Guild Wars 2

ArmageddonAsh.6430:

Overkillengine.6084:

Because a Mark requires a target which preserves the precious low/no mobility vision, so we are more likely to get something that requires a target.

Screw the low mobility, if they cant be bothered to actually do the other half and make it so that we cant be burst down as if we dont have any clothes on then surely, surely they should give us mobility. Even then its in DeathShroud and given a 15-20second cool down it would be fine,

As you would be using DeathShroud (9 second cool down) and then the skill (15-20second cool down) to do what EVERYONE else can do on a shorter cool down and without locking themselves out of there class mechanic for 9seconds…

Being able to mark-port into the backlines past the melee train would help a lot with that actually.

I can understand the desire for unrestricted mobility. We aren’t getting it. No point in asking. Even less point than complaining or offering feedback actually, which is saying something.

Our best route when asking for anything is to ask for the tools that we already have to actually be effective and reliable, without violating the constraints we all know kitten well we will never be allowed to not have.

Edit: plus with an increase in the number non-staff Marks we could possibly lobby for an alteration of Staff Mastery to apply to all Marks to open up more build options.

Because a Mark requires a target which preserves the precious low/no mobility vision, so we are more likely to get something that requires a target.

Aaaaaand there might be some trait interactions that could be kind of fun with having the skill have the Mark category….

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Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

Overkillengine.6084:

Make Dark Path it an enemy triggered teleport Mark; then we can use it in deceptive ways; gets rid of the stupid terrain hijinks, etc.

Causes issues in WvW. If it worked as you describe, then instead of siege equipment to bring down gates, you would see a bunch of necros using their “grappling hook” on the NPC guards atop the walls. This is the same reason Flesh Wurm’s teleport is a shadowstep and not a true teleport.

Actually what I had in mind was a Mark version of this:

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Shadow_Trap

Except instead of stealth it auto triggers the current Dark Path effects when an enemy trips the Mark. To my knowledge it cannot get a Thief up on a wall, so neither would my suggestion.

It gets rid of the kitten poor projectile speed and targeting issues and actually makes the skill useful for catching someone after they have started to disengage instead of almost having to proactively fire it if you even think the enemy might be considering running.

Make Dark Path it an enemy triggered teleport Mark; then we can use it in deceptive ways; gets rid of the stupid terrain hijinks, etc.

Being able to port past the usual incoming warrior hammer train to the enemy backlines to ream their squishies would be hilarious.

And you still could not use it as a reliable disengage so that precious Vision is still preserved.

We’ve busted out all sorts of ideas in the past.

Yet here we are.

cool down on those is nowhere near long enough for the duration given.

Edit: Nah Chill just need to add +Init cost to simulate the recharge penalty.

The healing (skills) isn’t the problem; Poison (which we have plenty of access to) shuts most of that down real fast.

The issue is almost anyone other than Guardians can just run away, reset the fight and their hp, and come back fresher than we are due to our cooldowns being long and because lifeforce does not refill between fights.

Which means we have to build to power or condi burst them down before they do.

Which means people complain, and we get nerfed over and over and over.

So our offense gets slowly gutted, and the initial problem never gets fixed; we can’t negate/restrict mobility and survive enough to pull off attrition fights like we should be able to.

manveruppd.7601:

…snip!…
I would much rather get better access to stability and improved disables and debuffs than something like that, frankly, and I think in the long run what’s going to happen is they’ll rework DS to be an energy pool which we can spend to activate snares, debuffs, and fears (similar to the ones we’ve got but better), rather than an extra life bar which we’ll be expected to use to facetank damage while stunned or being ping-ponged cause we have no stability.

This. DS would be better as a set of function key abilities that used lifeforce. Gets rid of the clunky transformation issues completely. They could still give each one the DS black aura effect when activating to let an enemy know we are using something DS related for combat info just fine.

Trolololol!

Still a LOT of variables present even in that.

