Guild Wars 2

Making the DM auto traits blatantly favor one theme (minions) over any other was just a bad design decision that should have not made it past beta.

Especially in a game that punishes you for having AI dependent performance.

SupahSpankeh.8452:

I was annoyed initially but then realised staff is now viable without spending 10 in DM so I don’t really mind. 180 is a decent area, though it should be merged with the CD trait.

Ditto. Saved 10 points in DM now that I don’t have to take both traits to make staff feel viable as a main weapon.

People have this bad tendency to vote for whomever is already in the lead when vote counts are given out in a running total.

Jack and squat so far, which is what makes it a good hiding place. No one goes there.

As long as you can grab the rations to last out there.

athuria.2751:

I’m pretty disappointed with it too—I would have even taken another skin besides the rapier, if only it wasn’t so bulky. The amount of thinner and/or more elegant options for swords leaves a lot to be desired.

effin THIS.

The overabundance of wannabe buster swords and ridiculously over-sized pauldrons is irritating to begin with; but the lack of alternatives is just criminal.

If you can slip past the Karka, yes.

The tree huts at steampipe make a good hiding spot if you are lucky enough to pick up enough rations to last to the end of the round.

You usually aren’t near any mist ghosts there, be they random or ones kitten ed at you killing them, because getting there alive and staying alive until round end means you probably avoided fighting anymore than absolutely needed.

It was neat, just wish the resource placements were more random.

Yes, alternate voice sets for all races/genders would be greatly appreciated.

This would really be appreciated by guilds with enough members to field more than 5 people in WvW, yet do not want to be a part of the inevitable blue dorito zerg that comes with the current commander tag.

If you cannot just make all guild members visible as gold dots by default the way nearby allies are green dots; please consider allowing a guild to set a number of officer ranks as unique icon tags that only show to guild members on the map, but in all other ways gives the same tools available to a commander.

(maybe have the guild buy the tags as a guild upgrade)

Like the title says, please let us buy the runes that are currently dungeon locked with Badges of honor.

Leave the skins dungeon locked for all I care.

I have no interest in running dungeon content repeatedly to the point of my eyes bleeding from boredom just to get runes that I want for a build, but I would like an option on how to get them.

Or, lower the rune token prices so that it only takes a couple runs to get enough tokens for 6 runes. That would make it a lot more tempting to even set foot in those tedious toilets.

Play one in anything other than hotjoin pvp against noobs. Especially if your team does not build to compensate for your lack of disengage/avoidance.

You’ll change your tune.

I hope so, I would like to be useful on my old spec to my team when roaming.

Tobbygnome.6793:

WvW is not balanced around that type of play, this is why ‘Structured PvP’ exists. Please don’t critically analyze class balance based off a battlefield game mode.

Otherwise lightning field and a plethora of other abilities would be up for heavy nerfing.

In WvW, if you can actually get the current channel off means either:

1) You hit them with CC first, leaving them unable to dodge/counter CC without a stun-break ready or stability. Cast time means little at that point.

2) They are out of endurance to dodge the effect. Cast time means little at that point.

2) Or there are so many people there on your side that the enemy can’t tell what you are doing in the middle of all effects spam going off….and the agony DoT+immob means very little at that point, as they are already getting AE CC+direct damage nuked, which will often kill them before you can even get into range, go all the way into DS, and start your animation. Note how this is already long enough to make it near worthless.

Basically this ability only has real value in small engagements that are drawn out enough for it to matter, or when someone is doing something wrong. It’s low enough on the balance totem pole that it’s difficult to even contemplate the point of making it weaker.

Fafnir.5124:

Items are only worth stuff when they are gotten through RNG have u noticed that. If they weren’t rare everyone would have them and you wouldn’t want them. Get ready for an inflation spike with upcoming updates they are making g to easy to get.

Anyone notice how Gold bars can’t be converted into gold coins? you would think there would be an illigal mint somewhere

Incorrect. Items have worth when the demand exceeds their supply. RNG is just a supply method.

