Guild Wars 2

Well cooldowns are completely ridiculous. Even when traited, I would still consider most well cooldowns too long.

People higher ranked in the leaderboards are definitely better players. People who solo queue do not get into the top 1,000 without being better than most players. People who queue in teams do not get to top 100 without being better than most players. Obviously, there’s a difference in threshold between those who solo queue and those who queue in groups, but leaderboards do properly gauge consistently better performances in the long term.

Well of Corruption converts boons into conditions, but necromancers can’t afford to take it over Corrupt Boon, Epidemic, and Spectral Walk or Signet of Undeath.

Even then, someone would have to stand in Null Field and Well of Corruption to lose more than one or two boons. That limits counter-play since guardians can instantly apply a variety of boons in an AOE with the push of a button.

This game does have matchmaking. It just needs more protections for new players.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Statistical_literacy

Worst bug in the game.

The philosophy description for necromancer is paradoxical because the class’s bad mobility makes it so other classes can almost always get away. Thieves, elementalists and mesmers can run around a necromancer without problems and it’s almost impossible for the necromancer to peel them off. (On this note, I feel like MMO developers consistently undervalue mobility in terms of survivability and damage potential.)

Some high-level necromancers already run without resurrection signet in favor of Spectral Walk because the class’s biggest problem is its lack of an out, not team support.

Making Well of Darkness a 30-second cooldown and maybe making it a stunbreaker would do a lot to fix necromancers without giving the class too much mobility, which the developers seem resistant to since it goes against the class’s theme.

That should also be part of a broader sweep on necromancer’s utility skills. ArenaNet needs to make the spectral skills more potent and reduce the cooldowns on almost all non-corruption utility skills.

That, on top of a dark DOT that could act like burning in terms of damage and cleansing protection, would be enough to fix the class.

For clarification, juking spells is worthless unless you’re trying to make someone waste an interrupt cooldown. Cancelling a spell triggers the same 4-second cooldown that is triggered when a spell is interrupted.

So if you don’t actually need to heal but want someone to waste an interrupt, juke a heal. But if you’re trying to juke World of Warcraft-style (cast, juke, interrupt, immediately re-cast), it’s not worth it.

Just clarifying this because it might be confusing for people coming from other MMOs.

Just letting you know.

Does this mean ArenaNet literally does not have a QA process?

The biggest problem with this is it happens with every new piece of content. It happened with Orr at launch, it happened with the first Southsun events, it happened with the Flame & Frost events, and now it’s happening with these Southsun events. Some of the supposedly fixed events still bug as well. It’s clear there’s a consistent problem with ArenaNet’s QA process, and there’s no sign they’re fixing it.

Every new non-instigator Southsun event is bugged and stalling.

It’s getting old seeing this kind of issue with every new piece of content. Please get a public test server.

The problem is two-fold: Necromancers don’t have a condition like burning, so HGH engineers are almost always going to better for condition damage because burn provides a lot of damage and cleansing protection. Necromancers also don’t have much in the way of mobility and require 900 range to do decent damage, so they’re very easy to focus down as an organized group.

Symbolic from Team Paradigm covered this well enough in a Reddit post recently:

In my opinion necromancer just doesn’t work in the current EU meta, you don’t deal enough damage (your only damaging condition is bleeds). Shout guardians/cantrips elementalists effectively neutralize that damage. You don’t have consistent poison like an HGH engineer with their pistol #2 and poison grenades(thieves probably get the best of it having a spammable poison field on shortbow 4, which is more useful than corrosive poison cloud). You rely on the third hit of your scepter for single target poison, which is a small poison duration and chillblains which is also a fairly short poison duration, however chillblains in itself is a hugely useful utility although the poison duration isn’t huge/repeating.

Effectively you’re a corrupt boon/epidemic/res bot that can tank with plague form. Plus the fact you’re so easily diveable from thieves/mesmers/warriors etc. Sure you can rely on positioning but when you’ve got a pistol dagger thief spamming blinds on you while doing huge damage or a sword/dagger thief spamming evades, disengaging when he wants.

