I think all the fractals are in a pretty good state right now, except for my favorite one, Thaumanova — it’s too long for the average PUG that isn’t able to solo/duo the individual rooms. They each have their hiccups and challenges, especially depending on the group’s ability to deal with Toxic Trails, Flux Bombs, and Social Awkwardness. Still, none of them require that much time (except getting to Anomaly, as noted), except when folks misunderstand the mechanics. And for those who do understand the mechanics, each of them can be done much more quickly.
My top two choices for them to work on next: Thauma and Cliffside (it’s a lot faster these days, but I think we can skip the first pair of seals on T3-4).
Honestly, I personally think neither cliffside nor Thaumanova need major revisiting. Anomaly needs some changes such as a breakbar to interrupt attacks and less exploding fields starting at 50% (those two go pretty much hand in hand; add a cc bar to him when he starts blowing up tons of platforms, break him and they won’t be destroyed, don’t break him and they will. Either you play it safe and you go ranged without breaking him or you go all in and break for a lot more dps). Everything else in this fractal (not being able to split up and do the rooms at the same time) is a player-related issue and should be treated as such, aka the players having to improve and finding out how to do it best. I’d be cool with reducing the portal-pull range though and maybe finally fixing the bug where you get pulled and catapulted to the moon where death awaits.
Cliffside is fine as is, the first seal doesn’t take long anyway. Can’t say I’m fond of the hammer-mechanic, but there’s people who are and taking that away would pretty much destroy the whole fractal.
Is this the full list of balance changes coming with the patch or is there more waiting for us?
Piercing Light: This trait no longer causes traps to daze enemies and will instead inflict the Slow condition on enemies for 1.5 seconds on the initial ‘trigger’ of a trap.
Also, since it doesn’t mention PvP only, is it safe to assume this change will hit PvE too?
Yes. Per OP “Note that all changes listed are global changes except for those that are designated as “PvP only.””
Hm, defiance bar impact though. This means 75 defiance bar damage per trap (1.5s of slow). This is down from 100 damage per (0.25s of daze).
As for the slight daze effect I found it very useful when dealing with large # mobs, but I’ve yet to play with lots of slow. Not sure how it would affect things for ranged enemy units. For example, the Mordrem Thrasher. It would spin and move to me, but hit a trap and it would stop moving. Will it now keep moving as normal speed, but attack slower? How exactly does slow affect enemy mobs?
Oh I did not see that, thanks for pointing it out.
Take longbow over rifle, even as power (this way, you can still generate a small amount of might with fire fields and skill 3, also higher dps)
Get a condi set additionally once you have the funds and use them depending on the situation.
Other than that it really boils down to knowing enemy attacks and their patterns, how to best respond to them etc.; basically, something you will learn just by playing.
Any chance this could be a thing?
They’re always really high in demand and the only way to get them right now is some really tedious farm in Kessex Hills.
Would be could if we could get some nodes in the fractal to harvest or get them outside of the boss chest at the end, even if it’s just T4 and somewhat small quantities. If you really want to restrict the access to them, maybe just make them available in the droptable of the challenge mode wobble chests, maybe with a few guaranteed ones at the end?
It would fit thematically and at the same time it would add a drop-source for them, specifically in an area of the game where you’re likely to find players using the spores in the first place. Also, toxic consumables will probably always be in demand, so it’d be a nice “you didn’t hit the jackpot but at least you got something”-reward when you roll them.
Is this the full list of balance changes coming with the patch or is there more waiting for us?
Piercing Light: This trait no longer causes traps to daze enemies and will instead inflict the Slow condition on enemies for 1.5 seconds on the initial ‘trigger’ of a trap.
Also, since it doesn’t mention PvP only, is it safe to assume this change will hit PvE too?
Just a few days ago, I was joining some random silverwastes runs through LFG which went just fine, since it really isn’t hard.
I’m not sure if this is an issue on NA, but on EU it definitely isn’t.
I brought mesmer up because it’s easier to survive on them than it is on necro while they bring more to a group. Necro does bring neither good dps nor group support, which is just bad.