Chalk me up for another that dislikes jump puzzles/platforming dependent content. Partially because my main is a Charr. Partially because the camera in this game sucks. Partially because this game engine is not optimal for platforming, though the Devs did a decent job shoehorning it in.

Though I ended up liking sanctum sprint; most likely because a minor mistake did not make you do the entire race over or eat a way-point fee. It eased the frustration enough that with enough practice I was able to learn the course well enough to take first place through honest effort. I started wishing there were more map variants to run after a while; there were some but after you learned them it got boring running the same overall map 25 times.

So Devs, there’s a strong hint on how to make that kind of content more palatable to a wider audience. You don’t have to make it less difficult, just less frustrating.

But making so much of an update depend on them if you wanted the quartz node was kind of a low blow to those that will never like platforming in this game; if you didn’t read the guides ahead of time to find out which achievements required little or no platforming.

So there is another hint; telegraph the content better in game. And I don’t mean just use yellow exclamation points. You have NPC’s, utilize them to guide the players to the content!

Maltos.5789:

I was curious if anyone has heard rumors about updating the BLT. I am not even looking for a massive overhaul, just simple filters.

Primarily:
-Filter armor types
-Items in proper categories (weapon upgrades is empty, but all the sigils are displayed under all)

Just curious if there are rumors or mentions anywhere of some tweaks to help ease the use of finding items here.

The armor type filter alone would be a massive improvement.

I would hope they would use a system that forced you to (at no cost) transmute the old MF gear into one of the other stat sets or also had a refund option for stuff that cost alternative currency. (tokens, ectos, laurels, etc.)

Then they’d not even have to clean out the TP themselves, as MF gear bought off of there would have to be transmuted (at no additional cost) into something else before use.

That would satisfy both the groups that either want different stats or a refund.

It doesn’t even have to be all grimdark, just not something that evokes happiness and pastries and ponies.

Charr characters need specific variant armor meshes that are actually designed for them, not this awful distorted copypasta human armor with textures that are shoehorned in and also look deformed thanks to having to cover more area with the same base art asset.

You can (barely) get away with doing that on the Norn, but Charr are distinct enough that it really looks poor and rushed.

I still think the base problem is the extra access we have to Fear/Terror now combined with the extra duration we received as well which caused a large increase in the base damage+disable power a Terror build could field.

It is effectively CC, damage, and a condition all in one package that stacks well with itself and anything else you can toss into it exponentially. Then add in the regular l2p issues the masses often have with running something other than max damage builds…feh.

I don’t envy the Devs on this one; they can’t make the base effect too low or it becomes near worthless on any build that does not focus on it, but too high and it rapidly becomes this overwhelming magnet for kittening from the masses on the receiving end of it.

They are likely going to only be able to fix it and keep it worth having by changing its fundamental nature somehow.

Lily Miranda.5407:

ZudetGambeous.9573:

Bigger advantage for the keys because you can buy all you will ever use in those 4 weeks.

You cannot buy all your WP uses in 4 weeks.

All the keys I will ever use is zero, except for those that drop from daily completion.

Gnash should give us discounts on kites and flutes.

Ditto. I refuse to pay another cent for keys, even a discounted one, until I can sell anything I get from those RNG toilets to someone that actually wants it, or the returns are improved enough that I am unlikely to want to sell/destroy any of it.

ZBeeblebrox.4928:

I never buy Black Lion Keys. I always use waypoints. The choice is pretty easy…

This.

Sweet; I had the Fervid Censer on my Sylvari Elementalist but didn’t have anything similar to put on my Sylvari Mesmer.

Given that the slow attack rate of mobs makes it too easy to avoid damage with minimal investment in defenses thus causing " go ’zerker or go home" syndrome in PvE, they really should just up most of the mob attack speed (but lower the dmg per attack to keep the dps sane). more damage slipping thru makes defensive stats more important and solves the pvp/pve split issues with retaliation and confusion.

Hopefully a version that is only really relevant against focus fire and does almost nothing 1v1 where we don’t usually need the help.

Or just having regular utilities show up at all would be nice….