A general tip is carry any cripple/chill/immob that you can, getting hit with those tends to either make the Mesmer panic and blow a cleanse immediately or sets them up for a spike from you; as getting in combat mobility restricted is potentially lethal to them.

The ones using Staff + Scepter/torch may sit there for a moment, hoping to lure you in for a #2 scepter block to stack torment on you while wasting your burst when you try to go in for the kill though; be wary as they can still staff port when immobilized right after that and then use a stealth while you are still swinging away.

Carrying a ranged backup weapon if you are melee to pop clones from a distance for clone death traited builds like the above is highly recommended; while you do want to do something about them, using up your endurance dodging them may not be optimal outside of an incoming shatter.

If they are running a power based spec, dodging the phantasm summons becomes more of a priority.

Keep in mind the clones and phants do have a slight lag time to their reactions, so you can kite an overly aggressive Mesmer outside their range. Not guaranteed to work if they are smart.

To steal a strategy from an outside source:

Observation; orientation; decision; action.

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

Lys.8621:

Qaelyn.7612:

Anyway, I think it should be abundantly clear by now that the idea that PU mesmers cannot be beat is simply false.

No, really?

EnderzShadow.2506:

I gather, from Lys’s own comments and your observation, there is one thing that is killing Lys.

Pride.

p.s. @Lys, I think you stopped being rational two pages ago…

Wow. This is the best in-topic answer so far.

Overkillengine.6084:

You don’t even need all the things you quoted.

All a person needs is the understanding how a Mesmer, and by extension a PU build works in order to defeat it using whatever tools your particular class already has.

Issue is right now there is a lot of the high offense low strategy players running around with little to no understanding of how other classes work, much less their own, but they think they are good because they are usually able to win with sheer burst offense.

So they run in, spam attacks without thought or strategy, and get owned by a particular build meant to prey upon that behavior.

It sounds like you encountered a rare Thief who was not a garden variety Heartseeker spammer. You’ll notice he deliberately played in a manner to deprive you of your sustain and your ability to deal damage effectively, and lured you out from a position of strength and used your confidence in your own power against you.

He did not let you solely dictate the terms of the engagement. And so he won.

I keep reading stuff like this. I didn’t asked for generic answers. I keep reading different versions of this: “Oh yeah, you can kill PU mesmer with knowing what to do.” Oh. Ok then. Sorry, but can’t I give you the same answer for every other great build in game?

Stop using this thread for saying how for you PU mesmer is good as it is cause “You see, it is not immortal”. Lol.
Instead please “keep” listing builds and classes, specific gameplay and skills use on how YOU can kill a PU mesmer. And sorry if I repeat myself, I would like to see your ideas in practice too.

Curious that when finally I update this thread with an in-topic post about how effectively happened that a build/gameplay/skills countered PU mesmer everyone keeps just focusing on how this build is killable with well knowing instead.

@Qaelyn
I realize now I should have asked you before: what actually kills you?
Since you are using PU so far. And I mean in 1vs1 situation (PvP or WvW), or roamin situation – such as small fights and 1vs2/3.
I’m curious why you didn’t say nothing about this since you are a PU and you claim you are so killable.

For kittens sake, you are getting generic answers because there are a million and one (hyperbole for emphasis) flavors of PU builds out there so you are going to have to observe (like has been said repeatedly) what your opponent is using and act accordingly. It is not being done to troll you or be unhelpful, it is literally the most helpful advice that can be given other than the standard stuff that works on almost all Mesmers like:

Dodge phantasm summons
Kill clones phants outside the close range death kitten or all at once when you have a cleanse you can afford to use if they are clone death specc’d.
Use conditions/cc strategically to use up their cleanses/stunbreaks.

Basically without knowing the specific PU user’s build you are facing….there is no way to give advice to the level of precision you desire.

And I think you are inserting your own biases into your interpretation of what has been said.

A PU build does not punish every high offense build; it instead punishes people that use them poorly (thus low strategy) by rushing in and expending their burst fruitlessly all at once, while the Mesmer merrily skips away and retaliates using whatever their offensive tools of choice are.

