument and I’d appreciate it if you didn’t misrepresent my position. Health is a passive base line to the suggestion. Not the bulk of their defense. The bulk of defense would come from the necromancer’s Active play, not passive. you’ve been saying reduce condi duration, crit immunity or the damage condi immunity. Which is very passive in terms of play. I’m talking about more active. A strict health and armor upgrade doesn’t make them unkillable to aoe. Or hard to kill to aoe. The defense of your minions should be on you. it should be primarily active, not passive.

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

Lily.1935:

It really isn’t that different. Especially Diablo III. They way GW2 minions and D3 minions function is almost identical. The biggest difference is that D3 minions have a far higher disposability but are still terrible. And we do actually weaken ourselves to bring minions. its not as drastic as GW1 though. But we do do it.

Have you seen Witch Doctor pet builds? They shred through everything and only rarely lose a pet to damage. Heck, the Witch Doctor is squishier than his pets.

Are they disposable? Yes, but I can’t recall the last time I lost one to damage and not timed lifespan.

Of course, if you don’t have the OP Starmetal Kukri, I can see how you come to this opinion. Tell you what, if you want to, I can stream how it works sometime.

yeah, I never got that weapon. So using pets wasn’t so great most the time when I was playing. You might know more then I do in that regard.

Bhawb.7408:

I don’t understand how you can say crit/condi immunity is passive, but HP and armor are not. More HP/armor does not in any way promote more active play, all it does is shift the “can I kill minions or not”, but does so in a way that scales very poorly from a single target->AoE scenario.

Armor and health can more easily be adjusted as time goes on for balance then a flat crit immunity and condi immunity can. Its foresight. Thats why I can say it.

Bhawb.7408:

The problem is you very quickly bring minions out of range of people without massive amounts of AoE to be able to ever kill. Essentially you simply go from condition players having trouble killing them to anyone with single target having trouble. There is no system that will be equal for everyone, where every player will be more or less equally able to kill minions, unless Anet decides to add in a way to reduce damage (both direct and condi) from AoE.

You are playing a different game then your opponent. You should very well know this as a minion master yourself. Your end game is extraordinarily different then your opponents and your weaknesses to be exploited should be far different then theirs would be. Putting more active play in protecting the minions puts their survival and yours far more in your hands then relying on the passive traits which make them extremely hard to kill. You should need to be able to micromanage your forces and poor management should be punished while great management should be rewarded. With such a game changing passive your remove a mega ton of the micromanagement required. There is too little micromanagement with minions as is and the micromanagement we do have isn’t rewarding enough.

Bhawb.7408:

Flesh of the Master is already required for minions, and our proposal is that Flesh of the Master gives you a defensive system that already exists baseline.

Still sounds like a problem to me.

Bhawb.7408:

I’m aware of how much they draw. We’ve said before that Fetid would have to change, which is fine because it is currently not worth taking. And we would be giving minions those traits. Flesh of the Master currently gives 50% HP to a minion, are you trying to say that it is also OP because 50% extra player health would be insane? Training of the Master gives 25% extra damage, also a trait that would be entirely OP as even a grandmaster trait for any profession. Our one Master tier trait is something turrets get for free.

Turrets are not minions. We should remember this. And we can’t use turrets as a base line to balance minions. This is actually a false comparison. I don’t know were you got 50% extra health being OP(over powered from. We are talking about immunity to critical and either immunity to conditions or partial immunity. Which is something that would be way too powerful at master tier. And I was using the term OP to mean Original poster. I hope that cleared it up for you.

Edit: I was using OP to mean original poster when replying to Shadelang.3012

Bhawb.7408:

As for the rest, I have no issue looking at how other games do things. But when you bring up GW1, Diablo, WoW, or other games like them, it needs mentioning that their version of “MM” is extremely different than ours. We don’t have mana to manage, corpses to gate power, large AoE buffs, we don’t weaken ourselves, minions can’t body block or taunt. There is also completely different single target vs AoE mechanics, GW2 has 5 target AoE limit and no AoE reduction, the opposite of most games. Also GW1 is one of the only other games I have played with anything close to what I’d call balanced PvP, and the differences in PvP between GW2 and the rest are massive.

Just about the only similarity is that we are both builds that have some reliance on summoning creatures to fight. Now, could we in the future have builds that more closely resemble those of GW1 or others? Sure, but that is beyond our scope, it would require new weapons, traits, and minion skills.

