Guild Wars 2

Djemo.7153:

@Mammoth If they actually did something and werent ignored by everyone then that could perhaps hold some logic. I dont know where you got those ridiculously stupid numbers from but they all die to a breeze in a bigger WvW fight, so i call bullkitten.

Those are the actual health totals of 5 minions, so you may want to think twice about calling bullkitten. The real problem is that a lot of the time they’ll get aoed down when normally the aoe wouldnt be hitting max targets anyway, effectively dying pointlessly. With the near-zero influence you have over their movement, there’s not a lot you can do about it.

If the 375 rating difference matchup between Augury Rock and Fort Ranik sounds bad, remember that SBI (NA) was in a match against SoS with a larger rating difference for months, but the old system hid how big the difference actually was. You can handle a week.

Kiriakulos.1690:

Mammoth.1975:

Engi provides a good matchup, but thieves are mostly ignorable, aside from caltrops thieves, which you should still beat. Haven’t played against any good tanky mesmers because it’s usually not the role a team wants from their mesmer. I keep hearing about these unbeatable phantasms though, I’d like to see it in action.

If you don’t think a P/D thief is one of the best attrition specs in the game, you don’t actually know what attrition is.

As I said, mostly ignorable. All they can do is stack half a dozen short duration bleeds every 10s and restealth, because if they try anything else they get chain cced to death. On the other hand, I’ve never fought a good thief running P/D, since, again, it’s not usually the role a team wants from their thief. I fought Jumpers caltrops build a few times and lost more than I won (in fact I think I only won one and got my face repeatedly smashed otherwise :P), but that’s about it as far as good attrition thieves goes.

I have seen one or two stealth spamming wvw heroes jump into tourneys, guys with all these videos posted up showing them kitten faces 1vX in wvw, but they got horribly squished. I recall being terribly disappointed by one in particular, I had pretty high expectations and to say he didn’t meet them would be something of an understatement.

Why would someone bump a 6 month old thread just to tell one of the better necros around that he’s doing it wrong? Troll?

Engi provides a good matchup, but thieves are mostly ignorable, aside from caltrops thieves, which you should still beat. Haven’t played against any good tanky mesmers because it’s usually not the role a team wants from their mesmer. I keep hearing about these unbeatable phantasms though, I’d like to see it in action.

Again, the only classes we lose to in attrition battles are those that spam cleanse constantly. The problem isn’t necro, it’s rampant cleanses from 2 classes in particular, both of which are pretty sharp at cleansing their team too.

Constantly is the keyword too. If there was any kind of real recharge time on ranger and ele cleansing traits, the problem would be solved.

flow.6043:

Mammoth.1975:

If you’re built for attrition you should be winning attrition fights against everyone except eles and rangers.

The whole point here is that you really can’t build for attrition as a necro.

If you do, then you beat everyone except eles and rangers, and the only reason you lose to those is because they drop conditions constantly while still maintaining decent output. Seems like you can.

If you’re built for attrition you should be winning attrition fights against everyone except eles and rangers.

DeadlySynz.3471:

Which doesn’t make a lick of difference when your outmatched and outnumbered to the point you can’t even make it out of your own base.

If SoR was outmatching their opponents that much, they’d be gaining rating. Hyperbole, it’s the absolute worst!

Waffler.1257:

Perma-stealth thieves are over the top in WvW, which is why Anet created the stealth trap. They couldn’t nerf thieves directly because their 3-node capping game is still their main focus when it comes to PvP and class balance, and in that game mode perma-stealth thieves are completely useless. At first I was doubtful that the stealth traps would actually be useful, but after trying them out for a bit they are actually quite good for countering stealth abusing thieves. I’ve found they are most effective for defending camps as the thief is almost certain to trip the trap while running around kiting the npcs, but I’ve also used them in open field. Sometimes if I’m roaming in a certain section of a map I’ll place a stealth trap in a location off the main path a bit, and when a thief starts trailing me I can just bait him into the trap and easily kill him. Another good use is when a thief’s first attempt at killing you fails, they almost invariably use shadow refuge to regenerate health and get a long duration stealth for some breathing room. Thieves almost always stay in refuge for the full duration of 4 seconds, and it takes exactly 4 seconds to plant a stealth trap so the second a thief uses refuge you can just plant a stealth trap right on top of him which I’ve found almost always results in a trigger and the thief dying. I’ve actually planted several stealth traps right in front of thieves that were attacking me, and they still run right into them and end up dying. Anyway, my advice would be to try out using the stealth traps a bit, also it is ridiculously funny watching a thief run around in circles frantically trying to CnD mobs for stealth and using their stealth heal or shadow refuge while they have that 30 second reveal on.

15 badges is hard to justify spending on a single kill, I have yet to use one of these. 30s reveal is quite good though, I could see it being handy if you’re expecting a veiled zerg.

Tracking DS cooldowns in your head is one of the skills that allows good necros to distinguish themselves from the rest. It’s the same with eles, how most of them fold up if you dodge the initial CC, because all they know how to do is a single burst rotation, then spam defensive skills till they die, whereas good ones are flat out scary to face. I constantly see people asking for skill plays to be removed from the game, it’s quite annoying.

Likewise a couple of your problems seem to stem from plague signet doing what it says it does. If the passive and actives were reversed, it wouldn’t be nearly as good a stunbreak. Right now it’s one of the few stunbreaks that also removes immobilize, extremely relevant when you have 3 guys spiking you. If you’re suggesting that it should transfer conditions from allies to foes every 3s, well, that would be way too strong.

On top of that, I personally love it when I can run my golem into a tree/rock/fence and hit a player on the far side, it’s a complete gamechanger.

A lot of the weaknesses you’re seeing are in fact strengths when used correctly, and I would be extremely disappointed to see them nerfed, which is what you seem to be asking for.

sternenstaub.8763:

But look from this direction. AOEs hit up to five targets. This means, your minions, when dead, at least protected other players…

For around 50,000 damage if you’re running 5 minion skills, 75,000 with flesh of the master. Pretty significant. You should have gotten a couple of sequence attacks too, roots and blinds etc, and if traited, laid down plenty of aoe poison.

While I find it surprising that anyone would find Cantha offensive, it’s not for me to determine what other people are allowed to be offended by.

‘I don’t wear glasses, so people who wear glasses shouldn’t be offended when I stereotype them as 98lb virgins.
I’m not overweight, so heavy people shouldn’t be offended when I stereotype them as weak willed and lazy.
I don’t live in a rural area, so people who do shouldn’t be offended when I stereotype them as inbred sheepshagging yokels.
Why not? Because I’m just joking of course, don’t be so sensitive!’

Chris.3290:

The system as it stands is just eliminating the middle tiers. It’s pushing all the T4+ servers above 1700 in rating and all the T5 and lower servers beneath 1300.

How so? For NA servers within that range, 3 are moving further from 1500, 2 are moving closer.

10 people from PuG you say?

Chris.3290:

Mammoth.1975:

Give it a rest. SBI and CD were ‘taking it on the chin’ for 8 weeks under the old system, you guys get bad matchups for 2 weeks under the new one and the QQ never stops.

CD puts up a great fight in NA and actually is a decent matchup for us. SBI did get screwed over, but that’s because they refused to give up and EB couldn’t rack up enough score.

None of which has ANYTHING to do with this system or this thread. No one liked the situation that occurred in T5 and T4.

The old system worked, just slowly. I think that if they tone the RNG range to 100 points down from 250; then we’ll see some change. However, the current system is creating too much volatility and we will still see some servers out of place ratings-wise when it’s done. You’ll end up with some servers so close together that you’ll have the same matchups week after week.