You can call that honorless, stupid, and idiotic all you want, but that is a personal construct of your own pride. You are not the arbiter of what the terms of engagement are.

Ah, I see. You are using semantics as an excuse to be a prat. Your parents must be so proud.

I could point out the multiple fallacies you have indulged in but your unreasoning vitriol indicates a zealot’s fervor.

Chaos.3579:

Now getting back to my point.
You say that A PU Mesmer is almost tailor made to obliterate the usual high offense low strategy builds? (I would say players instead of build. All builds can be changed in style by how it’s used my its user.)
Anyway

What about the trait specifically does that? There is no offense. Or more specifically offenses that target a reckless attacker. Instead simply defense.

The only things that Mesmer has that punishes high offense low strategy style players is confusion, the offhand sword ripost, scepter 2, retaliation. And a few other things this trait does not provide At all by itself.

The majority of these things that punish idiotic attackers are found in a classic mesmer condition build regardless if it has PU or not. how can you or anyone honestly label PU as the defining point of a style that punishes strategy less attackers? Really strikes me as idiots talking idiocy.

A PU mesmer (referring to the build and the variants contain the trait) punishes reckless attacking by denying the effectiveness of mindless offense via that very defense that so offends you.

Cool downs and initiative are resources after all, and most have become maybe a touch too used to squandering them.

Leaving said mesmer able to dismantle the enemy at their leisure if they insist on staying engaged.

An observant player will simply play in a manner to deny the effectiveness of the tools used in a PU build.

If you can’t see that then who is the one being idiotic?

More Cripple/Chill/Immobilize is needed on the Necromancer side to fulfill the lock-down paradigm.

Coincidentally all 3 of these really suck to get hit with on a Mesmer or Thief, and indirectly weaken the effectiveness of stealth via mobility restriction.

Counters exist, they are just too low in duration or a touch too high in cool-down to account for the level of disengage abilities other classes can bring to a fight.

They could just make the SoV passive give you life force when you are hit; and some sort of DECENT hp leech ability as the active.

Then you can use it passively to fill up your DS bar, activate to top off hp as much as you can, then go into DS to ablate more incoming damage while the signet is on cooldown.

Much more synergy with the class mechanic than the dreck we got.

The current corporate decision making meta has been for some time now to not give a kitten about the future as long as this quarter still shows profits.

Aurum.8793:

Overkillengine.6084:

Sevans.4619:

Word on the street is that they’re adding a Longbow that looks like a giant arm and bicep and it fires frozen burritos.

I heard it was made of steaks and shot bacon.

I thought about making a man-meat joke… Nah, too easy.

The man-meat is the new rifle skin; has a renamed killshot skill too.

Pretty much.

Want Dev response/action? Stop forking over money at all. It’s ultimately the only thing they will listen to; the silence of our wallets no longer opening.

Methods.4023:

Downed state needs to go just in wvw for one reason. Its causing separation within the server. More and more guilds are running by them selves and untagged in wvw because they don’t want people following. Most guilds feel anyone not in their guild is a rally bot and this is where the problem is with downed state in wvw .

/jranger

amiavamp.9785:

Nay of the Ether.8913:

So…let me get this straight…you run into a heavily aoe’d area that’s already so cluttered you can’t make out what’s in it…yet continue to run in it anyway, then complain about the effects of your actions?

Yes – I, the person who most definitely created this topic and complained about fear, repeatedly run into walls of fear while playing as a necromancer who creates said walls of fear.

On a more serious note, I’m going to guess you’ve never fought over a point in a PvP match where multiple mesmers/necromancers/rangers were involved while guardians are shooting bloom everywhere.

I have. I didn’t go into the red circles.

I have however /danced while an enemy Elementalist rained a meteor shower on me.

So I guess we all have our “full kitten” moments.

They are probably worried to Death at the reaction if they dare come within a mile of this sub-forum right now; all sorts of Spite and Curses will get thrown their way the moment the players smell Blood in the water. Too many people angry down to their very Soul. Reap what you sow and all that.