It really isn’t that different. Especially Diablo III. They way GW2 minions and D3 minions function is almost identical. The biggest difference is that D3 minions have a far higher disposability but are still terrible. And we do actually weaken ourselves to bring minions. its not as drastic as GW1 though. But we do do it.

ronpierce.2760:

snip

Actually I did say that I think the minions need a health and armor buff anyway without the addition of a trait. Part of the reason I mentioned the health and armor of minions in GW1 was to compare them to GW2 minions in that just how frail they were. I’m not against the idea of passive buffs I’m against the idea of passive play. Which most of your suggestion doesn’t promote that, don’t get me wrong on that. That particular suggestion does, however.

Also, if we were to say, increase the minion’s health by 50% just as a passive buff without Flesh of the Master then have that 50% added to it that does something very similar for the minions that your -50% condition duration suggestion does. Its not exactly the same, your suggestion is meant to reduce the damage by 50% but it can reduce it much further then that with conditions that only last a second while my alternative reduces damage from conditions by 50% as well. Doubling the health pool doubles the damage required to kill them with conditions.

I also mentioned raising their overall armor rating without a trait. My guess would be 180 extra toughness but it might need to go as high as 300. With your suggestion you do force people to be using Flesh of the Master. Which would end up doing way too much as a master trait and would need to be bumped up to grandmaster.

The passive buffs I mentioned are simple and much easier to balance for. The real power of a minion master’s defense and offense from minions should come from their active play. You mentioned this yourself and that trait change you suggested puts the power far more in their passive play then active, even with all the other changes you suggested.

Shadelang.3012:

snip

You misunderstand me. I never suggested adding a new skill to eat up a minion slot. Those slots are too valuable. Which is a major problem I have with minion masters in this game, but thats beside the over all point.

I wasn’t criticizing the entire post. I agree with most of it. I was criticizing the specific passive buff of giving the minions immunity the critical and conditions. This is an absurd buff, and I can’t stress that enough.

I do think some passive buffs are in order. The minions health and armor should just be increased with out a trait on it. How much though is up for debate. I would like to see a fight of a minion master in a 1v1 against a few different targets. if someone can show me this I might be able to calculate where their passive health and armor should be at.

The Minion master should be a profession that micromanages their minions a lot. A high skill build and very high reward for being able to do so. This is how similar styles of game play are done in other games. When they are done well you can feel it. GW1 did it very well. Diablo 2&3, not so much. As a minion master you are playing a different game then your opponent. And you should remember that. You will have to divide your attention in order to get the most out of the build. But we are just in the theory of it right now.

So there is two directions we can go with minions at their current design and I actually feel we should go with both of them and I’ll explain in a moment. The quality of life changes that was suggested is great. Some of the minor buffs in other areas are also interesting and I don’t disagree with them, they sound cool. However, I must note that its not the only way to go with this.

Both ideas that I have for the minions are something we can have with the bass profession we have now and I briefly touched on it before when I mentioned Death nova and blood of the master. Now I wasn’t suggesting that these two skills be adapted into GW2. nothing of the sort. What I was saying is they show us two options. Sustaining minions, which by the way is exactly the option that the OP wanted from the minions in the first place. But there is also the second option which is make the minions more bursty.

So the first one has quite a bit we can do to make it work. Including the suggestions made by the OP are great, minus the prefect immunity part. Active protection is also good. Making weapons more friendly toward minions is an option. Like perhaps give a bonus to the warhorn skills to actually provide something for the minions, death shroud skills being able to remove conditions or what have you. The suggestion you made with the next 2500 damage reduction isn’t a bad idea. Its proactive and something I can get behind. I don’t think it should be the only option we have, but I like the way you’re thinking.

The second option is to make them like a rocket. If you’ve ever played goblin tribal in MTG you’ll guess where this is going. Making the minions be able to come out of the gate trucking with power that slowly dies down as the fight progresses. While the first option might stick you in Death and blood the second option could stick you more in Death and Spite. Giving minions the ability to apply conditions or deal damage on not just death but summoning as well, combined with the cast time reduction suggested by the OP could be an interesting idea for build design. Allowing your warhorn skills to give your minions swiftness and a swarm of locus, or just the swiftness when you use it could cut the travel time between your targets giving you the increased likelihood that they’ll get to your target in time. Having a trait to trigger to give them all Quickness for a short duration with a long cool down trait could further push you down this path. And I’ll repeat myself, I think both a sustained option and burst option for minions should be available to us.

