Guild Wars 2

SlyDevil.3952:

Also, Dusk, have you heard any mysterious rumors surrounding lupi’s AA? Last I read you thought they were implying it was intentional and they were going to think about the change.

I’m seriously pretty PO’d about the whole thing. Poor Lauren has been trying so hard to give us more information, but gets stifled by higher-ups. I really don’t know what’s going on beyond what I’ve already reported, but I will dig into it again.

Going to re-post some thoughts I had in another thread since this is the centralized thread for feedback.

Stronghold was a pretty painful experience for me because there were so many people playing and the game apparently thinks I’m so good that I should be able to carry teams who lose 4v3 teamfights. I got in about a dozen games, of those I won about 5.

That said, I would like to clarify my thoughts on the game mode.

• The game lasts long enough, it should not last longer. The game mode already lasts long enough and no ‘victory or death’ mechanic needs be implemented. What should happen, however, is that points gain should be balanced so that once you have a higher score you can’t just turtle until timeout. Winning really should be about progress to killing the lord, so offense.
• There should be increased incentives to kill players. This is a big issue right now. If you wipe the enemy team in your lord room, there is literally nothing gained except a delay to the inevitable. By the time you collect your team or anything after such a win, the enemy has respawned and can charge again. This results in too hard of a snowball effect. There should be increased penalties to death as the game goes on such as longer respawn times or even having a hero spawn for your team after every few kills your team gets.
• Archers are terrible. This whole mechanic is essentially ignored because archers are worthless. They need to do substantially more damage to guards, and guards in general need to be substantially harder to kill by single players.
• Channeling absolutely needs to be interrupted by damage, not just CC. This is important for the health of the game mode. Certain stability-stacking builds can just cap a hero and ignore players and then run off afterwards. The entire purpose of these capture mechanics is to make them a place where a fight takes place because both teams want control of the mechanic.

These, I feel, are the biggest issues in Stronghold right now.

Tonori.1483:

“I’m wonder who exactly needs Jute scraps?”

Well, I’ve got a baby amorsmith, leatherworker & tailor. They all need seemingly hundreds. Given that they have been above 1 scrap = 1 silver on trading house I would very much like to know how to farm 500+ with minimal tedium. Frankly I’d like to be in the position to sell 5k scraps right now.

Do AC1/2/3 explorable dungeons in less than an hour, spend proceeds on 500 jute scraps in worst possible case.

Jerus.4350:

I was thinking about it on my long car ride today. I just can’t help but feel that max stacks from PS is too much. Perhaps taking .5s off (or maybe the boon duration loss will be enough?) such that 25 stacks requires outside sources and can’t be maintained much at all. Right now it’s like 20-25 stacks pretty easily from a PS war with strength sigil, pretty much constant 25 from strength runes on top of that.

Losing the boon duration drops might duration from +75% to +45%, which drops PS might duration from 10.5 seconds to 8.7 seconds. This will effectively reduce the might upkeep by ~20%, meaning over the course of a long fight you’ll sustain roughly 20% less might with current rotations. FGJ will likely become mandatory to make up for that loss, hurting the Warrior’s DPS.

As for the other classes, it’s hard to say. I don’t think Guardian will be that bad and I think they’ll have some varied strong builds besides just hammer. And while I agree that the sustained DPS rotation for staff Ele is pretty low difficulty, I find it very satisfying if nothing else.

Welcome to the fold, you two! I’d continue the discussion I was having above, but it seems a little irrelevant now. Looking forward to your work!

Giganticus Lupicus action figure (also a plushie).

Fair enough. The likely problem is that so few people on the site care about the build that no one argues against questionable changes.

Bhawb.7408:

Don’t use that build. I didn’t realize metabattle had kittened up their minion build that much, but that is just sad. This is what happens when you allow random people to “fix” builds.

It’s what happens when people like yourself aren’t the ones maintaining them. You could always make an account.

Vizardlorde.8243:

Very true but then thats not a meta party, just a guadian mule carrying people :S

I mean, sure, but the OP’s question didn’t specify only for meta groups.

TheFantasticGman.9451:

Man, if they add a weapon swap… Just… I picture it being much better than the current situation.