Also, you say “other classes can exhaust their evades/blocks/etc.” but necro can’t exhaust shroud? It’s the same concept, just in another way. Shroud when it comes to damage mitigation is basically a block that runs more on damage taken than duration.
Like I said, I don’t think necro should be ele-tier dps, but letting it have trash-tier dps and not many means of support, even less so unique ones is not acceptable. Same with blaming it on its “superior survivability”, which, again, is outclassed by other classes.
necro is the best example of that. high health, even higher health through class mechanic. give him too much dps and its “unfair” to other classes like elementalist / thief where you need “skillful gameplay” to get kitten done, or broken in other gamemodes.
just look at the condi build and all the “solos”. a little bit of skill involved, the rest is carry through healing conditions and facetank everything because healthbars over the top…
That’s bullkitten.
Most of those “solos” go highly defensive, options you would normally drop. Parasitic, Rise… all picks you should never take if you want to get the most dps.
Shroud is also highly overrated and doesn’t do as much as many people think, it’s just good at stopping some chip damage, for high damage hits it basically drains your shroud anyway and leaves you without skills you might need otherwise/messing with your rotation. Other than that necros pretty much only have dodges and positioning to rely on, CPC if it comes to projectiles.
Meanwhile mesmer for example can kitten blocks + distorts and even apply it to half of a raid squad + ridiculous dps increases thanks to perma quickness + alacrity, war has the same health bar while using a wep with inbuilt low cd evade and buffing his subgroup by ridiculous amounts with EA, PS and banners.
People are highly overrating the natural defense of a necro who isn’t running additional safety nets.
That being said, I’d gladly trade some of my HP/shroud for more dps or start paying with health for some of my skills instead.
This one sentence explains the entire problem with raids in GW2 right now.
Playing the profession/build you most enjoyed was okay when the game first came out, but for those players wanting to raid, ArenaNet has adopted a policy of min/max or go away – or, at the very least, min/max or forever be looked down upon by the raid community (because of the huge disparity between professions/builds)
It has been bad for the game. It has brought elitism and nastiness once reserved or a tiny percentage of dungeon/fractal runners front and center in the GW2 endgame.
A game that used to be about just enjoying yourself and creating characters that were just a tiny bit unique is now about copy pasting and conforming to a single accepted playstyle.
And, the worst part is, it isn’t necessary. It is 100% possible to implement challenging content without doing this. For some bizarre reason, the developers have begun moving away from the inclusive and fun-focused philosophy they had in the early game days toward the toxic mess the game is currently becoming.
I know that sounds extreme, but I hate seeing this happen to GW2. What was once this shining unique gem in the market has become another me-too clone-the-player-next-to-you game. And, I think their approach to raids are the single biggest reason for that.
3 years ago: Why won’t groups take my bear bow ranger? I do a lot of damage away from the group, my bear tanks, and my knock backs keep the enemies away.
But seriously, the fix is to buff power reaper. It’s also underperforming in pvp and wvw.
Yes and all welcome none meta group took those players and completed dungeons just fine.
As is also possible with raids.
Yes it would be if time limitation went out the window sure.
The enrage is not a problem, considering there have even been groups who killed vale guardian after 50 minutes of constant fighting because they decided to run ten heal eles.
Yea I seen the 10 guardian vale guardian aswell…. were are the 10 ranger, 10 engi, 10 necro, 10 warrior, 10 thief, 10 mesmer and 10 revenant kills tho?
And can you do it on any of the other 8 bosses not counting escort here.
Just because no one has done it doesn’t mean it wouldn’t be possible.
Also I’m not sure about the enrage timers for most bosses, but pretty sure the only ones where severe lack of dps wipes you are gors, sab and trio.
That being said, you shouldn’t be able to complete a full raid without a proper team comp anyway, that includes a part of the squad actually being able to deal damage.
This one sentence explains the entire problem with raids in GW2 right now.
