Guild Wars 2

Tell that to the engineer, who has 1 trait for skill recharge only, 1 for damage increase only, and 1 for range only, all in the same tree so you’ve got to grandmaster and spend ALL your major traits for an upgraded rifle.

And that upgraded rifle range isn’t 1200, either.

Rennoko.5731:

The real uncounterable weakness for necro in wvw is target break. We don’t have one. If you have ever heard about tunnel vision, it happens all the time in this game, and when your target can’t get “untargetted”, its a good target to spam or focus on, because it cannot prevent your no skill skills from hitting (like Heartseeker).

Ha. I remember having a discussion on this very forum with someone who thought that he was being focused on constantly because everyone was afraid of him.

No, really!

Quillixx.7034:

You do realize that the “difficult to master” comment you are parroting, is a running joke on the necro forum due to its satire, right? GW2 classes in general are very linear, and none of them are difficult to master, especially when pared up against some other MMOs.

When folks spout the “difficult to master” and its inverse “wants to push 2 buttons to win” memes, what they are actually doing is evading the need to explain what 3, or 6, or 19 buttons the other person should be pushing instead. This way, they present no rebuttable information and contribute nothing to the thread but their braggadocio.

Anyone who thinks necros are even remotely “difficult to master” needs to spend time on an engineer or a elementalist.

Jknifer.6803:

Sorry man, I don’t have the energy to argue with a bunch of bads who haven’t figured out how to play a class because they are too busy theory crafting…

Psst. Well recharge rate is not a “theory”.

I thought you might like to know that.

Of course, anyone who was actually using the skills instead of being on the forums, theorycrafting would not be needing a reminder. It’s not exactly something that someone actually using the abilities in the game would tend to miss.

Sometimes, that’s a point of pride :P

On an asura, does it really matter?

foofad.5162:

It’s not overpowered. If you spec like that you’re a one trick pony. I have an 80 thief and an 80 guardian, I should know.

If that one trick is a nearly guaranteed win, then that’s a hell of a trick.

That’s like saying “Oh this new elementalist chain that detonates all boons including block and stealth is perfectly balanced, because it’s a one trick pony!”

An 80 thief has only one purpose: ganking. Anyone who has an 80 thief should have their opinion disregarded, because they’re looking for free ganks, otherwise they’d have rolled a different class.

Once you start down the gank path, forever will it dominate your forum posts. Anything that doesn’t provide a cheap, easy kill in under 5 seconds will be an intolerable affront to class balance. The existence of any weapon anywhere in a class’s arsenal that might stop a gank is now justification for the gank: if you choose ANY OTHER WEAPON other than the one that stops the gank, you are a noob and deserved to die to the gank. If there is one ability anywhere in the possible builds that can stop a gank, all other builds deserved their gank. If you have any abilities at all down at the time of the gank, then death under 5 seconds is just good game balance.

And don’t let those noobs tell you otherwise. Anyone who can’t see the skill involved in ganking is a noob. Anyone who ever died to a gank is a noob, and anyone complaining about ganks is a noob. So l2p, noob.

Only a necromancer has his trademark condition lasting less long than every other class who has it, and is simultaneously the most vulnerable class to it.

This isn’t a problem.

F1 skills need adrenaline to work at all.

Other classes don’t have and can’t gain adrenaline.

They will get “not enough adrenaline” messages unless they’re another warrior who does have some adrenaline.

Problem solved before it even existed.

Try that against a human opponent and let us know how it works out for you.

Better yet, video it so we can laugh when the melee who can’t touch you does a leap move and proceeds to school you on why you need stability.

Actually, bounces might be EXACTLY what the devs mean, if you are to take their stated reasoning as truthful (a stretch, I know).

The devs said that the problem was that some AoE was doing more single-target damage than single-target abilities could do.

Now, what happens to a target that has a very damaging bounce hit him, hit something else then bounce back? Double damage. That sound like any engineer ability we know? Something beginning with the word “Static” and ending in “Discharge”?

And this is why Engineers who don’t play their Engineers should delete immediately. Not only do the devs think you’re “fine”, they’re using the fact that you’re waiting for them to get their act together against you! That engineer gathering dust in your character slot is being cited as proof by the devs that they don’t need to fix the class, ever!

If you aren’t playing your engi until it’s “fixed”, delete if you ever want to see it fixed.

For PvE, I used to use a static discharge with bombs build.

1. drop turret of choice
2. drop BoB
3. drop fire bomb
4. after fire bomb goes off, but before Bob goes off, det turret
5. BoB goes off.