Lys.8621:

Yus I agree with that.
But also (I suppose?) not every class has a build with range damage, tons of dodges, tons of boon steal, tons of stealth, some cc and poison – all together.
I didn’t even know thieves could have all of that.
Surely if he didn’t know well how mesmer works, things would have gone in a different way, but I’m still waiting for more possibilities in countering this build.

You don’t even need all the things you quoted.

All a person needs is the understanding how a Mesmer, and by extension a PU build works in order to defeat it using whatever tools your particular class already has.

Issue is right now there is a lot of the high offense low strategy players running around with little to no understanding of how other classes work, much less their own, but they think they are good because they are usually able to win with sheer burst offense.

So they run in, spam attacks without thought or strategy, and get owned by a particular build meant to prey upon that behavior.

It sounds like you encountered a rare Thief who was not a garden variety Heartseeker spammer. You’ll notice he deliberately played in a manner to deprive you of your sustain and your ability to deal damage effectively, and lured you out from a position of strength and used your confidence in your own power against you.

He did not let you solely dictate the terms of the engagement. And so he won.

Astralporing.1957:

Nike.2631:

Making with the Sharp Knives

And now a word about sub-classes. They’ve been trotted out a few times with people often saying “Wow, that would add so much diversity!”

No, it won’t.

It annihilates diversity.

I was meaning to address the point of subclasses, but i see you did it far better already.

I dislike the cost of ascended armor, because it prevents me from changing builds and tries to lock me to on option. But at least ascended armor can be changed, even if getting a second set would cost me an arm and a leg. Subclassing on the other hand would be far more limiting (unless it could be easily changed, but then why would it even exist?). There’s absolutely nothing positive subclassing could do to the game that adding new weapons, traits, skills and aestethics (by way of new armor designs) couldn’t do better.

Exactly, we need to expand, refine, and rebalance existing systems, not bolt on a new system on top of the old ones and end up with the problems of both.

Lys.8621:

Qaelyn.7612:

Go take your “immortal” PU mesmer to PvP and you’ll discover your mortality right quick.

I did 80% of my tests in open PvP dueling servers.

However! I’m glad to have some news after a week I ask opinion around.
Yesterday I got killed 3 times of 3 tries from a shortbow / sword+dagger thief in 1vs1 PvP situation. I really would like to have recorded that cause I’m kind of new to thieves and so I know I can’t explain his gameplay and build nicely.
But I noticed these (in order of importance in our fights, IMHO):
1) 70/80% of the time he was ranged from me and my illusions, my lack in mobilty made the burst very hard for me and illusions moving is slow too, so bleeding couldn’t stack properly.
2) He had A LOT of dodge. Not only thanks to endurance but mainly from initiative (weapons skills). My Phantasmal Duelists shots were almost always evaded, and same for the sword Leap. This means very low chances of direct damage burst.
3) Ha had a lot of boon steal thanks to Larcenous Strike (sword skill 2).
4) As I use Signet of the Eather, Poison sucks.
5) Getting both dazed and immobilized sucks. I had Mantra Of Resolve in all 3 fights tho, probably I paniced a bit and used it wrong.
6) He had some cond remover – not many. But when I got him to enough conditions stacking, he was able to “run away” (using stealth – as I do – without reset fight) and re-engage with a great timing.
7) He didn’t cared too much about evading my Torment.
8) Pretty much long fights. He hadn’t heavy direct or condition damage. He killed me slowly, engaging me when I had many cooldowns up. Every single fight ended up in this kind of situation: HE was de-engaging me cause of HIS low life, after a condition burst of mine – then I try to reach him for “finish the work” – using a lot of skills – and instead he is the one that re-engages, coming melee and killing me pretty easily – as I was running to him, “old” illusions were too far away.