I know at one point having a Necro along during the Jade Maw fractal boss fight was a nice safety valve against a wipe + reset thanks to judicious DS use.

Yeah the issue I keep running into isn’t what WILL help a Necromancer survive a CC+lolspikeburstgg, it’s more of what the Devs would be willing to give that isn’t already on the verboten list of mobility/teleport/boons/stability.

Hell, just a trait that gave a passive chance to auto transfer incoming CC onto a nearby enemy target would be a huge help as it would help DS tanking damage be useful instead of being a CC magnet.

I can see some argument that packing both Staff Mastery and Greater Marks into one trait would be a bit too powerful; but honestly part of the issue is that stock Staff feels so miserable without them. I’d be more than OK with a fused trait that did both at a reduced capacity if the stock staff abilities were on a slightly shorter base cool-down, as we’d also have a trait slot freed up too for more flexibility.

Doing that and addressing the issue that reanimator and protection of the horde really don’t do much of anything useful for someone trying to make a tanky build would go a long ways to helping out sustain builds.

Some freaking consistency in design would be nice. Right now they are heading towards making Fear a binary feature that you have to either go balls deep to get decent use of it or completely ignore it thanks to how they are trying to cherry pick when it counts as a condition or stun.

PinCushion.7390:

People aren’t accustomed to long fights.

To beat a Necro you have to run us out of 2 health bars while taking substantial condition damage. This is going to involve ducking out of the fight to cleanse several times. The good news is that Necro has pretty awful mobility. The bad news is that our Condi Damage output is incredibly high, and if you get hit by fears at the wrong time you lose.

I play a Necro in WvW a good bit, but I play my staff Ele more. I got schooled by Necros in WvW before I figured out that I was taking loads of damage from Spectral Wall + Fear Damage, because I was a dummy and ran into it multiple times. Also, I was failing to run away from Necros because I would assume I had more time to hold out for cleansing…then get triple feared and drop dead.

Now, I range them. If I can stay close to max range all they can do is attempt to drop marks (which are easily dodged) and throw a bad auto-attack. They run out of LF eventually, and can’t really get away unless they flee to a keep or their group mates. Necros are incredibly vulnerable to ranged damage now. Closing to melee is crazy, since I’ll just be loaded with condis and feared to death.

If I played a Warrior vs a Necro I’d probably just swap to Rifle and kite him. As long as I can dodge the Dark Path and most of the marks there’s not a lot Necros can do about it.

That wasn’t true pre-patch. Pre-patch you could melee a Necro down faster than the conditions could kill you. Now you can’t. That’s not OP at all. It’s just different.

TL-DR: Necros are only a threat inside of Scepter range. The profession has extremely low damage output at long range and bad mobility. Kite to win.

Nice to see someone actually get it. Though, depending on build, Necros could be very strong in melee even before the recent changes; all it took was Wells and someone dumb enough to try to stand in them to beat on you fruitlessly (usually the garden variety heartseeker spammer) while they melted.

By that logic all the evasion, block, and invulnerability tools other classes get are by definition OP.

And they often get them on far shorter animation times than the effects we get on DS.

(note: Please leave any gripes about recent offensive changes out of this thread; they’ve already been debated ad nauseam and it is generally accepted that there is going to be some sort of change in that area if not agreement about what and how much.)

It has been identified many times that Necromancers are particularly weak to focus fire and by extension crowd control that leaves them in a position to be focus fired. Reasons for this include to varying degrees:

Low/Limited: mobility tools, high up-time defensive boons like protection, aegis, vigor, stability, stealth, and invulnerability utilities.

Currently Death Shroud functions as a substitute health bar which helps greatly in 1v1 encounters; but is somewhat lacking compared to options other classes get when trying to ablate or avoid focus fire.

The result is an increasing lack of builds that are viewed as viable, especially in a game where the meta tends towards heavy offense + avoidance/mobility being king to begin with.

The purpose of this thread is to bring up ways that Death Shroud can be altered to better address this issue and move the class closer to the attrition ideal that has been stated as the design mandate by the Developers, without making the class an unbeatable monster in small scale encounters.