For anyone stupid enough to be in the radius (hi mobs!), that gives you 2 explosions, 6 stacks of might, and a blowout. Veery nasty.

Now, if there was only a way to get a player to sit in the radius while BoB ticks down but not knock you down while you’re dropping all that, then this might actually have some utility outside kindergarden PvE.

Which illustrates why I used to use my engineer.

So give with one hand when you take with the other. For those skills that you reduce their power, expand their max targets. They’ll be more effective against zergs, not less and will address the issue that the dev actually mentioned, hurting one person more than a single target skill does.

Although I must say that bouncing attacks that hit the same target twice certainly fit this definition more than meteor shower does. Maybe fix that instead.

You’re right!

Because if any of your defenses are down, for any reason (like maybe you were PvPing on a PvP server, oh the horror!) then you obviously deserved to be 3-shotted because those three shots take skilllllllllll.

For those of you who think “everyone’s making the same complaints” is some kind of valid point, just how many different ways do you want us to say “fix it”? Do you want us to alternate capital letters or something so that you can feel fresh and various?

There are actual suggestion threads. I suggest you go find them if these hurt your eyes.

For a interesting build based on both condition damage and straight damage:
http://intothemists.com/calc/?build=-sBCGw;0VKVP0d4BL-60;9;4JTJ;046-24B46v

Both of your offhands have interrupt generators, and both sets have a block (which reflect missiles) and at least one interrupt. Your strategy would be to keep the opponent bleeding for the 10% buff, interrupt him as often as possible for confusion, give him the choice of killing himself or yielding the initiative. Your goal is to get him to 25% and stun him for the finishing combo.

You have 2 condition cleaners, reflects, gap closers, stuns, and a knockdown. Also you need to maintain 2-3 conditions then parry counterattacks. Keeping that all running will keep anyone busy.

I’d actually prefer going axe/mace for the second set for more offense and changing out sundering for either embrace the pain or shield mastery.

I’d recommend that you not focus on any more condition damage or duration than is already in the build, but instead get as much might as possible, as that buff is twice as strong for you as for non-hybrids. Ideally you’ll save adrenaline for when you need a mace stun, and keep the target bleeding and weakened, both to limit dodges and for the 10% bonus damage with maces and 10% bonus when bleeding and 12% bonus when adrenaline full.

Most likely, they’ll nerf all standard AoE to 4 max targets, and 3-target AoE to 2-targets.

Their truthful motivation will actually be the culling issue: They didn’t buy enough server horsepower to handle the game they ended up with, and because their servers can’t hack WvW without hiding 95% of the players from 100% of the players, they’re taking measures to make their servers do less work.

Next they’ll “fix” conditions by reducing max stacks by half, because tracking conditions is apparently too hard on the server.

Yeah, it’s not so great for builds that aren’t focused on boon duration to have to burn all your rune slots if you want to cruise above fail speed. Best to carry a staff, run the 2 shouts, and pray that you have time to swap in your real stuff before a fight begins.

Because you can’t swap in your real rune set quite that easily.

Groups that make you ping your gear to make sure you are fragile enough for their tastes deserve to sit and wait while you run back to them. Karma’s a kitten.

Seriously, we need to get a handle on these WoW rejects who are bringing their addiction for inspection views to games where such behavior isn’t wanted. Maybe Anet should seriously consider making this an offense meriting stripping the offender of his tokens and equipment for that dungeon.

It’s probably better to start with what you want to do in pvp and work your way back to what weapons do the job best, instead of starting with the weapons and finding a role for them.

If the role you want is a condition warrior, then you have to consider how you’re going to protect your bleeds from one-condition removal skills. So you have to apply other conditions as well.

The conditions that a warrior can apply that last a non-negligible amount of time are:
Bleeding (of course)
Burning (very limited, bow burst skill and its combos only)
Confusion(From distracting strikes, great with maces, shields and hammers)
Crippled(low duration but might force them to use their cleansing)
Immobilize(same as above, but even moreso)
Vulnerability(Very easy to keep up with rending strikes, rifle, mace, axe, greatsword)
Weakness(mace, horn, hammer – Cull the weak and sundering mace both magnify damage when target is weakened)

So with that info, you can start a build on your own, deciding what other conditions you want to apply. I’d recommend using a poison sigil and some tanky traits because a condition warrior is a slower killer so you have to live long enough to win.

You know what’s even more tired and boring than people complaining about necro?

People who complain about people complaining about necro.

At least the first group can point to some actual, documented problems. The second group’s complaints consist of whining that they don’t want to hear it and/or some magical thinking fallacy that complaints will drive away the gods… er devs.