Thinking about this later, I guess I made some mistakes tho. A mesmer that runs to catch a thief sounds pretty stupid. Maybe I should have just waited for him to re-engage with all of my skills ready instead of wasting them before. But also in that case, if all the times he is low life he is able to de-engage so well, I hardly could kill him. Especially in the 3rd fight we had, I got crazy at the 4th time he was escaping at 10% hp. I just waited the other 3 times he got away, and then he came back almost full life recovered… I was full too, but it was like doing again the fight from the start.
Anyway, it was a build that did counter PU great, also relatively to player skill – he was a good thief.

I really hope I will do more of this constructive fights with him and other players to have more possibilities to counter this build.

A PU Mesmer is almost tailor made to obliterate the usual high offense low strategy builds that are endemic in a game that emphasizes ending fights before your opponent can react.

So it’s no surprise many people have issues when facing one because fighting them requires actual thought and observation instead of max possible damage output in the shortest possible time.

Sevans.4619:

Word on the street is that they’re adding a Longbow that looks like a giant arm and bicep and it fires frozen burritos.

I heard it was made of steaks and shot bacon.

Engage, hit them with conditions; disengage and kite to deny them their boon sustain, repeat until they blow most or all of their removals and stealths, then cc them and proceed to turn them into red paste.

A PU build sucks at chasing without making some sort of sacrifice to improve that.
They have next to no sustain without a (nearby) target.
They have weak condi removal overall.
If they are the variant built for clone generation/clone death, immobilizes are devastating to get hit by.

If you insist on fighting one on their terms where they are strongest, you deserve to lose.

Want to win? Don’t fight on their terms.

Thoom.9653:

I’d like to chime in with some thoughts about how GW2’s current progression systems have pushed me away from the game. Before GW2 came out I was super ultra hyped for it, and the first few weeks I played something like 6-8 hours per day. Then I started to realize the implications of some of the mechanics like transmutation, and it dropped to 3-4 hours. Then Ascended gear showed up, and it dropped to 1-2 hours. Now I log in for a couple hours a month (except when Super Adventure Box is around — then it’s back up to 4-8 hours/day).

My core issue with the progression systems in this game is that I don’t like throwing the results of my hard work away. Let’s take an example: suppose I decided to bite the bullet and slog through the 4 months of grind it would probably take me to assemble a full Berserker’s ascended set with a set of skins I liked for my Elementalist.

Now, suppose I wanted a different skin. If I want to keep my stats, my choices are to go through another 4 months of grinding to generate a completely new set, destroy all my old skins that I worked so hard for, or pay nearly $20 in gems to buy transmutation splitters. That’s kind of demoralizing.

Suppose I want different stats (e.g. Soldiers, or some new stat combo)? Same problem, but worse. Another 3 months of grind, followed by the choice of either throwing away the months I spent grinding the Berserkers’ stats, a month grinding out fresh copies of the skins (which isn’t always even possible, since some skins are limited-time-only), or another $20 down the hole.

Suppose I decide my Mesmer is my new main and I don’t want to play Elementalist any more? Everything I strived for on my Elementalist is now meaningless, and it’s yet another four long months before I’ve repaired the damage I’ve done to my progression by daring to play another of the 8 professions.

Just thinking about all the ways my invested time could be so easily be thrown down the drain makes me tired and not want to play the game. I don’t want everything handed to me on a silver platter, but I’d also prefer if my hard work wasn’t invalidated every time I want to change things up and get a little variety in my gameplay. So how could things be better?

My suggestion is to make soulbinding an item unlock its stats and skin for your account. Then repurpose transmutation crystals to be a reagent for reconfiguring the stats/skin on a piece of gear to anything you’ve previously unlocked.

Then I could craft a full set of ascended gear for one character, and a full set for a different character with a different set of stats, and benefit from both. Rather than accelerating the process for alts, this would make repeating the process more meaningful and less of a chore, because you’d be benefitting your existing characters by unlocking a new stat combo, and benefiting each successive alt more by opening them up to a wider and wider pool of choices.