There is a lot more I could say about this subject. And to tell you the absolute truth in the matter. I don’t think the minion master will truly get what it needs until after we get a weapon that is at least partially dedicated to minions in some way.

Bhawb.7408:

As much as I enjoyed the old GW1 MM, the GW2 Necro minions don’t fit it at all. There is really nothing we could or should translate as far as mechanics, because it is an entirely different playstyle. Now, that isn’t to say that ANet couldn’t try to support it in the future, but it would require entirely new minion skills to do so, along with new minion traits, and in the end we’d basically end up with mobile turrets. But you’re looking at GW1 too much. GW2 needs to be balanced for its own style of play, which is very distinctly different than GW1, and shouldn’t be held back by GW1’s mechanics. Conditions/boons are vastly different than GW1, minions and necros are both very different than GW1, and PvP is very different than GW1. That’s not to say that we can’t learn anything from GW1, but minion defense is definitely not one of those things.

Condi builds wouldn’t be countered by our idea for MM at all, they just wouldn’t be able to AoE spam the minions down with AoE condis (and would never use single target on a minion anyway). You shouldn’t have to kill the minions to counter the build, and with the other changes we are making you wouldn’t have to. You would kite the minions, because if you can simply kite Flesh Golem alone the minion DPS is around 600 which is less than burning, and you would focus all of your condi pressure on the MM because MMs can’t afford to take that much condi clear. All that you would have to do is watch the minions for their actives, other than that you wouldn’t need to actually worry about them.

So must I remind you that Fetid Consumption is a trait. Which I just tested btw, and each minion has its own condition draw trigger. So yeah, you’ll become a hard counter. And the second part of that of being unable to be critically hit? No… Just no.. You would be basically making the minions each have 2 grandmaster traits from the elementalist as one trait. Add Fetid Consumption into that mix and good luck trying to kill them with conditions… Yeah, I don’t see how you guys don’t see that as a hard counter. Turning a master trait into 2 grandmaster traits combine into one isn’t balanced. Its busted.

As for the first part, you couldn’t be more wrong in this. GW1 has a lot to teach us about minions. Diablo II & III can teach us a lot as well. You see, the games aren’t as different as you may think. Although they feel and play quite differently, there is still a mega ton of similarities in these games. Looking at the similarities and also looking at the differences we can better understand what was done right and wrong in those games. We can try to understand why it did or didn’t work very well in those games and analyze what we can take from them. I’d also suggestion looking at similar concepts in other games such as starcraft or even going as deep as Magic: The gathering. All of these games for this type of play style have one thing that is shared between them. And its in the very DNA of what it means to be a minion master. Managing resources and your forces.

Now I know it sounds a bit strange to you guys, or even crazy. But I feel I should explain how I think. I look at problems in 3-4 dimensions. How I visualize things is that I don’t see pictures in my mind. I see 3 dimensional objects. I see what they look like from the front, back, bottom, top and sides. And If the object is a building I see the object from the outside in as well. This is how I think. I look at things in a very detailed way and I also visualize them progressing through time. How they might change or function later in the future.

The issue we have, Bawb as well as other people I’ve debated with on the forums before, is that when I mention GW1 or another game you seem to automatically assume that I want GW2 to be just like GW1. And that hasn’t what I’ve been trying to get across. I’ve been saying the equivalent of that if you’re an architect and you want to build a building that has never been built before its not a bad idea to see how other buildings have been historically built. Or going back into our own evolutionary history to learn more about humans in the present. GW1 just happens to be the closest relative to GW2.

Shadelang.3012:

The issue is due to the investment required to make an MM build worth using in this game they absolutely HAVE to survive to be useful.

Lily it seems you want a return to the days of minion swarms. Where yes it didn’t matter if one or two died as long as you had access to an exploitable corpse nearby.

That will NEVER happen in this game though. Its simply not going to.

Also. I feel you underestimate heavily how hard the build is shut down right now. It simply isn’t viable. In nearly any situation. In nearly any comp. Because nearly every composition in the game completely rolls over it like its not even there.