Also you should look at the change in ratings. This system has destroyed the 1400-1700 range.
That means that T4 servers are going to have their stuff pushed in EVERY week.
You have sympathy for CD because of us? At least they got quality WvW in their timeslot, just see how they feel when they get regularly matched with DB, Maguuma, and FA.

You can also save your crocodile tears for SBI. They and BP are going to be routinely rofl stomping the bottom-half of servers. When they are regularly matched against IoJ, SF and GoM; no one is going to be having fun.

Again, we talk about SoS (the symptom) in context with the disease (the RNG element)

I forget, is 8 bigger than 2? It’s not about having sympathy for your opponents btw. It’s the fact that while your tears are full of delicious irony, it’s possible to have too much of a good thing.

I’m sure you’ve noticed that we don’t generally need our zergs to be bigger this week though Giraffe. Besides which, if we do temporarily, it’s just a matter of having a chat to the other commander on TS. It’s quite difficult to fight 2 servers properly with 1 commander when you’re being explicitly ganged on, although it seems like that’s no longer so much of an issue :P

Give it a rest. SBI and CD were ‘taking it on the chin’ for 8 weeks under the old system, you guys get bad matchups for 2 weeks under the new one and the QQ never stops.

SoS really needs to stop complaining. 2 weeks of bad matchups after 8 weeks of sitting comfortably at the top of the tier and your wvw population is broken? I didn’t see SBI and CD spamming the forums with tears when they were getting their backsides handed to them week in week out by you guys.

Uh, I used to do it all the time. It’s pretty easy to see if a team needs something to be viable and log it or ask someone to log it, and it’s extremely rare that you’re 2 classes short of filling all the necessary roles. Of course I’m forgetting, it’s the games fault when no one on your team is willing and able to log that class.

I’ve been thinking the same thing. I keep running into guild groups from AR that die to a handful of people responding to ‘X AR at Y’ calls. I never bother remembering the tags unfortunately.

There’s enough baby steps already. Take the next step. The attitude on display here makes me think that the only thing stopping most of you from forming a team is losing the ability to blame your random teammates for your losses.

stof.9341:

Solo queue : you get random classes with random builds and so random roles. End result, you get a team with little chance to have correct synergy.

5 man queue : you can get completely random classes too but it’s your fault, more often than not you’ll be playing with a correctly constructed team with assigned roles for all players.

Solo queue is statistically MUCH harder to win with than 5 man queues. Thus it needs a split somehow. This isn’t DotA 2 where you select your team compo once the match starts and you can no matter who you are matched with, get something that works.

Uh, of course you can choose your team comp after the match starts. Log out>character select>log in. The fact that you would post this says it all really. Blame matchmaking instead of figuring out how to win.

That’s exactly what I’m referring to. If you’re the best server in the tier, winning is probable, but points become exponentially more difficult to obtain the broader your front is and the more often both enemy servers are therefore ignoring each other, even unintentionally. I think that that some kind of curved function would thus help account for that. Your tier is the one that got me thinking about it in fact. The thing is, I don’t know if it’s already the case, and if so, whether the curve is sharp enough, too sharp, etc. If the relationship between rating and expected score is too linear, it explains the current situation where you guys are looking to gain 66 rating and being more likely to face hard opposition again next week despite having less than half the points of FA, who are looking set to lose rating.

The problem is the difficulty of getting an accurate read when 2v1s are going to occur every week. The losing servers will be on the side with 2 and thus have artificially inflated ratings, while the winning servers will be facing 2 opponents and have artificially depressed ratings. That adds up to making similar matchups likely to occur week after week. Perhaps it’s balanced out by the losing servers missing their fairweather guys.

DeadlySynz.3471:

Bottom line is this:

If/when this system stabilizes via rankings, your going to find the servers are going to be matched up exactly how they were matched up before this system came into effect.

Your not going to find SoR sitting in T6; your not going to find BG sitting in T8; your not going to find ET or FC bouncing between T1-T3. TC & FA wont be finding a home anytime soon in T7…

Point being, we already know where the servers are going to stabilize. If you look at the current rankings right now and Tier them out based on rankings, your going to come up with near identical match-ups as we had before this system came into effect.