I think this would change the mode of progression for many players from “one and done” or “not even gonna bother” to “gotta catch ’em all”, which is probably healthier for the game long-term.

It would also define a very fun and useful niche for Legendary items. Equipping a Legendary unlocks a unique skin along with all Ascended stat combinations for that slot, and allows you to freely swap skins and stats for that piece on that character forever.

This. CoH did account based skin unlocks for the most part and I could not throw my money at them fast enough!

Why? Fair value for the price, and I could use each costume piece as I saw fit whenever I wanted after unlocking it; no muss, no fuss. I even bought skins I never got around to using; but I HAD them available and ready to rock the moment I had a character concept. And some were even still able to be earned in game (in a non months of tedium based time-frame) if I wanted to take that route instead.

The current skin system is an atrocious mess of nickle and dime attempts for things worth maybe pennies in value at best that makes me walk away from the transaction table entirely in disgust.

Want my money? Upgrade your service offerings. And upgrading your system to account for stat arrays on gear in a similar way would help a lot too; right now the time-gated grind is so immense that it makes me not want to even bother.

Yes yes, other games have done the classic monetizations to death in order to profit….but here’s a big hint: this is GW2. Not WoW. Not Maplestory. Not generic tired MMO X. Freaking GW2!

Start designing for it instead of importing systems from MMO’s that we have fled from for a reason.

My female human warrior would like a version of the male phalanx available to her as well that does not look like frilly parade armor just because she is female. If that means the men getting a parade armor variant of what the women got from the phalanx set, so be it.

nekretaal.6485:

All I see in the pic is that since you were a necro, you had no chance to get away from the Zerg.

The only real reason staff was taken before the putrid mark nerf was the utility + 1200 range. It was a way to snake conditions onto an enemy group via AE spam in the hopes at least identifying which one of them did not have a cleanse ready so that you’d be able to epidemic off of them before getting focused. It’s also “OK” as an anti stealth weapon too. The 1200 range gave you a chance to stay out of the horrible kitten radius of the other classes (’cuz disengaging at closer range is near impossible).

But when it comes to actual killing, other weapons were/are superior. So the Putrid Mark team cleanse removal hurt that much harder.

Add in that in PvE you usually need dps more than range; and well, you start to get the picture.

Quaggan wants to be more than friends!

Terravos.4059:

I’m trying to understand this thread

Necro’s are now terrible because they dislike a new healing skill that was added?

Straw, camel, back.

Long standing issues have been back burnered for so long that with the newest Signet of Insult foisted on the class’s unhealed injuries, people are getting a bit cantankerous and tired of waiting.

Staff Mastery if you can only have one of the two.

Use Mark of Blood to ablate any aegis boons present within a group you are attacking then Mark away with the others. Up-time I find tends to be a tad more important than having absolutely every potential target get hit. Assuming you are not alone and your screen does not fold; you’ll get time to cycle them again too with shorter cool-downs.

If it was just one target I’d assume you would be weapon swapping anyways so moot point there.

Usagi.4835:

There’re so many threads similar to this I’m not sure my comment will be seen at all, and it’s probably already been said, but I honestly don’t think ANet knows what they want to do with the necromancer or how to make it an ‘attrition’ class.

People complain about how necros have a second HP via Deathshroud/Lifeforce and how necros have the highest base health pool of the light classes; if you play necro, you see that they don’t have any reliable skills available to them that can be used to disengage so a high base HP is necessary. I’m not saying necros should be like eles in any way, but I see eles and despite their low base HP, I feel (at least with D/D eles) that they have good/decent sustain via switching to water attunement, Cone of Cold, Cleansing Wave, Evasive Arcana and arguably Signet of Restoration.

I suppose you could argue that’s a different sort of sustain, but that’s just my opinion. I’m not sure if it holds any water or is particularly valid but yeah. I don’t know~

See it irritates me that people think of DS as a second HP pool.

DS is fundamentally different from HP; for starters it blocks hitpoint healing while in use and when you drop combat it does not replenish like hitpoints do!