You keep referring to there non immunity to hexes in guild wars one like thats supposed to mean something in the current situation. It doesn’t. How they USED to work has no bearing on the current situation just as how conditions used to work also has no bearing. The only thing that matters is that right now one burn field can kill your entire squad. One dragon’s tooth can kill your entire squad.

We aren’t even getting killed by BUILDS. Were being wiped out by individual skills. Thats how weak we are now. Thats whats being addressed here. Methods of dealing with mechanics that are complete…absoulte…100% hard counters to us. That nearly every class in the game can take advantage of regardless of build.

I actually do understand whats going on. And just because the two games are different doesn’t mean we can’t learn something from the first game. This is a common mistake people who are not familiar with game design make. We absolutely can learn from GW1 because the minions had similar weaknesses. So the question is how can we use this knowledge and apply it to GW2? I’m looking at the problem from multiple different angles, not just one. MM’s minions got wreaked by AOE in GW1. But the necromancer had a tone of ways to offset the weakness through proactive game play. Blood of the master was one method and death nova was another. A necromancer could either weaken themselves majorly to stop their death or convert the minions into high damage sources. And I mean HIGH! Like each one dealing 1/5th of a person’s health high.

Minions don’t work exactly the same as they do in GW1. I know that, and that’s why I don’t like them. And I am distinguishing between opinion and suggestions. My suggestions are for the current necromancer. My opinion on their end result doesn’t do anything to make me want to actually play them competitively or for fun. I’m just looking at this from an objective point of view.

ronpierce.2760:

Lily.1935:

ronpierce.2760:

The problem is only a little bit power. Conditions go right through them. Its funny you say that though, I did have a similar alternative I had suggested:

Immunity to Crits and Burning, and 50% reduced condition duration. (Burning being the absolute unrealistic bane). That way conditions could still damage them, but it’d be less effective, and you wouldnt see cases of a single burning field killing half your minions within a few seconds.

See. I just want to do what I did in GW1. Overwhelm my foe with my own personal, disposable trash mob. Its kinda the reason I could never get into MM for GW2. They aren’t as disposable as they were in GW1. I still think immunity to conditions is a bad idea. Even partial immunity. For a short duration through an active ability I feel would be more interesting for game dynamics as well as for spectators.

They’re too disposable as it is. In any fight with aoe, they die in seconds. they barely get to see any play, end end up more of an instant use/death nova fodder. I’m not sure you realize just how bad it can be in tpvp trying to get pets to be even remotely useful. They absolutely require AOE protection because they don’t last. They’re not even just disposable, they just die.

I mean you said it yourself, they had these types of defenses in full before. (For bleeding and so on) Sometimes it just a necessary evil for AI to even function, especially against a team. This game is also VERY aoe heavy in all cases, where even melee weapons cleave and so forth.

You and I are using disposable in two different ways. I’m using it to mean that if they die its of little consequence to you. You’re meaning it to just mean they easily die. Using the meaning I’m using it would say that the minions are not disposable. Because its of major consequence to you if a few or most of them die within a few hits. This isn’t disposable in the way that I’m using the word.

Now I’m not saying that the way you’re using it is wrong, I’m just clarifying what I mean when I say disposable as to prevent confusion.

As for the immunity to poison, bleeding and disease. I also mentioned that minions were not immune to hexes from the first game. Conditions in GW2 function more like hexes then they do conditions when compared to GW1. So we should take that into consideration.

ronpierce.2760:

The problem is only a little bit power. Conditions go right through them. Its funny you say that though, I did have a similar alternative I had suggested:

Immunity to Crits and Burning, and 50% reduced condition duration. (Burning being the absolute unrealistic bane). That way conditions could still damage them, but it’d be less effective, and you wouldnt see cases of a single burning field killing half your minions within a few seconds.

See. I just want to do what I did in GW1. Overwhelm my foe with my own personal, disposable trash mob. Its kinda the reason I could never get into MM for GW2. They aren’t as disposable as they were in GW1. I still think immunity to conditions is a bad idea. Even partial immunity. For a short duration through an active ability I feel would be more interesting for game dynamics as well as for spectators.

ronpierce.2760:

Lily.1935:

I lost interest in being a minion master in GW2 when the game launched. Coming over from GW1, even with these changes I can’t see myself wanting to play with them much if at all. Yeah, I agree with most of these changes. The immune to damage conditions though? Strict no. I can’t agree with that under any circumstance. I’m sorry, but that isn’t a part of our flavor and it just sounds like it would be a really bad balance decision. You would pretty much make another hard counter to condition builds with that sort of change and its not something I can support.