Playing the profession/build you most enjoyed was okay when the game first came out, but for those players wanting to raid, ArenaNet has adopted a policy of min/max or go away – or, at the very least, min/max or forever be looked down upon by the raid community (because of the huge disparity between professions/builds)
It has been bad for the game. It has brought elitism and nastiness once reserved or a tiny percentage of dungeon/fractal runners front and center in the GW2 endgame.
A game that used to be about just enjoying yourself and creating characters that were just a tiny bit unique is now about copy pasting and conforming to a single accepted playstyle.
And, the worst part is, it isn’t necessary. It is 100% possible to implement challenging content without doing this. For some bizarre reason, the developers have begun moving away from the inclusive and fun-focused philosophy they had in the early game days toward the toxic mess the game is currently becoming.
I know that sounds extreme, but I hate seeing this happen to GW2. What was once this shining unique gem in the market has become another me-too clone-the-player-next-to-you game. And, I think their approach to raids are the single biggest reason for that.
3 years ago: Why won’t groups take my bear bow ranger? I do a lot of damage away from the group, my bear tanks, and my knock backs keep the enemies away.
But seriously, the fix is to buff power reaper. It’s also underperforming in pvp and wvw.
Yes and all welcome none meta group took those players and completed dungeons just fine.
As is also possible with raids.
Yes it would be if time limitation went out the window sure.
The enrage is not a problem, considering there have even been groups who killed vale guardian after 50 minutes of constant fighting because they decided to run ten heal eles.
Hold on people … don’t get too excited over what Bobby said there. It was a little vague but you can see a big diversion from anything raid-like in that statement.
They are investigating DIFFERENT METHODS to make the story more ACCESSIBLE. That tells me it’s not raid, as we know it in GW2.
Yeah, people should hold their panic and speculation. I haven’t said anything other than we’re looking at ways to make the story accessible. That could take any number of forms.
;)
I assume you thought about that, but why not make it a little living story episode? If that’s feasible. Would give players a way to experience the raid story and you can sprinkle some rewards into that, all the while showcasing some of the things that happen in raids. Could also add some small achievements to it.
If that’s something along the lines of being doable with the time/resources you have, I think that’d be a way to please a large amount of players.
Bad condi… I think not. See below.
Survivability: you have two lives.
Nuff said.
It is bad. Other classes can do much better than that. We just got some gimmicks that aren’t good most of the time.
Shroud does basically nothing for your survivability when you have classes that can kitten blocks, inulvn and whatnot, even more so affecting multiple party members at the same time.
As for what I like about necro, I always liked the bursts and the idea of actually being able to kitten kitten up while making sure your enemies can’t escape. Sadly, there’s not much that in actual gameplay thanks to crappy dps, how necro is supposed to work etc.
you are ridiculous, go actually play a necro. i dare you to solo lupicus without sacrificing anything to do so
i do play necro. daily. im done with you. youve proven you only want a OP class so you can faceroll raids solo. bye
LOL
nice joke
Subli is absolutely right. The fact that you react like this shows that you have no idea about necro.
And also, you say “necro has plenty of HP so they should be weaker” yet you have warriors which can bring more DPS (even if just slightly so), have the same base HP, heavy armor and plenty of defensive options, if they wish to bring them. On top of that, they are capable of increasing group DPS by ridiculous amounts through various means just by… well, doing their thing. How again is the spot necro is in justified?
my warrior has shroud? NO WAY!!!!! i guess youll just ignore me everytime i say necro deserves a buff huh? just goes right over your head. ive said it in every post so far. but it does not deserve damage on par with eles.
The point is that shroud is absolutely trash for defense and going into it is a dps loss on power necro.
I’m not saying it should be ele tier damage, not sure where you got that from, but it isn’t close to deserving being absolute garbage-tier dps while also bringing nothing else meaningful to the squad.
Not that I disagree with your point as a whole but again, saying necro brings nothing meaningful besides its DPS is completely wrong. Just Epidemic and Plague Signet is better utility than every non-support class, and necro has plenty more useful tricks. Necro’s problem is literally only the fact that its DPS is 50-70% that of other classes.
Other classes have much more complex problems but tbh necro is a fairly well designed class overall, it just has poor numbers atm.