Plus add in that even if DS acted exactly the same as hitpoints in all respects; extra hp means jack all against all the damage floating around in actual play without some other layer of mitigation backing it up.

Balefire.7592:

Draehl.2681:

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

But I would love to see a unique debuff that disables teleports and shadowsteps on the target.

I could definitely see something like this. Rather than a full on daze/stun it could simply suppress all movement skills/effects. Be it teleports, leaps, swiftness, etc. In fact, call it “Suppression” it could be the necro equivilant to stuns. It could have a slightly higher duration than a stun or daze would since you’re still able to move, heal, attack, etc. It might could be worked into Death Shroud, Focus, or MH dagger?

I don’t think they’ll do this because beyond profession mechanics, they don’t seem fond of giving any specific profession a mechanic that no one other profession has an equivalent of.

If anything, they need to get Spectral Grasp and Dark Path to work well before looking at anything else.
Frankly, if we’re looking for mass pulling, they should just either modify Tainted Shackles into a Binding Blade equivalent (immob + torment = nonbo), or they should make Spectral Grasp a mass pull.

I still think Dark Path would work better as a Mark/teleport similar in appearance to what Risen nobles use. Drop a mark on who you want to teleport to, it triggers, bam! you are there, and the person who set it off and anyone nearby is chilled+bleeding.

No stupid projectile+terrain hijinks; it can still technically be dodged, and now a whole slew of traits potentially apply to it.

Using it to teleport to the rear of the zerg bearing down on you would also help immensely, and could maybe see some application as a “trap” that summons the Necro.

Part of that though is due to the terrain design; big open areas make it hard to disengage/break line of sight when you are on a class with next to no real mobility. It also contributes to zerg centric game play in that manner as well since it is harder for smaller forces to properly ambush larger ones.

Adding some more clutter/cover to WvW would passively help in a large way if a player is willing to use said cover.

Master

Undying Flesh: Gain lifeforce when struck while not in Death Shroud.

That creates a black market. Trust me, you want that even less than the current situation.

If you are using clone death traits and have your own stealth slotted; you can time it right to force their attacks to hit/kill your clones.

This makes Thieves unhappy. Very very unhappy.

And? Guardians are almost as stand and fight it out oriented as Necros barring a few skills here and there.

Plus they have more on demand mechanics available to them that synergize with healing. They literally get a better ideal set of conditions available to them.

I’m more in favor of indexing the lifesteal to be a % of the power damage dealt to the target per attack; that way you get something controllable (and helps power/hybrid Necro builds) while not allowing a bunker build to breach the immortality threshold in the way a static base leech does, especially with AE’s.

Bhawb.7408:

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

snip

No, you see that is just the numbers from the traits. I don’t know of many other traits that can cause 22k damage and healing in 10 seconds.

Well of Blood can add another 13k self-healing (35k AoE), WoS/WoC will be adding their own damage, etc. Those numbers are literally just 4 traits working together being activated as much as possible in a small time period.

The problem is our bottom end performance is being sacrificed due to theoretical perfect scenarios that result in those top end numbers.

I can understand the need to keep the top end in check; but it’s been over a year and at some point actual serious effort needs to be allocated past some minor number tweaks to adjust the back end mechanics to something actually viable outside of full investment and perfect conditions.

Siphons don’t crit.

WoB will siphon when traited with Vampiric Rituals according to the wiki if the enemy stands in it; been so long since I used those traits my memory is fuzzy though.

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

I just limited this thread to those two slots due to that specifically being what ANet is looking at.

@Overkillengine: tier for those?

Honestly what tier those would be good for depends highly on the numbers used. I’ll elaborate on the concepts a bit more.

Note: I am assuming as minors; as majors they may need a touch more beef.