If people want to face off against new players, guilds, and strategies each week or even each day, the entire “server vs server” idea needs to be abandoned. We’re honestly better following a “Faction vs Faction” framework instead where players can log on each day to fight with a specific faction on one of the borderlands or EB. This way at least should solve the population imbalance, as well as, kill off server ques. This being by instituting multiple tiers that become available once one has been filled up.

This is inaccurate. Several servers that are getting crushed this week are nonetheless performing better than their relative rating would indicate and will gain rating. Several servers that are stomping face are not winning by as much as their rating would suggest and will lose rating. You can’t get an accurate rating by playing the same matches week after week. That much is fact.

What is debatable is whether or not Anets algorithm for determining probable score outcomes is accurate.

Good post. Splitting the community just lengthens queues. Matchmaking means you’re going to get matched against pugs or really bad teams 90% of the time when you’re pugging anyway. Baddies just need to blame something other than themselves when they lose, and matchmaking is the scapegoat of the day.

Besides, there’s a fix in place. Start a team.

Champion X is meaningless. There’s a matchmaking system, your win rate will approach 50% once you find your rating even if you have no thumbs and no fingers on your right hand. Thus, 400 games played = champion, and 400 is not a lot. Try X of the Arena.

Shrug, it’s always the kittenters who run at the mouth anyway. Who cares what they say? You don’t see too many top players talking trash, and anyone who blames their team for their losses is just bad.

Whether they’re worried about it or not, I’ve been impressed with IoJ. They spam siege like no ones business and put up a good showing when outnumbered in ZvZ. We don’t see much of them but that’s just a population issue.

Light whirl cleanses zero from the whirling character, it shoots bolts that cleanse allies.

Light whirl is a really strong effect too. It’s a pretty strong ability without making it a 10s water field. It is very annoying not to be able to drop it where the heals are needed in large groups though.

BlackBeard.2873:

My server is the NA pVp serer (MAnvil Rock) and I have seen a good number of small pvp teams running around. They are awesome in small skirmishes while you are with them, but they generally only stick around to take a camp, maybe a tower, before bolting back to the mists. I also don’t think they would be as good as some of the well-organized guilds who had great group tactics (Rekz on Ehmry Bay comes to mind) in anything larger than havoc-group size. If zerging becomes less effective…maybe.

None of those roaming groups have tourney players in them, and none of them are any good either. Well, none that I’ve encountered yet. I’m killing them 1v3, 3v5+npcs, etc, while specced for zerging, and I’m not real good. I did run into a marauder engi on your server who was decent though.

It does make me wonder how little crossover there actually is, i.e people who play both game modes. Anvil rock has a ton of good tpvpers, but this whole week I’ve seen all of one good player, in terms of fighting other players that is. Plenty of guys who are effective at bringing numbers to bear and being where they need to be, when they need to be there. Different skillsets.

If a few of your tournament players got together and came in for a day things would get pretty interesting, but I’m not sure how willing they would be to take a backseat to the commanders who know all the wvw mechanics, and I’m not sure how many of them have properly geared 80s of their preferred class, if at all.

Balekai.6083:

The trick to this is is actually being with 300-600 range of your main target. You take advantage of high armor, wells, mark triggers, condition removals, geomancy swapping, MoE dodging etc. so you get loads of area bleeds and mass regenerations off 24/7. You still have the ability to use skills at 900/1200 range when appropriate as enemies back off, run away, stack, are harrassing teammates etc.

This is really relevant. I didn’t check the numbers for Balekais build, but the one I posted up there applies over 11k aoe bleeding damage in a few seconds, every few seconds, and is tough enough to just keep doing it. You’re not the necro who sits back, spams 1, and screams for a peel whenever a thief gives you a funny look. You get on point aggressively and turn into a blender. Of course that’s stupid against opponents who are properly positioned, but tbh there are very few teams around who actually know what they’re doing with regard to positioning.