The problem with this is, while cpc/epi/plague signet etc. can definitely be good utility skills, they’re heavily condi biased and make a power necro perform indirectly or even directly (cpc self weakness for example) worse. If we want to rephrase this then let me say that power necro needs meaningful support.
Plague signet is only worthwhile at Matt, on Xera you generally want to avoid bringing condis otherwise it wouldn’t be bad there either and like Sublimatio pointed out – Epidemic is great, but only as long as adds aren’t just pulled in and cleaved down, like every proper group would do. Leaves bouncing which is pretty good, but in the current state of necro not worth taking two for because you just lose so much more. CPC is good utility for condi necs, but absolutely horrendous for power like I already said.
Everything else is either highly gimmicky/not necessary/a (highly) kitten version of something another class can do.
you are ridiculous, go actually play a necro. i dare you to solo lupicus without sacrificing anything to do so
i do play necro. daily. im done with you. youve proven you only want a OP class so you can faceroll raids solo. bye
LOL
nice joke
Subli is absolutely right. The fact that you react like this shows that you have no idea about necro.
And also, you say “necro has plenty of HP so they should be weaker” yet you have warriors which can bring more DPS (even if just slightly so), have the same base HP, heavy armor and plenty of defensive options, if they wish to bring them. On top of that, they are capable of increasing group DPS by ridiculous amounts through various means just by… well, doing their thing. How again is the spot necro is in justified?
my warrior has shroud? NO WAY!!!!! i guess youll just ignore me everytime i say necro deserves a buff huh? just goes right over your head. ive said it in every post so far. but it does not deserve damage on par with eles.
The point is that shroud is absolutely trash for defense and going into it is a dps loss on power necro.
I’m not saying it should be ele tier damage, not sure where you got that from, but it isn’t close to deserving being absolute garbage-tier dps while also bringing nothing else meaningful to the squad.
you are ridiculous, go actually play a necro. i dare you to solo lupicus without sacrificing anything to do so
i do play necro. daily. im done with you. youve proven you only want a OP class so you can faceroll raids solo. bye
LOL
nice joke
Subli is absolutely right. The fact that you react like this shows that you have no idea about necro.
And also, you say “necro has plenty of HP so they should be weaker” yet you have warriors which can bring more DPS (even if just slightly so), have the same base HP, heavy armor and plenty of defensive options, if they wish to bring them. On top of that, they are capable of increasing group DPS by ridiculous amounts through various means just by… well, doing their thing. How again is the spot necro is in justified?
All this would need, at most basic implementation, is to add three more wings to that list, “Salvation Pass (easy mode),” for example. No complete engineering needed for that. The infrastructure is already in place, they just need to apply it.
At this point, I need to interject. I am familiar with the process of changing to a multi-modality system of game presentation, having written about it long ago, when I was a journalist writing about another company and another game. For that game, too, players said “No big deal.” And they were absolutely wrong. They said, “Just tweak a few stats, lower a few spawns, and voila, you’ve got it!” No, that’s not how it worked. And that’s not how I think it would work for Guild Wars 2.
Thanks for digging that post up for me, couldn’t be bothered to search for it.
Probably only counts for new boxes given they replaced the old items by new, identical ones. No idea.
Also, this is probably the wrong sub to ask, pvp/general sub would’ve been better.
The current raids already support being able to select three different wings from a list. All this would need, at most basic implementation, is to add three more wings to that list, “Salvation Pass (easy mode),” for example. No complete engineering needed for that. The infrastructure is already in place, they just need to apply it.
Don’t you think it is quite… presumptuous to keep saying this when even devs said in the past that this as it is simply not true? You keep saying “it’s not much effort”, but you have NO proof whatsoever of backing it up that their code actually allows for simply changing this without having to dig really deep.
Do you code yourself, did you see the code, can you actually back up that it IS easy for them to add multiple difficulties and easily tweak the values to levels they consider up-to-par with what they expect/think should be right without having to take resources from other content? If you can’t, stop saying it despite having been told not to by the very people working on this game.