At the moment the necromancer is currently only good in condition cleave comps with a mesmer/hgh engineer so it can spread pressure from an initial target as the necromancer doesn’t in itself deal a huge amount of pressure. Plus the fact if you’re positioning properly you’re realistically only going to be pressuring the guardian and anybody who overextends. Necromancer lacks too much disengage and has no real ‘gtfo’(disengage) ability(you could run flesh wurm I guess?) so it can go into a fight and get off its damage, so it has to deal damage to low priority targets, and the targets it does deal damage to you’d probably be better suited having an hgh engineer pressuring that target.

The only problem I have with thieves is there’s really nothing I can do as a condition necromancer to consistently survive against their the chain of blinds. I can live through the first initiative dump, but at that point a thief will usually restealth, pool initiative, and attack again. Since my class has poor mobility, I mostly have to take it if Plague — a three-minute cooldown — isn’t up.

I understand that it’s supposed to massively pressure me when a thief uses that much initiative, but being chain blinded while taking massive burst since the blind also enables backstab seems like too much against my class.

From a philosophical standpoint, I would never allow a class to have a blind and daze with no cooldown, even if it comes at heavy resource cost.

Then again, if that was taken away, thieves would need substantial survivability buffs to make up for it, so I’m not totally sure how I would go about comprehensively fixing this problem.

I also understand that this situation is mostly against my class and other classes don’t have a problem against thieves. In fact, from what I understand, thieves are mediocre at best in high-end, fully organized structured PvP, so maybe I’m just not seeing through my own class bias. Maybe there is no problem, or the problem is necromancers, not thieves.

As someone who thinks there’s too much stealth in the game, I can safely say that trap is ridiculously overkill. It should be maybe 10 seconds at most.

Loyo.8526:

Someone show me a WvW video of Necro 1vXing. please.

As a condition necromancer, I 1vX all the time in world vs. world. It’s almost why I world vs. world.

I support spamming this thread until it’s fixed. This change is on the verge of ruining PvP. I think about quitting every time my heal is interrupted by a queued dodge.

Kwll.1468:

Buffs, in general, need to have shorter durations. You should not be able to get any buff to last more then about 15-20 seconds imo and that shuld be with buff duration stacking.

I agree. It will take broader changes to accomplish, but this particular aspect of the game seems out of whack to me. Stability, fury, swiftness, and might are way too accessible nowadays, and it’s leading to a less skillful, dynamic game.

jcbroe.4329:

I was thinking specifically poison fields, which necros really don’t have access to (the one utility that they could take isn’t preferred). So more so that comment is aimed at an engi, and an engi does have an easier time than a necro.

Necros can do more interesting things than that, like keep the pet almost constantly chilled/crippled/weakened because it doesn’t dodge, so you can kite much easier and take relatively less damage then a person who would otherwise have to dedicate single target movement reduction to the pet.

Also, it isn’t “countered” by empathic bond, as the pet is eating all of that damage, and the ranger requires the pet to be alive to actually kill you. So you are either killing the pet and alleviating the damage you’re taking, or the ranger switches pets and puts the pet out of position, giving you more chances to kite the new pet, with a new 20s window for your AoE conditions to kill the the new pet and the player at the same time.

Pressure pressure pressure.

I admit with necromancers most of the problems could be fixed by giving the class another significant damage DOT so bleed cleansing isn’t absolutely debilitating. Engineer’s access to burning is why it fares so much better. It’s all up to the dark DOT the developers already announced for necromancer.

Either way, my point is rangers don’t have it nearly as bad against conditions as they make it seem. If you want to see classes that do have it bad, look at mesmer, warrior or even engineer.

Dropping conditions on a Healing Spring is actually the worst thing any condition build can do.

For necromancers, the heavy bleed abilities on scepter and dagger have 10-second or 25-second cooldowns. That’s countered by Emphatic Bond. Most of the bleed and all of the poison poison comes from auto-attack, which is good but not good enough to take down someone in a reasonable amount of time.

Xsorus.2507:

Its 3 Conditions every 10 seconds.

Unless they’re using Healing Spring, and Healing Spring has a 30 second cooldown and actually isn’t nearly as good as TU for Bunker Build (It is better for groups though)

I can clear more conditions on my thief just by stealthing..

Signet of Renewal. I’m sure some use Shake It Off on an off-pet, too.

Keep in mind I’m a necromancer, so three conditions every 10 seconds along with sporadic cleansing takes basically everything I have. (That’s more a necromancer than ranger problem, though. We need something like burn.)