My suggestion is as follows:

Capping the amount of life-force you can lose to a set max rate per second no matter how many people are attacking you while in Death Shroud. That would give a closer approximation of the invulnerability/avoidance mechanics that other classes get.

Attacking a Necromancer would still cause them to have to exit Death Shroud sooner than they would unattended, but would help them greatly to survive the current behavior of mass focus firing a Necromancer the moment they are identified as such.

A hopefully simple way of doing this might include just two different degen rates while making the Necromancer technically invulnerable while in Death Shroud, one for not being attacked during the degen tick period, and one for being attacked during the degen tick period.

Certain effects like fall damage may or may not be allowed to bypass the degen cap in order to keep some behaviors in check if needed.

Alternate suggestions of course welcome; I just ask that they be focused on ways of addressing the class weakness to focus fire.

I usually line of sight pull them by ducking behind something. Makes everything pile up relatively neatly for an orderly massacre.

Nemesis.8593:

The real problem they said necromancer is “borderline OP” in the rare situations when everything “clicks in” and you have AoE burning + AoE bleeds and you drop AoE fear on top… you can wipe a team…

Yes… no character should be able to do that, that is OP.

The second problem is that while that is very strong vs multiple in the rare occasions it happens, but doesn’t make it any different in 1v1, it’s something that is really strong if it clicks, and while it shouldn’t do that vs multiple… perhaps it should do that vs 1 target…

Third problem would be that ArenaNet wants us to be an attrition class with low mobility and high attrition, which i totally agree with… i don’t think we should be given mobility and stability and be turned into an elementalist… So we have Death Shroud to compensate for our lack of mobility.
Here’s the catch… a thief goes into stealth to escape 1 player or 5 players, a mesmer goes distorted to escape 1 player or 5 players, an engineer eats an elixir to escape 1 player or 5 players… guardian becomes invulnerable.

A necromancer can absorb damage from 1 player to escape… dies instantly from 5… if DS is to be used to compensate for that, it would be either too much for 1v1 and enough for 1v multiple, or not enough for 1v multiple…

Now add the lack of mobility and stability / escape mechanisms… and we have the perfect class to be focused. No chance = free kill = GG.

The only way i see this getting fixed is with additional mechanics vs being focused… like Reaper’s Protection moved somewhere more accessible and have an additional effect such as: “Resets in 90 seconds AND resets every 3-4-5 consecutive CCs done in 90 seconds under 90 seconds”… therefor DS remains the same and doesn’t imbalance 1v1, and focus fireing gets punished…

Or capping the amount of life-force you can lose to a set max rate per second no matter how many people are attacking you while in Death Shroud. That would give a closer approximation of the invulnerability/avoidance mechanics that other classes get.

They need to place Fear firmly in one category or the other for what affects it. Allowing both condition and cc effects to apply both positive and negative is what is causing all the issues. It is either feast or famine when it comes to balancing that.

If they decide to keep Fear as a condition with the associated damage and duration scaling, they need to change the nature of fear to not be a hard cc and not be affected by stability and stunbreaks.

If they decide to classify Fear as a control effect only; then only stun breaks and stability should negate it, but it should give up the scaling it currently gets from cond damage and duration.

People are just screaming because the meta has shifted; nothing ticks people off more than changes making them have to actually leave their comfort zone of cookie cutter glass cannon or boon-bunker builds to deal with condition spam.

The main issue is the extra fear certain builds gained via spectral wall and the current state of fear/terror counting as both a condition and crowd control for all positive and negative effects (Paralyzation sigil/Melandru). All the devs need to do is shift Fear firmly into one category or the other and then let the metagame stabilize since right now everyone and their brother is running a Necro since they recently got buffed, which makes it seem far worse than it really is.

The Spanish Inquisition!

That’s a pretty close assessment…it is very much often a fight to the bitter end or the opponent at least flees.