Why would they even nerf it? They didn’t even consider it? I don’t even think there’s any backlash on how challenge mode would be too difficult and needs nerfing?
Topic seems pretty pointless imo, even if I agree
What I want is that the golem casts his charge, leaving me to do other things instead of how it is now.
The player should always have control over the charge, I would never use it if the golem just did it.
The charge cast time should just be instant for the necro and maybe give the golem a small buildup. That way necros can use it while stunned as a counter-pressure mechanism. The huge casttime just make the skill clunky and while it occasionally has good moments its better to use anything else.
That’s what I meant. The necro tells the golem to use the skill (insta-cast), the golem then prepares to charge where it’s supposed to. I see how my wording wasn’t clear though.
They are, and should remain, the most difficult content in the game.
The biggest problem with Raids is that they’re made artificially difficult through weird and cheap mechanics (most notably the enrage timer and not being able to resurrect defeated players), rather than actually programming the boss encounters to be complex and intricate. I’ve got 2 main suggestions for making Raids feel more genuinely challenging rather than artificially difficult:
1. Remove the enrage timer and inability to resurrect defeated players.
2. Add in some degree of randomness in the timing of every Raid boss’ attacks.
3. Rework whatever mechanics need to be reworked as a result of these two changes above.
If you can manage to implement these things into all the Raids, I can pretty much guarantee people will find them a lot more fun, while still staying just as challenging, if not more so.
What?
1. Enrage timer is something you will barely ever hit (actually, we never hit enrage even when practicing bosses on release), if you do your group is doing something severely wrong. If you permadie, it’s your fault. Get better. The game isn’t to blame here.
2. Randomness is the worst to have in raids, at least when it comes down to important things and even more so if the different outcomes can vary heavily in how fast the group has to adapt or similar (which is one of the reasons I dislike KC’s bomb-or-phantasm roll). Outside of that it would really depend on what gets randomness added to it and to what degree, but I don’t think it would be a good change.
How? i actually dont know how to do it or even start it without the story.
You don’t need to start anything.
You just do the exact same things again (help the NPCs, gather berries, gather suet from mobs, once you have everything you go to the springs and craft the elixir), then you can go
The map is nice, but sadly the story is so awfully stretched by unskippable dialogue, “do the heart quests and collect stuff” and more dialogue. I for one would definitely prefer just having 2 short-ish story instances which actually feature more playtime than dialogue. I know the devs put a lot of effort into this and it’s appreciated, but just sitting around, listening to dialogue for most of the time is simply boring, especially if you plan on replaying the story.
(Spoilers ahead I guess?)
Also, the fight against the ice beast is really, really messy. That thing really likes to get stuck on garm for minutes in the worst places, so it can’t even rush to an ice shard you have to break, but even if it does, it enjoys randomly interrupting its charge or simply running OVER the ice shard just as much. This is not only a frustrating time waster, but also makes the 5min achievement a lot harder than it should be and it would be great if some devs could look into that and fix any issues they might find there.
(Spoilers end here)
Otherwise no complaints here and I really feel like this new pace you’re trying to keep is much better overall. Keep up the good work.
What I want is that the golem casts his charge, leaving me to do other things instead of how it is now.
Also, transfusion can heal minions, including flesh golem. They’re just lower priority than other players.
Happy to see so much discussion here! I can give a little more non spoilery info.
It is going to be a single fractal, not two like the other ep 1 fractals.
Mechanically and story wise it is almost nothing like the original. You will get tinges of nostalgia but we very much wanted this to be a completely unique experience for both players who played the original and new players. The prime focus is on the encounters and the combat, so expect some fun challenges
Warm up your dodge keys folks!
Also… don’t neglect the protection boon!
Sounds good.
And while I know you guys don’t wanna answer with yes/no if you’re not 100% certain, others and I brought up the idea of the Breachmaker-battle against Scarlet’s hologram as boss fractal, in this thread too. Is this something you guys ever considered or could see actually getting implemented into fractals?