Do you have a better idea that would increase their actual ability to survive in team fights? As it stands, the only thing that has ever proven to be effective is crit/condi immunity (in turrets). And by the same token, it reduces the burst risk from condies from death nova bombs. I’ve seen more people die to that than actually fighting me.

If we take a look back at GW1 how the minions worked there we can see some interesting things. Although minions in the first game had immunity to disease, poison and bleeding we can’t actually rely on that sort of idea considering GW2 treats conditions very differently. Minions were not immune to hexes for example.

But also looking at minions from GW1, they functioned very differently in several ways. Such as having an extremely large health pool as well as very high armor. They still died to AoE pretty easily, and that is a weakness they share with GW2. But they could survive a meteor shower with the help of the master. So perhaps we can give them a way to survive with something a bit more active.

Simply giving them a passive buff to that trait like 100% health increase or an extra 300 toughness might work but the question is would it work?

As for active ideas. I have a few. Perhaps we could give a Minion master incentive to use death shroud a bit more. Like perhaps Transfusion cleanses conditions from minions as well as heals normally. Shrouded Removal could also remove 1-2 conditions from all minions. The last idea I had is a bit unorthodox but I’ll mention it anyway. This might be strange, but give the necromancer a way to give each of their minions aegis with a long cooldown of course.

I lost interest in being a minion master in GW2 when the game launched. Coming over from GW1, even with these changes I can’t see myself wanting to play with them much if at all. Yeah, I agree with most of these changes. The immune to damage conditions though? Strict no. I can’t agree with that under any circumstance. I’m sorry, but that isn’t a part of our flavor and it just sounds like it would be a really bad balance decision. You would pretty much make another hard counter to condition builds with that sort of change and its not something I can support.

I don’t know. Is Chronomancer Meguuma themed?

I don’t want to kill Trahearne.

stayBlind.7849:

McWolfy.5924:

I hope rangers lose the pets

I hope Necro lose shroud.

Replace death shroud with orders… Mmm. yeah.

Terrahero.9358:

This is the question that bugged me as well. I don’t expect big changes to the profession mechanics. And I’m not so sure they are going to remove an entire skill category (i.e. Traps, or Cantrips) as these traits are often spread across multiple traitlines.
You can’t take out just 1 traitline for Elementalist and and not be left with a bunch of traits that still affect Cantrips f.e.

And im also not sold on the idea that you lose access to a weapon, I haven’t seen arenanet hint at that so far and it would leave certain professions who are already pretty lacking in choice (f.e. Engineer) in an equally kittenty situation. It would also be even harder to balance with traits as weapon related traits are also often spread around.

We don’t know yet. They did say the specialization would “Fundamentally change the way you play your profession” and I’ve heard multiple times they’ll each have a new mechanic. Its possible that we don’t lose a weapon but each base profession will actually gain a weapon that the specialization can’t use. Which could be interesting.

There are 19 different weapon types in the game currently. With this expansion we will be getting 19 different legendaries if they include the underwater legends. Which I personally hope they do but wont be disappointed if they don’t.

But considering that, that’s enough legendary weapons for each profession to have 2 designed to fit their theme with 1 left over.

Now what I’d really REALLY like to see is the aquatic weapons become terrestrial weapons and a few terrestrial weapons become aquatic compatible. Part of the reason underwater combat is so stale is because of the lack of options. There are plenty more reasons as well.

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

Jaken.6801:

In that way I am thinking that the Necro might loose all their Minions, to gain a more close combat stance.
The Flesh Golem was usually used as a tank/stunner (if he did what he was supposed to), if the Necro goes offense and gains the ability himself (maybe a bone armor, or armor of the dead. If we go by Majories developement, she might be tied to the souls of the dead)

Given how many minions Marjory has used in the Living Story thus far, I’m inclined to believe those are still available for the specialized Necro. I think we’re more likely to lose corruptions or spectrals as a utility type.

losing corruptions would SUCK! But it could be worth it. Don’t know. Would rather lose spectral skills.