Perhaps it’s time we treat the second group the same way they treat the first.

This is just armchair theorycrafting here, but…

What about 4x pack/2x Altruism? Both of them proc boons to “nearby allies” for a free heal, and the swiftness buff synergizes well with your newfound love for staff.

Ravenmoon.5318:

Add the swiftness to catch up even faster to an enemy or god forbid closing his path with line of warding.

If someone hits a wall that took you a full second to cast (which is forever in a pursuit) and hits something he could have dodged right through and gotten clean away after you effectively gave up the pursuit by stopping to cast, then the target was a total nub who would have died anyway to a more reliable ability.

Sirevanac.3178:

Getting ready is looking for alternative options. Here, I read “if they nerf them I quit Necro.”. :P

Yeah, we could all go minion master as an alternative option!

Oh, wait…

Well, there’s always our powerful and effective lifesteal builds!

Oh, wait…

Well, I’m sure if we just dig deep enough, we can find an alternate build that no one has previously discovered. No, really!

P.S. Yeah, you talk all the dirt you want about “unwarranted shrieking panic”. Anet doesn’t CARE that the wells are already on a massive cooldown, just like they didn’t CARE that we have 1 freaking second of fear when they nerfed THAT.

There has been no identifiable pattern, EVER, of the change-makers thinking what happens to necro when they swing the nerfbat at the other classes. If we don’t get hit, it will be out of sheer dumb luck.

What’s actually unwarranted is thinking that anet will suddenly change it’s ways through the sheer power of your positive thinking.

Not really.

Nightmare court acts like they’re rebels from an overmind, but like most rebels they just want to replace the control scheme with their own, more tyrannical one.

Joining the soundless and taking mercenary contracts from the Pale Tree? I’d go with that. She wants my help, she can pay for it, not place a gaes on me that burns everytime I go do a jumping puzzle instead of warring de dragonz 24/7.

1st, I wanted to experience all the racial storylines, so I had to take one.

2nd, I wanted to play a countercultural character, so it was going to be either necro or engineer, but engineer has a max turret cap which conflicts with the sylvari elite.

So I have a Sylvari Vigil Necro who dresses in the brightest and prettiest colors so people can tell for sure when she enters death shroud

While slaughtering random bunnies for more life force, my necro happily contemplates all the new and interesting life that she’s making room and food for! It’s wonderful!

Die, wicked bunnies!

Lighthorse.5164:

My question is would Sword/x be a viable alternative for hammer? The sword burst damage is not affected by adren lvls. as it also has a stun effect that the time is increased on per adren lvl. Just curious about how sword is affected by fire field.

Flurry gives more bleeds for every level of adrenaline and it immobilizes, not stuns. That said, you don’t get a lot more bleeds, so spamming L1 flurries is perfectly viable. Sword has a leap finisher so you can get fire armor leaping into your fire field.

Giving up hammer, you’re giving up a lot of interrupts. Although immobilize is nasty, it isn’t an interrupt.

“Embrace the incompetence”

For every 3 uplevelled nubs you gank at a WvW jumping puzzle, automatically post to the forums about how the necromancer isn’t broken.

a cone attack of 1200? Wow =)

At least make the cone narrower if you’re going to do that! =)

As for the stacking problem against massive mobs, I prefer bursting.

When you exceed the maximum stacks or a balance-determined maximum duration time on a condition, then half the existing stacks/duration get applied immediately in a burst, but at 50% the damage they would have applied had they continued.

My preferred solution is for there to be no “infinite” removal AT ALL.

You can’t remove an infinite stack of burn or poison, you may only remove a set number of ticks.

You can’t remove all bleeds, you may only remove a set number of stacks.

You most certainly may not ever ever ever remove all conditions everywhere.

Various condition removal abilities will have more or less units of conditions they can remove, and the current “remove all” will be adjusted to shave some ticks off of all existing conditions.

That fixes the removal problem.

Actually, you should totally advise your friend to get bright and happy colors for her sylvari necro. Death is really just the celebration of making room for new life! I recommend Lemon Ice and Jalapeno Dye with Royal Rose accents.

Having the prettiest necro around just makes it more impactful when she shrouds.

Eh, it’s as good a solution as any. As long as the minion isn’t forced down our throats like it currently is, I don’t care what solution it is.

Massssster the Death Shroud.

Swimsasa Stoon.8936:

I tried guardian but don’t like its mobility

Then you’ll despise necro. We have a nice signet for run speed, but lack of mobility is actually in our design statement by the devs, and it shows.

With Guardian, you have JI/GS leap/sword leap/Staff AoE swift/2 shouts that give swift.