The thing is, content shouldn’t force players out of their comfort zone. This is entertainment. Yes, one must put some effort in and make minor sacrifices, but it should be enjoyable above all else.
This is most people issue with raiding – there’s some decidedly un-fun factors that are inherent to their design.
That is an opinion. Nothing more, nothing less. You and others might not enjoy the idea of having to adapt to each situation, maybe even take weapons/playstyles you usually don’t enjoy as much, but there are enough people who do enjoy being forced out of their comfort zone, maybe even learning to love a playstyle they hated before. Those are the ones raiding is made for. If you prefer playing whatever the hell you want all the time, sure, that’s cool, but you’re not the targeted audience for raids and you should understand that.
People have already touched a bit on the survivability aspect, but this is really the main reason why Viper necro is used so much in fractal and why many groups are t4 viper necro only (with the exception of an optional ranger).
Viper necro has parasitic trait and has better heal-over-time than warrior heal sig. With multiple enemies, the trait alone can make a necro heal so much that they are practically immune to damage. Add to that, 50% damage reduction from “Rise”, shroud when focused by a boss, and stability/escape with low CD.
All this while doing acceptable damage for a class on full dps gear, and exceptional dps when coordinating epidemic, and you got a very pug friendly class where the priority is to finish a fractal in decent time with minimum fuss. It also work well with the fractal tonics which provides endurance and speed buffs which necro commonly lacks. the defense tonic work well with the high health pool that necro got (and in shroud), and the offensive tonic combos with the parasitic trait.
I don’t see the point in running parasitic and rise, you give up so much for it. What do pugs drop for rise, anyway? It’s even more weird when you see those people still die frequently…
Nor can I raid for 15 minutes and take a break and do more later.
To be fair, once you’ve got past the learning phase you could easily get to the point where you generally oneshot bosses or so, allowing you to kill a boss in around 15min (including setup time usually) and then just coming back for another boss the next day. If you did that every day while limiting yourself to 15min raid-playtime, you’d still get 7 LIs per week.
That’d still exclude the learning phase and the fact you simply don’t enjoy raids.
My guess is there will be a second legendary armor later on, but who knows.
Whatever you do with raids don`t lock xp gain or any form of non-raid progress behind them for players who have no interest in raids.
^ This.
That’s the only thing I can agree with in terms of most complains to be honest, they should somehow manage to make it so that the raid mastery doesn’t restrict you from getting shards if you don’t have it.
I like how a dev says “it’s definitely NOT going to happen as it’s not feasible, instead we will provide entry level encounters in coming raid wings like we did in the past” and there is still people trying to argue for easy modes. Let it go already.
Also, iirc the raid team is still very small in comparison to other teams inside anet, with part of them being especially hired for raids. So I’m quite sure raids play no part in being reason for a “content drought”, which we actually don’t really have currently. Even less so if you consider all the reworks and fixes fractals got…
Seeing a mini, when I can get other minis isn’t such a big deal. Seeing a skin when I can get other skins, isn’t a big deal.
But this skin that animates only when you’re in battle, that has swappable stats.
Sorry, it’s a prize that’s being withheld from me that I’ll not be able to get without destroying the game for me. Which makes me wonder if the game is really for me anymore.
I’ve played too many hours and worked too hard to get the rewards I have to become a second class citizen now and I’m not the only person who feels this way.
Genuinely curious here as to why something that in the end is merely a super fancy skin with stat-swapping that MIGHT be near-useless for most classes if we’re not allowed to swap runes along with it and is not required to partake in any content is ruining the game for you? Especially considering that you can very well change stats on your ascended gear for a small fee and that purchasing/getting a 2nd armor set is most likely cheaper than going for full legendary armor, even more so if you’re a frequent fractal runner.
I’m not seeing any grounds for “game-ruining” happenings here. If you don’t want to raid, sure, you don’t have to. The armor is a want at best, not a need and likely not a money-saver except when looking at the really long run under specific circumstances such as throwing the gear around between multiple characters and/or swapping stats a whole lot
Edit: Never mind, I thought you meant the triple switch room in underground… Was gonna say 0.o
For thauma heat room pretty much all you need is a full shroud, flesh wurm to port in and well heal, spectral walk for some swiftness and at that point you shouldn’t be able to fail it really.