Yeah, I don’t think staff will see play in PvE at all. It might have seen some use if there were a weapon swap so you could run S/S + Staff. Still, at least being able to swap between two legends means Ventari and Jalis will see some play coupled with Shiro.

Donari’s right, though… Maybe the staff will have incredible power coefficients, bit—Nah, who are we kidding.

It’s also meta in keeping terrible pub teammates alive.

TheFantasticGman.9451:

From what information was provided, I’ll never use the Ventari legend unless there’s weapon swap. A barely-DPS legend is useless in instanced group content with things that have healthbars.

Sure you will. Near-permanent projectile absorb uptime is great, plus you can run DPS weapons and the power-based legend and swap to that when you don’t need the projectile management.

spoj.9672:

Yeah but keeper’s recipes cost a kittening ton and have limited supply. Zojja’s are cheap and always attainable.

True, but I’ve got so many alts who could use the Zerker Ascended!

Riddle me this. The announcement said the molten sickle will be going away, but the molten sickle doesn’t say “Leaves the gem store in X days!” when viewed on the gem store. Does that mean it isn’t going away? Or is it still going away? I’d really love to get it, but I’d much rather wait to convert my gold to gems, so the difference matters.

Fractal weapon skins should never be available in PvP. I have done hundreds upon hundreds of Fractals in an attempt to finish my collection, and I am still only at 18/19. I love using these skins and knowing that these skins say “I played Fractals of the Mists”. If you added a way to get them to PvP, then no one could say that and it would devalue these prestigious skins in irreparable ways.

Don’t get me wrong, I think the RNG associated with Fractal weapon skins is terrible, and ANet knows about it from my reports, but that doesn’t mean the guaranteed way to get them should show up in PvP. Au contraire, it belongs only in one place: Fractals themselves.

Malediktus.3740:

The faulty fractal reward system is not a reason to hand out the rewards like candy in PvP.

Exactly.

spoj.9672:

Cant you get zealot from ascended boxes? Play the RNG game. :>

Yeah, but from Raider’s chests. It’s pretty much impossible for me to seriously consider Keeper’s armor when Berserker’s is an option.

Stronghold was a pretty painful experience for me because there were so many people playing and the game apparently thinks I’m so good that I should be able to carry teams who lose 4v3 teamfights.

That said, I agree generally with the OP, but would like to clarify my thoughts as well.

• The game lasts long enough, it should not last longer. The game mode already lasts long enough and no ‘victory or death’ mechanic needs be implemented. What should happen, however, is that points gain should be balanced so that once you have a higher score you can’t just turtle until timeout.
• There should be increased incentives to kill players. This is a big issue right now. If you wipe the enemy team in your lord room, there is literally nothing gained except a delay to the inevitable. By the time you collect your team or anything after such a win, the enemy has respawned and can charge again. This results in too hard of a snowball effect. There should be increased penalties to death as the game goes on such as longer respawn times or even having a hero spawn for your team after every few kills your team gets.
• Archers are terrible. This whole mechanic is essentially ignored because archers are worthless. They need to do substantially more damage to guards, and guards in general need to be substantially harder to kill by single players.
• Channeling absolutely needs to be interrupted by damage, not just CC. This is important for the health of the game mode. Certain stability-stacking builds can just cap a hero and ignore players and then run off afterwards. The entire purpose of these capture mechanics is to make them a place where a fight takes place because both teams want control of the mechanic.

These, I feel, are the biggest issues in Stronghold right now.

This is a great change. Thanks for the heads up, Karl!

Jerus.4350:

@Rising, the problem is the passive nature of PS. It’s simply too much for too little. And as far as the DPS loss… well look at the new traits, unless the elite spec is just amazing we’re looking at a PS + DPS build meta, no more fast hands but who cares when you can just GS camp your way to victory.

There are surely many benefits to it that you’ve pointed out, but it still trivializes something that used to be one of the marks of good coordination.

I’m not sure how I’d change it, but to me it’s just one of the steps towards less skilled play. As I said above, my group was using it the day it came out because it fit so well into our “braindead meta” which we called that for a reason. We stopped using it because it just got boring.

I can certainly appreciate the desire for a more active rotation. I know that GS camping is boring for me and that weapon camping in general is something people dislike, so I made some points to ANet about that a bit ago and they’re trying to rework stuff to encourage the fast hands rotations we all enjoy with Warrior while still keeping things like PS as they are. It’s for this same reason that I’m pushing to keep Scepter builds relevant with ANet on Eles; I know some people prefer that kind of gameplay, and those builds should absolutely retain relevance.