The lack of solo queue is probably killing the game for a lot of midcore players and even casuals. Once they fix that, it will take off.

I honestly have no idea what people are talking about when they say rangers have bad condition removal. As a condition necromancer, I can deal with elementalists and guardians because it’s just a matter of peeling through their condition-cleansing cooldown. But with rangers the passive condition cleansing is constant and debilitating.

Nope. I actually noticed it doesn’t have a facing requirement and seems to miss a lot less often now. I’m happy with it.

Mizu.9387:

I see our numbers drop every day. People are moving away and we have zero queues on any map at any given time.
All that is left to do now is solo roam, since our guild group can’t really accomplish anything. We don’t want our members to spend 3 hours of their time watching others play with siege.
I must admit that I don’t know a whole lot about war history, but I don’t care, this is boring. If realistic means whatver this is, I rather do without. I assume this is the approach Anet wants to take though, since no “fix” has come yet.
GG Anet, it was fun while it lasted.

I agree with this post. I don’t care what the original intention of arrow carts was or what’s most realistic; no one wants to deal with siege weapons as if they’re players. Siege weapons should be for breaking down walls and doors, not damaging other players.

If ArenaNet thinks there’s a problem with zergs, find another way to fix it. No one wants to rely so much on siege weapons.

Theplayboy.6417:

I don’t mind the damage as much. What irks me the most is the an Engineer can hand toss grenades further than a warrior can shoot a longbow. How does that make sense?

Do you even lift?

TheMightyAltroll.3485:

And apparently no one has seen the Necro glitch with Roots, where Scepter/Staff Necromancers seemingly have to manually target the Root and autoattack it. By the time the Necro can get out of the root, he’s already dead.

Yeah, this is really annoying. It’s bad enough we’d probably do little damage to the root since it’s an object, but not being able go target it at all is so annoying. In the end, I’m forced to transfer or consume conditions and roll immediately.

Of course. I think the Illusionary Leap and Blurred Frenzy combo is fine. The fact it’s different from the Bull’s Charge and Hundred Blades combo is good for the game. It’s what having different classes is all about. It’s cool warriors are easier to predict but do more damage, while mesmers are harder to predict but do less damage.

I think people just need more experience and patience with the ability to learn how to counter it.

People saying Swap is easy to detect are underestimating how disorienting it can be to deal with multiple illusions. The Swap flash in particular is very similar to shatter. Good players will still generally see it because of the initial Illusionary Leap cast, but calling it as obvious as Bull’s Charge is far-fetched.

I will never understand why dodge can be queued to begin with. It’s a mostly reactive ability; it does not need a proactive mechanic.

Salamol.7963:

You can move away from it, so no I don’t think it’s a problem. I realise that it’s usually used right after a tp/root but it’s one of the reasons to have a stunbreaker.

Stun breakers don’t work on immobilize.

MakubeC.3026:

I’ve done the dungeon over 8 times now. Not a single exotic find like Mini or Jetpack or Tonic.

So frustrating…

Eight runs is basically nothing. You shouldn’t be getting frustrated that quickly.

butch.8136:

Nye, I noticed some hotjoinheroes duo/triple capping close at the beginning…

Yup. This is so annoying.

I don’t do hot join, and I have no problem doing the achievement on my own. That’s not why I made this thread.

The problem is the game is directly encouraging bad play.

LOOKING FOR TEAM

In-Game Name: Lopez

Main Class: Necromancer

Region: NA

Practice Times: Weekdays 7-11 p.m. EST, weekends any time

Experience: I’m usually rank 700-800, which I think is OK since I only solo queue. I was also a multi-gladiator in World of Warcraft (http://us.battle.net/wow/en/character/emerald-dream/Lopez/advanced).

Other: Be willing to give and take constructive criticism, and no ragers.

Except for the map one, the other objectives are fine, but requiring people to capture points directly encourages horrible play. It’s common to see two or three people uselessly stacking on a point when they could be going somewhere useful.

FateOmega.9601:

Isn’t 12 days too short a period for people to get these exclusive items?

That’s literally the point.

Dardamaniac.1295:

On demand is always better than passive

This isn’t necessarily true. Passive allows you to continue attacking or use other defensive abilities while cleansing. That can be a pretty big advantage when trying to stay offensive. So it’s situational, although I agree on-demand is mostly better than passive.