I’ve played a fair bit of tpvp last year (r45) and a little bit of wvw the last month or so (r42). There’s no real difference in skill for most regular players, whichever one they prefer. You do see a lot more guys in wvw who are mainly pve focused, but I’m not really talking about them.

There’s no question that the top 200 or so tpvpers are significantly better than anything I’ve encountered in wvw though. The only wvw guilds I’ve faced so far would field pretty average tournament teams.

On the other hand, I used to run very successful AVs for 2 of my wow servers, plus lead a top rvr guild in warhammer. I thought I was quite good at leading large pvp groups, but some of the commanders have blown me away with how well they read and predict the fight. Most are just doing the obvious and sensible thing, but a few are simply brilliant.

Plus there’s a few people around who play both anyway.

I like your build Balekai. Have you tested reaper’s protection over staff mastery? You’re understating the effectiveness of well of blood though. If you can stay in it for the duration, it’s the best scaling heal in the game by a large margin. Healing your team is nice too of course, as is the light field.

Here, try this:
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fQAQNAW7YjQad6haaa0bKAJFPj9kivHPqwxUKKndA-TsAg2CrIaS1krJTTymsNN8Y5xeBA

I posted a few up ages ago in the post your build thread. Xelfer used to run one too, you can probably find that around somewhere. Not sure that any of them would be particularly useful in wvw zergs, but you could definitely use them for small group roaming, and even solo if you don’t mind having to run away anytime you encounter a ranger.

BTW, if you’re stacking a little bit of healing power, try to remember that well of blood scales with it significantly better than anything else in the game. Although if you can keep your blood fiend alive he’s pretty OP too.

You can transfer immobilise with putrid mark before they go invulnerable with blurred frenzy. Take a couple of tries to figure out the timing. In a 1v1 just save your dodges for when you see them raise their pistol or when they leap a clone at you and you’ll probably win anyway. If you miss a dodge, transfer immob with putrid, if putrid is down, DS. Good shatter mesmers are rough, but they’re few and far between, and we definitely have the tools to beat them. Phantasms annoy me more.

I’d really rather have a link to a build page as well, rather than just a video that analyzes why you don’t want to take X trait, why you do want to take Y trait, etc. The video is great for its purpose, but after watching 2 of these I won’t be watching anymore. Without the build link I have to sit there and watch for ten minutes before I figure out whether you’re posting something I find interesting or something that everybody has already played around with 9 months ago. I don’t mean to sound overly critical btw, I appreciate the effort going into them, and both the videos I watched would be excellent for new necromancers. Just providing feedback.

Current round of optimisations extended it, now I’m lagging in wvw. I don’t enjoy pve (I don’t even enjoy wvw that much I was only playing it because I can’t tourney with the game in this state), so basically your game is unplayable for me right now. Changed all my settings from highest to lowest, no problems with my box. Rechecked ping and bandwidth tests, no problems with my connection. Just GW2.

3 weeks now. I want to play but it lags so bad it that the gameplay actually makes me angry. This is definitely a surefire way to lose customers, and yes, I’m a paying customer. Or at least I was, and would be still if you still had a working product.

Zenith.7301:

Mammoth.1975:

Ricochet is one of the top dps DD ranged autos in the game. Complaining about it being low damage casts the rest of your post in a dubious light.

So you claim. For being the top DD ranged axe mainhand sure is absent in dungeon groups, which value optimal DPS over all things.

It’s just math. It’s one of the top 3 or 4. Crossfire is another (without flanking), and guardian scepter, I don’t recall the whole list, but necro axe is one of the top 5 or so.

Ricochet is one of the top dps DD ranged autos in the game. Complaining about it being low damage casts the rest of your post in a dubious light.