You can’t solo the drill room in underground facility, no. You can however port up to the second switch (the one that opens the door to the drill room itself) and port back down shortly after, getting you to your team faster easily. Really simple stuff though.
If I’m reading these comments right, you guys want ele nerfed to be easier to play so there is less gap between a good ele and a bad one, right?
What I think they’re on about is to keep the difference between a good and bad ele, but making it more in line with the dps of other classes. That’s what I get from this.
Honestly, I can say the viper reaper necro is still strongest class / group at FOTM in higher tier and still stand effectively. Except RAID !!
Nah it’s not the strongest class or group, never was. It was just easy.
That being sad, if you really want to go down the condi necro line, they are still viable in fractals. Most encounters are rather short (so your minion downtime won’t hurt as much as in raids, if you decide to stick to lich form over flesh golem) and necro can do nifty stuff such as soloing the heat room, pretty much activate all the switches in the aetherblade fractal laser section etc., so you can do those things for your team if they fail to manage it themselves and help speed up your runs.
It’s an alright pick which is still taken often into fractals, albeit the class definitely is more than 1111 if you want to get the most out of it and more difficult to fully get down than some other builds. (Though there’s also builds/classes that are much harder to learn than necro)
Other condition builds have better dps without combo fields too. Also, we have to spin rs 4 in an ice field or poison field to maximize our damage.
Only we have to stand in the ice field to maximize RS4 DPS. The enemies can move out of the field, so it alleviates a lot of difficulty. You can easily plan the RS5 field sufficiently to hit any raid boss even while moving without missing a chilling bolt.
Competitive PvE Condition Builds:
Ranger > Torch Fire Fields
Warrior > Longbow Fire Fields
Engineer > Bomb Kit Fire Fields
Less-Competitive PvE Condition Builds:
Thief > Caltrops Fields
Guardian > Consecration Fire Fields
Elementalist > Fire Fields
The only other condition builds out there are…
Mesmer, which is only good against single targets without adds due to phantasm reliance
Revenant, which is extremely bad due to undertuning but still relies on Mace fire field for damage
Necromancer is in the unique situation where it has Epidemic, 900 range, safe condition DPS, and no worthwhile enemy-must-stay-in-field reliance. Because of these two things, it will never be tuned to be particularly strong.
Or they just, I don’t know, turn a bunch of our skills into pulsing AoE’s because that’s what would make sense. Scepter 2 and Dagger 5 are absolutely perfect contenders for that, for example.
To be fair, fractals are all about things that have happened in tyria’s past. I mean of course it gives them space to do almost whatever, but this is much easier to just give us something at least.
That being said, not too fond of the tower either, lets see though.
also: Scarlet Hologram fractal when, that kitten was absolutely amazing and would easily be a good encounter to rework as a stepping stone for raids with the mechanics it had. On top of that the music and whatnot.
Anet does understand how their changes affect how players ‘solve’ raids … that’s why they make those changes.
Now that’s something I seriously doubt when I think of the consequences the last round of balancing had.
Really? Do you care to explain why? Let me start: Here is why I think it’s true:
Primarily, because raids were too easy with excessive boon durations and sharing.
Secondly, because the compositions were biased too much against unfavoured classes
So basically, if Anet is advertising an inclusive and challenging raiding environment, everything that got nerfed moves them in that direction.
Uhm what?
We still have the same amount of boonsharing, the chrono build actually got easier and there’s more classes getting knocked out now or only being able to join under very specific circumstances if at all. On top of that there’s more slots “fixed” than before, leaving less space for “random classes”.
So what are you trying to prove right now?