We are still recruiting, I swear!

It’s been busy for me lately working forum specialist stuff so I haven’t thought to bump this, but the guild is still alive and strong, doing the things we always do reliably and consistently. If the kind of casual, new-player friendly group we have is what you’re looking for, ask a guild officer about [VZ] and we’ll see if you’re a good fit.

cranos.5913:

Personally I don’t see PS as horrible. What I hate is how mandatory it’s going to be after the LH and general non-staff ele builds nerf, giving you no other option than PS in longer fights. PS will also no longer suffer a personal dmg nerf after the trait changes, meaning you don’t sacrifice a lot for group support anymore.

As a side note, I will say that you shouldn’t be so sure that non-staff Ele builds will be gutted quite like the preview suggested. I’ve been working with them on this, and I think they’re going to dial back those nerfs to keep Scepter builds relevant. I’m pretty confident Ice Bow is still going to get the shaft (I’m trying hard to make sure it doesn’t get nerfed as bad as FGS was).

My collection of thoughts on what is appropriate for a WvW forum specialist is someone who posts “regularly enough” in the WvW forum to have a solid understanding of what the community is talking about, and who shows engagement with the community on topics that matter to them. Beyond that, I’d expect them to be well-spoken and effective at distilling a massive number of opinions down into a cogent argument for a specific change or improvement or even nerf.

I’d also expect a WvW forum specialist to have some measure of experience in WvW, obviously. I don’t think this needs to involve guild vs. guild at all, however, because so long as they understand the underpinnings of WvW and show engagement with those players who do GvG regularly, that would enable them to effectively communicate opinions to ANet. I would say that someone who is rank 300 or so would be fine as a specialist. They don’t have to have played thousands of hours in the format to represent the WvW forum effectively. Being casual is not a problem for effectively performing the role; the only real need here is to have thick enough skin to deal with player-driven toxicity.

I know that there are a number of people in the WvW forum who meet that criteria and who are also located in the US. I hope that they’ve submitted applications, and I hope we hear more soon about who they are. For those who doubt that ANet listens and who doubt that the forum specialist program is working, I can safely assure you that such preoccupations are unfounded. I know ANet actively reviews and makes changes based on our reports.

spoj.9672:

Might stacking with blasts ISNT too powerful in long drawn out fights. Phalanx IS too powerful in long drawn out fights.

I’m actually going to reply regarding PS, not so much about might in general.

A number of people have started raising the banner of “PS is too strong” as a trait recently, and it bothers me a bit. From my perspective, PS is very strong, but it inherently guts the damage of the individual to take that trait line for PS to balance that a bit. Additionally, the presence of PS enables other combo fields to be used regularly in meta DPS groups without suffering the problem of combo field selectivity (and thus combo field frustration). Furthermore, PS enables pub players to learn best-practices (maintaining might stacks) and thus become better contributing members both of their current team and of the community in general. There is literally no downside to this in my opinion. Might-stacking by blasts is still crucial to pre-stack before bosses, and might-stacking by PS just allows those high numbers to be sustained throughout a fight. I would literally never recommend to ANet to nerf PS because it has only positive benefits for the game.

Convince me otherwise, please, if the general consensus is that PS is bad for the meta/game or whatever. I’m genuinely curious to hear the other side of this.

I actually think Ventari could see legitimate use in PvE due to the absorbing bubble uptime (near-permanent with proper energy management). Obviously the Staff won’t be used, but a mix of Ventari/Shiro could be really solid, swapping out Ventari for Jalis if you ever need stability (or swiftness blasting) more than the absorbs.

If it’s got full zerker it’s fine in my book. The Celestial Elementalist I might puke a little at, but it could be worse. The Warrior would be pretty ineffective if he sat in hammer a lot, and the CCs would knock mobs out of AOEs and be pretty aggravating. Really it would depend on how they played; if they were contributing, stacking might, swapping weapons / utilities based on the situation they’d be fine in my book.

Very, very nice! Approved.

Nice run! Looking over it now.