Jaken.6801:

In that way I am thinking that the Necro might loose all their Minions, to gain a more close combat stance.
The Flesh Golem was usually used as a tank/stunner (if he did what he was supposed to), if the Necro goes offense and gains the ability himself (maybe a bone armor, or armor of the dead. If we go by Majories developement, she might be tied to the souls of the dead)

maybe. But its also possible we would lose our spectral skills. It really depends on what direction they take it.

Sagramor.7395:

Lily.1935:

I was more explaining to other people here that the changes that are being implemented are not going to be a strict upgrade in power. You’re going to lose something in the process.

I wasn’t even aware that that misconception existed until this thread.

there was an earlier thread talking about it. The title was something like “Needs two specializations to make sense” or something like that. There has been other areas were people have been confused.

Sagramor.7395:

Regardless of what’s added/removed in the transition from Ranger to Druid (to use a known example) it’s going to be a lateral move. Think of it as being able to switch to a similar yet uniquely different profession. Really nothing to get worried about.

I’m not worried about it. I was a huge fan of the deck building aspect of the first game. And I feel that GW2 has lost a lot of that charm. With this expansion my interest in builds has shot through the roof. I’m not worried. I’m excited! Making a meaningful choice for my profession and having the potential for much more later down the road is an absolute thrill!

I was more explaining to other people here that the changes that are being implemented are not going to be a strict upgrade in power. You’re going to lose something in the process.

I thought of another name that could be a possibility. sanguinemancer.

Nike.2631:

I saw a wolf fighting along side the druid in the video. Druid’s still use pets. Changing a class mechanic is not the same as replacing it.

That really doesn’t tell us anything. For all we know the druid could summon their pets to attack something using one move before dismissing them. We can’t be sure.

My personal hypothesis is that the greatsword will be a life stealing weapon. That its auto will steal health along with several of its other attacks as well. So it’ll benefit greatly from power and healing. This would let the weapon scale greater with more enemies and be less effective against lone targets. It would make it so it doesn’t step too much on the toes of the dagger.

I don’t want the greatsword to be our melee condi weapon because I feel that that title should be reserved for a much more interesting weapon. Aka, scythe or mace.

Nike.2631:

That doesn’t mean you’ll lose your overall class mechanic – those tend to reach across multiple lines. But the Guardian specialization might replace 1 -2 of their virtues with different virtues.

Actually I’ve read multiple interviews were they’re quite clear about each profession getting a new profession mechanic. I’m not quite sure what that means but it could mean that Guardian virtues wont be a thing on the new specialization.

I’m going to make this topic because I haven’t seen anyone really talking about it at all. A lot of people are assuming that the specialization will just be a strict upgrade of the profession and from what I’m hearing, this isn’t the case. When you specialize you will lose something in the process. The question is how much will you lose?

From what i understand, they talked about fundamentally changing the way the profession is played and that they’ll be getting a new mechanic. Alright, so right off the bat we can make the assumption that what they mean by this is that our profession mechanic will be given up in the process of the change. But WHAT does that actually mean? The question has been rolling around in my head for a while.

As a necromancer player losing Death shroud would ruin use defensively. But depending on the new skills we get we might not care so much about that lose. It being replaced with other, more reliable defensive skills might be good. But how does that translate to our skills? More then a few skills would have to change in order to adjust for such a drastic loss. Dagger auto, staff auto, scepter 3, axe 2, warhorn 2, focus 1, signet of undeath, and all of the spectral skills as well as a tone of traits would have to be removed or completely changed to adjust for the potential loss of life force. Now another direction that could be taken is just the removal of death shroud and life force is still used but in a fundamentally different way. But it still leaves us with traits that are unusable as the specialization.

What I’m trying to say is that its very possible that we wont just lose one thing when we spec for the specialization. We might have to give up all of a single type of skill that shares a type. The Elementalist might lose attunements and thus glyphs could be dropped. The Mesmer could lose illusions which would mean a massive redesign of most of their skills or just a tone of new skills entirely. While other professions who have little interaction with their mechanic through skills might not change much at all.

Is this possible? Absolutely! Arena net have been know to make extremely drastic changes for the health of their game. What do you guys think? You think that its possible the new specializations could impact us so drastically?

So I thought of another one for you guys. You might like this.

Mesmer > Doppelganger

Weapon? Dagger/dagger.