Besides, even if you don’t want to accept it, yes, ANet balance has a direct effect on how the meta looks like and what is being played and what is not. “B-but you can run 10 eles and still be fine!” yes you can, doesn’t matter. Players are trying to clear content in a timely manner with a comp that makes as much sense as possible while having a hopefully easy time, path of least resistance and whatnot. There is no reason for anyone to make it harder on themselves by dropping things as crucial as chronos, druids and PS-wars, just like you wouldn’t make it harder on yourself in real life except when you are looking for a challenge. And believe me, most players who are in for their weekly kills are not. Yes, it’s anet’s fault, simple as that.
It’s actually why a one difficulty mode works. It makes balancing infinitely easier as there’s not 256k variables to work through to point to as the source of the problem.
But that’s neither here nor there, and you really should stop pushing the easy mode agenda.
Saying that balance must be done around one fragment of one game mode with only small minority of overall players playing it – is very funny indeed.
How about being sane developers and doing other way around?
You are very funny indeed for disregarding developers as insane because they refuse to follow the bidding of a minority for something that was never planned in the first place.
LFR where you randomly get thrown together would be the worst idea due to potentially horrible comps which might even lack vital classes/utilities/etc.
Also the bullkitten happening in there would be through the roof
Reaper is rather important for Necro, not taking it will hurt you quite a bit.
For power, run Dagger/Focus + Greatsword both with force + air sigil, armor full Berserker with Scholar Runes, Spite top top mid, Blood Magic mid bot top, Reaper mid bot mid
Condi is basically this: http://metabattle.com/wiki/Build:Reaper_-_Viper_Horror
Though you don’t run death magic at all, always blood magic. Lich Form got nerfbatted extremely hard and death magic suffered in the process. Although I suggest taking Quickening Thirst over Blood Bond.
Depending on if you plan to raid go either Thorns or Berserker-Rune setup (Thorns if yes to raids, Berserker if no)
Power is imo more fun and wins out if you run around in open world, condi wins in fractals and raids.
Necros have meta-level builds for literally every mode in the game; it’s not at “rock bottom”. The fact that necros are reliant on support in PvP doesn’t change that either.
Necros are basically dead again in PvE with kitten-tier dps and their only helpful thing being epidemic (and in the very specific case of Matthias in raids condition-handling, same goes to some degree at sloth and xera but why would you)
I can’t say kitten about WvW, though I’d assume they’re doing fine enough in zergs while they’re probably completely unplayable when roaming except you enjoy torturing yourself.
The fact that anet thinks a class is in a good spot when it boils down to “spam all your skills before the focus fire from the enemy team downs you because you can’t do much, then get rezzed by your friendly neighborhood scrapper/ele/whatever and repeat” then that is extremely worrying. Though I’ll go ahead and admit that necro is not quite as kittenome people admit in terms of PvP.
I still think vuln application should be reduced across the board while giving necro some sort of advantage in regards to it, especially considering getting 25 stacks of vuln requires basically no effort at all and is a ridiculous damage boost.
On a positive note, I managed to get the new glider (not exactly a pinnacle of beauty, but that’s besides the point) twice within 6 chests, the game was kind enough to take the second unlocked glider and replace it with two black lion keys, stating that it does this with all account bound rewards you already redeemed on your account.
How is Spite/BM/Reaper D/F+GS with Scholar Runes and Berserker gear not optimal for solo open world play? Your build seems overly defense imo, with only two sources of chill (one being suffer, one being CttB), four if you have your GS out. Your build most likely generates a lot of vuln but does so “too slow” for most fights, since most trash doesn’t really survive for long. Reaper’s Touch and Death Spiral are great vuln-bursts, well of suffering does its part too while also having really high damage. Blighter’s Boon is, lightly put, kitten now. Rise is something that should NEVER be slotted by default, only if you really, really need it. You’re not getting much out of death magic, 77 power outside of shroud and 180~ while inside, though that is before Corrupter’s Fervor. With you’re looking at 98 and 221 respectively. At the same time you give up bonuses you could get from better runes and the bonus effects from Blood Magic. Not to mention you dropped Chilling Nova, Spiteful Talisman and Shiver of Death.
etc.
If you enjoy your build that’s great, but I don’t see it being more effective in anything but the “pls no die” department, which is something that shouldn’t be an issue for any class in open world pve really.