Necro has locust signet and spectral walk.

Space for other suggestions. Remember to quote the dev vision statement!

Necomancers also have multiple movement disabling abilities(8), while allows them to chase down enemies who are low on health(9).

In practice, a necro is going to seldom chase down someone who’s running away. It certainly isn’t going to compete with a high-mobility class in that regard. One aspect of the problem is that CC means you merely knock the necro down then run.

Suggestion: Make entering DS a stun break. This is a big change, but this or something very like this would need to happen in order for the “allows them to chase down enemies” to inspire fear rather than derisive laughter. DS is already a tightly controlled state, and if dying doesn’t qualify as a stun break, I’m not sure what would.

Suggestion: Add immunity to fear to Master of Terror. This would make lore sense and make it so that at least some necros will be spending more time spreading fear than suffering from it :P

They are able to combine condition damage with raw damage(6): Needs help. The curses traitline makes some small steps in this direction, but fails at the end because power/prec/critdam is synergistic and condition damage is NOT. Here’s the ways they interact:

2% damage per condition GM trait: There are 11 total conditions, which makes the total attainable damage boost 22%, which sounds impressive until you realize that 5 of them are at the extreme end of short-duration, with some of the rest being low duration or ones a necro can’t keep up. Compare this to the guardian, who has a 10% damage trait vs burning enemies, and another 10% trait for any condition at all.

66% chance on crit for a bleed. Good chance, microscopic duration.

That’s it. That is all the necromancer interactions between condition damage and other damage. Might stacks both, but we have limited access to that. Traited BiP has 50% uptime (boon duration extends this, but we aren’t a boon class that sees much other benefit from boon gear).

There is no way within the existing damage framework for any type of non-condition stat to increase condition damage.

Suggestion: Reduce BiP untraited to 24 seconds because more reliable access to might rewards combining condition damage with raw damage. Make reaper’s might apply a flat 6 stacks (while in DS only) to give condition users a reason to rotate into death shroud.

Suggestion: Increase target the weak to 2.5% per condition. More than 6 conditions on a target for any significant time is rare.

The necro boasts the highest natural health of all the caster classes(1), and also has death shroud to extend that life total even higher(2). While they don’t have some of the escape or damage reduction capabilities that other classes boast(3), they do have a lot of ways to win attrition fights(4). They have access to poison on multiple weapons(5), they are able to combine condition damage with raw damage(6), and they have multiple disables to interrupt enemy skills(7). Necomancers also have multiple movement disabling abilities(8), while allows them to chase down enemies who are low on health(9).

This post is going to assume that the dev statement on Necros is an accurate vision of what they want necros to be, and for people to make suggestions to help make that vision an actual reality. If you can, please preface each suggestion by quoting the line of the dev statement you address.

1, 2 and 3 are obviously true, though that doesn’t mean suggestions to improve that would be unwelcome. 5 is true but could be made more true by making axe 1 poison enemies as well.

Actually, I for one wouldn’t mind massive sweeping buffs ^^

If the existence of people being upset at a problem causes the people who are in charge of fixing problems to avoid doing so, then the people who are upset are NOT NOT NOT the problem.

Paying my bills annoys me. That doesn’t mean I get to burn them instead of paying them. I don’t wanna go to work. But I have to.

Broken classes attract complaints. That doesn’t mean you get a free pass to ignore them…

Your theory amounts to “the game fixers need to grow up”. If I were at anet, that might be gratuitously insulting…

It would be nice if there was some kind of indication from the devs whether this is a bug or intended. I doubt they can bust us for abusing the Siphoned power “bug” being as we can’t avoid using it, but people should be put on notice if it’s going to disappear one day.

If DS #1 fired more rapidly you could use it for might stacking on your existing conditions, hence making DS not a total waste of time for a conditionmancer.

Maybe the devs are thinking that epi is the big-cannon AoE for conditionmancers, so DS is the big-cannon AoE for power/crit players.

That “easy access to stability” is via a grandmaster trait in a trait line few people use… at least ones wishing to deal damage. All 3 seconds of it – you have to be in DS to use it so no chaining, no quickness so you can’t use it for burst…

Yoda: “Engineer, or do not. There is no nerf.”

What about taking the DPS variant and replacing dual-handed with distracting strikes? You’ve got a LOT of interrupts in this build and therefore the potential to continuously reapply confusion, which combines nicely with retaliation.

Neither. Go for Giver’s and Fire. They’re both on-crit procs, but fire is the one that procs when you don’t have a condition to transfer to the enemy, giving you a nice combination of defense and offense.