Grasp of Death: Chance to steal a boon on hit. Chance scales with number of conditions on you. (note: 9 unique conditions exist, % and ICD subject to adjustment)

The point of that trait is to not only give another tool to deal with the boon heavy meta but to also cement a Necro as being able to derive power from being attacked with conditions other than just conversion (Well of Power), consumption (Consume Conditions) or the various transfer abilities. Note that it helps with the defensive issues that DS and Plague tend to have (lack of condition management tools while in them).

Counterplay versus this: stop mindless automatic boon spamming on recharge while loading a Necro who has this trait up with conditions or you are going to have a bad time. They’ll eat your boons and then you.

Patient Zero: Auto transfer one stun or condition/stack per x seconds to a nearby foe.
Radius: 600 units, similar to Epidemic but centered on the Necro per proc.

Another defensive trait with an emphasis on manipulating conditions to the Necro’s advantage; rewards aggressively sticking close to an enemy to infect them. Has some synergy with certain signets as a pseudo team support tool. Counterplay? Same as versus Plague; back up and focus them from range.

A note: if scaled up to majors, they would become powerful but in some ways mutually antagonistic to have at the same time; this is to prevent stacking issues.

Edit: guess I didn’t really answer the original question. Either would work decent as a Master I’d think as long as they were scaled appropriately.

I like the boon corruption one. Boon spamming is everywhere; more ways to subvert it would be very nice.

Grasp of Death: Chance to steal a boon on hit. Chance scales with number of conditions on you.

Patient Zero: Auto transfer one stun or condition/stack per x seconds to a nearby foe.

It’s just latent and not so latent discontent with balance policies and progress that has festered and percolated into a fine brew is all.

The new “heal” was just the timer on the machine letting us know the bitter joe was ready.

Bhawb.7408:

Overkillengine.6084:

Or how about granting the Necro retaliation when a minion dies? And none of this ICD hibbity jibbity either; it would already be capped by the number of minions you could have out.

Edit: of course this assumes the trait would also be made an major/optional trait instead of a minor deadweight trait for non mm builds.

Problem is that many MM builds can already reach full retal uptime because of Axe 3. Obviously you wouldn’t take it if that is the case, but I’d prefer to see more playstyles supported.

As it is now, the only really valid MM playstyle is to have expendable minions that are used for their various uses, and then it isn’t a big deal when they die. If you aren’t using minions as expendable tools, then you either probably aren’t a full MM, or aren’t optimized.

I’d like to see a few other playstyles supported. One of them that this could help support is one where the minions are kept alive. Turn Protection of the Horde from a selfish trait that makes the Necro stronger, into something that helps keep the minions alive, at some cost of making the Necro weaker. Like in some MM builds in GW1, where the Necromancer could be very weak personally, but keep their minions alive very well (at the cost of weakening themselves, especially through health sacrifice and taking DoT’s onto themselves from minions).

My reasoning was to provide an alternative to running Axe for retaliation actually.

As for build options that focus more on keeping the minions alive (and have it be worth it) I’m not going to hold my breath on that; not with how wonderfully reliable* AI based mechanics are in this game.

• Totally being a sarcastic kitten here.

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

I’d like to see PotH be replaced with something like gaining Retaliation (2 or 3 seconds) when stunned, personally.

Or how about granting the Necro retaliation when a minion dies? And none of this ICD hibbity jibbity either; it would already be capped by the number of minions you could have out.

Edit: of course this assumes the trait would also be made an major/optional trait instead of a minor deadweight trait for non mm builds.

Wait someone actually wants to use Reanimator? Have they gone off their meds?

Bhawb.7408:

Overkillengine.6084:

Problem is we gotta keep complaining so that they don’t forget/“accidentally” de-prioritize it.

It won’t happen. Wherever it is in development, its stuck there. I’ve been directly told by at least one mod (multiple times) that he hated Reanimator, that he knew we hated reanimator, and that is was entirely within their plans to change it.

But because they are brand new traits, they are probably trying to take time to actually get it right, plus the bosses are probably saying “well if necros get trait fixes so does everyone else”.

The issue isn’t the ones who realize it need changed. The issue is the ones giving them their marching orders.