Immobilize/Chill/Cripple:
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Chilblains
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Grasping_Dead
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Dark_Pact
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Frozen_Abyss
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Rigor_Mortis
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Signet_of_Spite
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Chilling_Wind
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Plague_of_Pestilence
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Tainted_Shackles

Pull to/from
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Deadly_Catch
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Dark_Spear
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Spectral_Grasp

Swiftness/Speed/Teleport
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Locust_Swarm
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Dark_Path (also has a chill)
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Signet_of_the_Locust
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Spectral_Walk
→ http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Spectral_Recall
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Necrotic_Traversal

I probably missed some. Take note the number of teleport skills is deceiving; as most have some sort of built in limiter to usage such a requiring a target or are tied to a minion.

There are traits that help too, such as:
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Chilling_Darkness

The issue with this thread is it gives the illusion of veracity to the people that are refusing to use the tools at their disposal and are just whining for nerfs instead of actually bringing anti condition/cc tools to defend against a spec with strong conditions and CC; or even at least learning the limitations of such a spec and preemptively shutting it down.

You don’t address that sort of mentality by coddling it. You only accomplish encouraging that behavior to continue in the future.

That is why this thread comes across as both nonconstructive and insulting.

I would be definitely be on board with a merged Staff Mastery and Greater marks trait being Master tier; as it stands it sucks to have to take two traits to bring staff up to par as a main weapon choice so freeing up an Adept trait choice for something else would be nice.

Honestly there would be far fewer if any complaints about minion master and protection of the horde if they were optional and not foisted on us if we want a staff or defense centric build; they would just be skipped in favor of things that actually help.

aophts.9862:

Wow, only vague tips and advices. I just want to be able to gain something with craft, could someone help me please? Are you guys afraid that i will stole part of your profit in this thing?

The crafted goods market is VERY VOLATILE.

Profit margins can change very rapidly, which is why anyone that is interested in not bending you over the barrel can give anything other than vague tips.

No matter which craft you use, in order to make a profit over just selling the base mats, you are going to have to research the crafting costs in order to set your prices competitively to sell before you get undercut.

Again, no one can give you anything more definite because the market changes from hour to hour or even faster. It’s not because we want you to be stumbling along blindly, it simply because crafting for profit requires personal observation on your part no matter what.

lettucemode.3789:

Homonavn.6348:

I will just stick to my old well build. I really need my 20 points in death magic and blood magic… I tried running without and no way.. i love my well CD ruduction and health siphoning to much. Feel to squishy without

*secret blood magic high five *

I just can’t quit Death and Blood for my wells either. Though the goodies in the other lines are looking really nice, glad to see more options now.

I noticed today when equipping the elixir gun that the fast acting elixirs trait does not seem to decrease the cool-down on Super Elixir at all. The tool-tip for it does have it listed as “Elixir”. Bug, or intended?

Give them a high innate toughness, and immunity to bleed and poison.

Metal Plating → Reactive armor: Turrets have retaliation.

Feedback: The frequent and nigh unavoidable golem pulls create a division between those builds that have on demand stability/aegis versus those that do not. A grossly unfair one.

And even if you do, you have to run at least part of the time away from the golems, which means thanks to camera angles and the bright kitten electric walls, good luck seeing the golems pull animations in time!

(That they seem to spam on an insanely low recharge. Which also means the more people get downed, the more they can focus fire it on the remaining players and exhaust their supply of countermeasures.)

Feedback: The frequent and nigh unavoidable golem pulls create a division between those builds that have on demand stability/aegis versus those that do not. A grossly unfair one.

And even if you do, you have to run at least part of the time away from the golems, which means thanks to camera angles and the bright kitten electric walls, good luck seeing the golems pull animations in time!

(That they seem to spam on an insanely low recharge. Which also means the more people get downed, the more they can focus fire it on the remaining players and exhaust their supply of countermeasures.)

Didn’t even know I wanted that until I saw it in the patch notes. Awesome.

There were achievement/badge based costume pieces available in City of Heroes and those did not bother me one bit actually; they gave a good reason to do the associated content PLUS they were guaranteed if you completed the content so that you were not forced into a burnout cycle of hammering that Skinner Box RNG to get the reward so much that you grew to detest said content/reward and actively dreaded ever repeating the experience on an alt.