EDIT: Approved, but it will take a little bit to get on the site since you aren’t in our DB yet and it’s on the site now.

P.S. Nice random RtL into the wall at the end, Painox.

This is pretty great. Approved.

I’m personally hoping it’ll affect everyone it hits. The cost of this being so strong is that it is on a fairly immobile class and is essentially melee range. If you can coral enemies and reave boons like that, then I’d say that’s just playing exceptionally well.

I could also see Spectral Armor absorbing projectiles shot at you, while Spectral Walk could cause the trail left by your movement with the skill active to reflect projectiles. Spectral skills in general outside of Spectral Grasp feel as though they could have a reflect/block component.

spoj.9672:

Robert Gee was pretty correct in saying it would be better to solve the main issues on the core specs and not bandaid it on the elite spec. That said the elite spec definitely does a good job of improving necro. It provides much better AOE, debuff conditions and sustain possibilities.

If we had a much more viable core class then the elite spec would be looked at as a huge positive regardless. Its just difficult to be completely satisfied when our core issues from the base class are still left unresolved. The elite spec is definitely a big positive. Just not necessarily enough on its own. Core spec stuff will clinch it in the end.

I was going to write a post in response to the OP, but Spoj already said it well enough so I’ll just quote him instead.

Bahaha, it’s okay, I just really wanted to use an “I’m being ignored” gif in my post after reading it.

For the record, Gates, your report topics mostly line up with my last two, so I think the double whammy will be particularly helpful to them. I’m not discussing minions so much, and am more focusing on the traits and their synergies and where the issues are there. That said my next report is heavily focused on the Reaper, so that will be relevant as well.

flow.6043:

I just want to say in light of all the work you did, and Robert Gee even mentioning the community’s feedback on stream, you deserve a round of applaus and a cookie.
/hands-over-special-necro-cookie

Feels

The easiest fix for blast finishers would be to have Putrid Mark have a flip skill that enables you to blast the mark prematurely out of combat. Couple that with like one other blast finisher somewhere and they’re good to go.

Anyway, I don’t expect or really hope for Necros to ever be meta. There are basically three roles in speed clears.

• Best DPS: Elementalist (AOE) / Thief (Single Target) / Engi (Underwater)
• Best Group Skip Utility: Thief (Stealth) / Mesmer (Portal)
• Best Offensive Utility: Elementalist (Might + Fury) / Mesmer (Reflects) / Guard (Reflects + Heavy Support) / Warrior (Banners)

When you look at that, it’s no surprise that Ele/Ele/Thief/(Mesmer or Guard or Ele)/Warrior is your group comp of choice basically everywhere. If you wanted Necromancer to fit anywhere into that, you’d have to offer something better than what’s presented there. It’s like if the Necromancer got Warrior-level offensive support and somehow scored a smoke field for stealth, it could theoretically overtake Thief, but I somehow don’t see that happening.

Chill of Death really isn’t good enough alone to merit ever taking as a GM. The thing that makes it valid is that Chill of Death is guaranteed currently to gain the bonus from Close to Death. Without that it will lack the actual punch it has right now and never be taken.

Signet Mastery really should stay as a GM because it offers a lesser damage bonus compared to CtD, but picks up a lot of added sustain from the Signet of the Locust activation. In general it’s good to have a sustain/damage/utility approach to GMs, and I think they did that one fine.

Death Shiver competing with Bitter Chill is a non-starter as well. One will, on average, be completely superior than the other and thus only one will ever be used. They do basically the same thing just in marginally different ways. In reality, I kind of like how we have to make decisions between good traits now.

I wouldn’t mind this so long as it’s not on a bloody celestial jewel that you couldn’t pay me to use. If they do this it should be account bound and a feature of an ascended ring that you can select the stats on.

This is definitely a bug in both the animation and the skill efficacy that ANet should address as soon as possible.

spoj.9672:

You are overdramatizing it. Its a bug lol.

Bingo. They’ll fix it.

ronpierce.2760:

And poor Sky deleted their comment because people jumped to conclusions… :/

Probably because he immaturely threatened to quit as though that has any impact on anything.

Laraley.7695:

Which makes me wonder why immob in air is not fixed yet. -_-

Because it is a significantly harder issue to fix in the underlying game systems.