Not arguing for one over the other, but it’s frankly ridiculous to say that insta cleansing is easier than dodge rolling out of the bad. Everyone keeps talking about how easy it is to counter epidemic, while ignoring that fact.

Just a nice reminder that you’re better off LF team than whining about matchmaking.

I love the look of them, except shadow fiend. I did prefer the gw1 versions of bone minions and jagged horrors, although in the jagged horrors case it’s only because the new one is so tiny. I’d love to see a return of the shambling horror, but the last thing I want is some generic zombie crap.

Hanzo.9624:

I love Flesh Golem for all of my builds, especially in small areas where he can pin people to the wall and do insane amounts of damage.

If he runs into an obstacle that they’re standing on the far side of, he can also hit with all the charge ticks. For example in clocktower, if they’re standing just off the raised centre area and he is up on it. If they’re a little further back, you get a massive knockback instead.

Similar concept to an old build I used to use btw:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/necromancer/Post-Your-Build-Thread/856001

Mark of revival is pretty awesome. It’s won me more fights than any other trait except maybe protection on wells. It’s situational, but in that situation, it’s amazing.

How is ‘necros are only good in numbers v numbers’ and ‘no one roams alone in higher tiers’ a coherent argument? Are you trying to say that necros are too strong in wvw? Or are you saying that we need a buff because you lost a 1vnumbers?

yski.7642:

Ravezaar.4951:

Necro isnt a burst Class. Most ppl who do any kind of decent PvP/WvW knows this.

Khalifa would probably like to have a word with you there.

Khalifas burst definitely gives you more ways to react than a thief or mes. Still remember the first few times I encountered him timewarped in lich though, and if you don’t have an answer, you’re probably losing that game. He is the reason I first tried corrupt boon iirc.

Spamwhining on the forums turns people off the class. To be fair, I have no idea how we are in PvE, but as far as PvP, 99% of the posters on here don’t play at a level where the tiny edges and corners we might lack actually impact results. In WvW we are probably stronger than most, not that it even matters, since 90% of WvW is numbers. Like the above poster mentioned, we’re good in zergs, and zergs are where the majority of the points AND the rank come from (which could use a change imo). I don’t think the escape comparison is entirely warranted however. Sure, we lack the ability to disengage that thieves (oh, the stealth class can disengage better than us, BUFFPLZ), mesmers, and to a lesser extent, eles have, but we’re pretty much better than anything else at disengaging. Rangers are situationally on par. I’ve escaped plenty of 1v5s. Hell, I’ve won some 1v4s.

In pvp, our real issues are rangers, which are a huge counter to us, being fotm, while eles, our other biggest counter, are still in their current ‘whatconditions?’ state. Then add engis damage being a bit better while providing very comparable utility, and you have the perfect storm for a necro hostile meta. Well, you could go deeper and ask why we’ve always fought with engis (and at one stage rangers) for the fifth spot on a team. When one class is doing well, the other is on the outer, because neither fill core roles that certain other classes have put their stamps on (guardian being the most obvious offender).

Sure, I’d like more mobility, perma vigor, four second stability on a five second recharge, and maybe swap staff 1 for lich 1 while we’re at it, but lacking those isn’t why necros aren’t currently seeing play.

The five main ‘necro’ problems I see:
1. Only one class has wards, bubbles, blocks, and CC to rotate.
2. Both explosives kits apply more pressure than any weapon set we have, mainly because their 1 skills are also aoe.
3. Only 2 classes can burst off their weapon set and defend off their mechanic+weapon set. This allows them to spec for burst and use utilities as actual utilities, rather than using those slots to prop the spec up like say, warriors have to.
4. Healing spring.
5. Elementalists.

Those are the things keeping necros off teams. There is no room to build around the synergies between them and other classes, because most of the team is autofilled by guardian/ele/mesmer. Simply providing more role differentiation between necro and engi would be a good start, because as things stand, if one is stronger, and one always will be by whatever tiny margin, the other isn’t wanted.