As a condition necromancer, I feel rangers have enough passive removal that it feels like constant cleansing pressure. It can take a while to start building momentum on a ranger depending on where their timers are when I first engage them, and that delay can be enough to decide a fight.

To be clear, I’m not agreeing rangers are overpowered. I think the new metagame still needs time to settle, and even the best players still have to adjust to some of the changes in one-on-one and group environments. I just disagree that rangers are easily wrecked by conditions.

Pope.1469:

Just pile conditions on bunker rangers and they drop faster than guardians or pre-nerf elementalists. Just like how you’re supposed to crack any bunker. They have almost no on demand condition removal, you ever notice that?

For this reason alone, I’m amazed how necro never reached flavor status.

I don’t get why people say this all the time. Rangers have plenty of condition removal if they’re built correctly. It may not be on-demand, but it’s still really good.

I honestly don’t know why evade would have a queue to begin with. Skill queueing is fine, but the whole point of evade is to be reactionary.

Everyone does the Orr events on my server. The temples are almost never contested. They’re easily the most difficult events, but they don’t require organization. They’re very easy to do in a PUG.

So they’re not raiding, and I don’t know why you think people don’t do them right now.

Underwater combat in PvE is just as bad. In underwater areas, some classes are legitimately useless and lose all the utility that makes them useful and interesting in PvE groups. There are also some classes that do more DPS while downed, which encourages them to purposely go down against some bosses to do more DPS (I’ve actually seen this before).

On the structured PvP side, the partially underwater map isn’t used in tournaments because underwater combat is so obviously imbalanced.

You would think the developers would put more work into a major feature that is clearly not working as intended in any gameplay type.

In general, it seems like there’s been little thought put into how much damage classes do while downed. I hope they get around to it someday.

I recently found out that capping a sentry immediately gives your world 1 point. (By the way, that needs to be communicated better; I thought the sentries were just to slow down players and dolyaks before.)

I was wondering if the dynamic events scattered around world vs. world serve a similar purpose. Does thinning the mosquito population give points? How about killing that bloated grub or veteran worm?

To be clear, I’m not talking about the events you use to recruit mercenaries. I know what those do. I’m talking about the other events.

I noticed today that Priest of Grenth is now classified as a champion. He was legendary before. I didn’t actually notice him dying faster, so I’m wondering if there was an actual nerf or if the classification just dropped. It could also be a scaling thing.

Evan Lesh.3295:

17) This will not happen as it affects way to many things in the game. Why do you have that many things stacked at once as to need a stack size of 1000? The problem is not the stack size.

I appreciate all your other answers, but I think this one is faulty. Some exotic dungeon gear costs more than 250 tokens. Same deal with PvP gear and tokens. Players are stacking more than 250 of those tokens because they’re required to do so to obtain gear.

Same deal with crafting legendary items, which require 500 or more of some mats. Players don’t have a choice in stacking more than 250 of those if they want a legendary item.

I went from an Intel to an HP mouse because of this issue, and it made it a lot better. It still happens sometimes, but I no longer struggle to control my character at random moments for five straight minutes like I used to.

This is a really minor gripe, but I’ve never understood this.

A bunch of classes have traits that sensibly affect their land weapons and underwater alternatives. Why can’t traits that affect scepter, such as Lingering Curse, affect trident too?

The same could apply between axe and dagger traits and spear.

I think this would go a long way to making necromancers stronger and a little more interesting underwater without buffing the class too much.

Tarnished Coast has successfully completed the event nearly every time I tried it in the past three weeks. The Balthazar waypoint is rarely contested on my server.

When it does fail, it’s entirely because of the two issues I listed: people letting the NPCs get flanked or people pulling AOE to the NPCs by standing on them.

People just need to better understand how to keep the NPCs alive. That means failure is because of poor execution, which should result in a failed event.

Warruz.8096:

Im really tired of this event as its absurdly annoying due to the 75% instant moral drop from who knows where(does anyone actually know what causes that). I wouldnt mind it if it wasnt the only temple that you could buy Obsidian shards for karma but its been broken for months now.

I think it’s common knowledge what causes it. Morale is based on how many NPCs are alive. The event usually fails because people stand on NPCs, which pulls AOE onto them, or people letting the NPCs get flanked.