The Doppelganger would use its F1-F3 skills in order to copy ally, enemy and your own skills to give you use of the next one they used. These would be Mirror, Mimicry and Echo. Mirror would let you copy a foe’s next skill, Mimicry would copy an ally’s next skill and Echo would copy your next skill.

The Doppelganger’s special skills would deal with copying effects and dealing them back on the foe. Or doubling positive effects from allies. Such as they might do a reverse epidemic that copies all conditions from surrounding foes onto one foe or doubles those conditions. Maybe they copy enemy boons to allies through greater effect then what they have now. Maybe even mirroring AoE fields that are already up. Relying heavily on the battle going on. A very reactive profession specialization rather then a proactive one. As such, the specialization would need attrition. It would need to outlast your foe and use their own powers against them to greater effect then the mesmer currently does. They could even have an elite were they become an exact duplicate of of a foe or ally for a short period of time.

PS: I know that the mesmer specialization is going to be the Chronomancer. That’s obvious. This is a possibility for future future specializations.

Scepter is pretty slow, sure. But its also fairly good as is. I’d personally like its torment to last a bit longer, but that’s just me. I don’t think 1 second more would break PvP. At least 1 second more in PvE. I’ve maxed my duration of torment and its up to a whopping 4 seconds! It would be nice to be able to sustain more stacks after increasing torment by 95% before cons.

Because hang gliders! Do you need another reason? HANG GLIDERS!

I remember back when Nightfall came out. Wow! Just… Wow! That soundtrack was just superb. Very few soundtracks are quite as epic as that one was. The new soundtrack sounds like it could be just as good. I’d love that.

RashanDale.3609:

I hope it never comes to this. It surely would make more sense but it’s very hard to make corpse-using abilities that are consistently good; similar to on-death-traits.

In GW1 it worked relatively well most of the time because you got plenty of corpses. but if there was a tough bossfight or enemies without corpses and you ran out of minions, you became almost completely useless.
I’d rather not be forced to run around and grind neutrals to get minions up before i can engage the actual enemy.

Curses as well. Although I can’t say how they’d work. I’d imagine that a Curse would be an AoE field that’d stalk people much like those trolls in Silverwastes do with their bug swarms. Hmmm. If I think of more I’ll let you know.

Basically, curses are skills with a duration, that stay on an enemy and deal damage over time or have a conditional effect.

A lot of them have been turned into conditions, ‘simple’ AoEs or illusions. Other still ‘sit’ on an enemy, but arent conditions:
-Signet of Vampirism
-Impale

So i guess, if we get more curse-like abilities, they’ll probably be like that or AoEs, but with subtler effects than most AoEs. But considering how much kittens already whine about conditions and how theres no counter to them, i doubt that Anet introduces more curse-like abilities.

Also, Bindingrituals are fitting and possible but may be too close to ranger’s spirit.

So I was just throwing out ideas. Also, Do note that I didn’t say that minions that use corpses would replace the old minions now. And minions now are useless during boss fights so I don’t really see your point. Minions were not consistently good in the first game. Just because a skill isn’t good 100% of the time doesn’t mean it can’t be fun to use or in the game. Look at epidemic. Its a really powerful skill that has no use in a boss fight who doesn’t have any support form minions/underlings. Or Doom against bosses who are immune to Crowed control. Or Dhuumfire against destroyers. Or well of darkness against dredge. Or marks against objects. Or conditions against objects. or… I think you get the point.

I know a lot of hexes have been turned into conditions. However, the flavor and concept of hexes isn’t so much into the game. A talking spirit might be interesting as an aoe field that doesn’t last too long and can be dodged or defended against would be an interesting idea.

I’m debating between 3 races. Human, Sylvari and Asura. I’ve almost completely rulled out Asura because heavy armor looks dreadful on a female asura(in my opinion). If something changes then I might, but since I doubt it, I see no reason to make another asura, unfortunately.. Sylvari have some cool armor options but I’m not sure. Human would be cool because she could be a follower of Kormir. Grenth would also make sense for the Revenant seeing as Ritualists usually favored Grenth. However, Since Kormir is the goddess of truth, and the connection to the mists seems like it would be a good fit for a Revenant. So.. I’m at a toss up. I won’t make another charr because the armor problem for them is far worse then the asura in my opinion. And I’m not making another heavy armor norn. My Guardian is already my norn. I’ll probably make a medium armor norn druid.

So there you have it. Either Sylvari or Human.