I would be very sad if Warhorn phased out of the meta because it’s my favorite Necromancer weapon currently. Having to swap it in like that would also be kind of annoying. Oh well.

It would sure be nice to be able to self-stack 25 might and 25 vulnerability permanently regardless of whether we attack in DS or not and maintain 100% critical hit chance with basically no precision, but I genuinely think we’re being naive if we don’t acknowledge that we can’t have all of these things. It’s just too much.

So the real key is to decide what you want more. I personally think my suggestion would enable us to build to do things with different playstyles in each manner, while still giving us the strength we need to be effective and manage life force effectively.

I think in general we’ll opt for Spite/SR/Reaper like in this build: http://dulfy.net/gw2traits#build=AgQBqAVoBqw~. Downside to this is that we lose out on Fury on entering DS and we lose out on Target the Weak which I think ANet will move back to a damage modifier instead of a critical chance modifier (hopefully).

The alternative to this build is to use Curses and opt out of SR, which would look like this http://dulfy.net/gw2traits#build=AgQB2AL8Brw~. Here we go with Decimate Defenses for the crit chance and focus on maintaining 25 stacks of vulnerability in order to keep ourselves at 100% crit chance. The big loss here is that our DS is fairly weak so we’d just flash it for Fury and we’re going to struggle getting most mobs under 50%. The other big issue here is that it has no personal might generation, so even if it’s stronger than the other build in raw numbers I don’t think it’ll be as good for general open world PVE. That said I’m personally glad that the build that doesn’t properly use DS is weaker.

Rym.1469:

Just nerf might duration. I care only for current synergy with Blighter’s Boon.

Generating a boon just to heal yourself or generate LF is a pretty poor design decision. The might duration is already really low, and any lower and you may as well not even get might. I’d much rather Chilling Force be a reasonable trait that has value on its own and isn’t strictly useful only when coupled with Blighter’s Boon.

Firstly, trooper runes are a real DPS loss in PvE, especially for a class that can so easily retain the scholar rune 6th bonus. Secondly, the necromancer has no need for all of those condition clears; it isn’t the kind of group support it wants or needs. If it really needs some condition clears, it can already run Well of Power and get more mileage out of that than it would out of any of the shouts in their current form.

hailsatan.2865:

If you want to focus more on helping your team vs dps/cc maybe necro isnt the right class for you.

This is where the real problem with your logic lies. The Necromancer can still be a very selfish class while still retaining sufficient team support in the form of +1 to 2 reliable blast finishers and maybe picking up a projectile absorb or some offensive ally-affecting traits. This is especially true because you’re treating the DPS as if it’s the Necromancer’s forte, where it simply is not given how few damage modifiers the class has. If the Necromancer’s specialty is supposed to be CC / DPS, then why is the Ele superior at both of those things all while having more team support at the exact same time? I’ll tell you why: because the Necromancer is currently not where it should be in terms of balance; it’s weak. That’s why people ask for team support.

As much as I’d love to be able to solo generate 25 might with greater ease than a Warrior while on my Necromancer, I’m not sure I’m sold that this is really an appropriate trait given what we already have. It’s already sort of redundant with Reaper’s Might, so here’s what I propose.

Reaper’s Might: Gain 1 stack of might for 15 seconds for each foe you hit with Life Blast or Plague Blast.

Chilling Force: Deal 10% bonus damage to foes suffering from chill. When you strike a foe suffering from chill, you gain 1% life force.

Here’s the logic. Currently with Reaper’s Might you can just autoattack the floor and generate might, which is fairly silly. Additionally, even if you manage to line it up and cleave people with Life Blast, you still only get 1 stack of might. This change would make it so you’d get 1 stack of might for each foe you hit, which would scale really well into Reaper’s Shroud. This would give us a reliable way to self-buff when surrounded by multiple enemies, and then we could simultaneously dial back Chilling Force so we get an extra damage modifier (something Necromancer needs) and retain the life force generation without it being over the top.

As far as I can tell, this balances the issue out and gives us all of what we want out of these two traits. If you want might, you’d go for Reaper’s Might, and if you want the damage modifier and life force management, you’d go for Chilling Force.

Only downside to this is that Reaper’s Might competes with Bitter Chill, so in an organized group that is blasting might or has a PS Warrior you would take Bitter Chill, and in a solo scenario you’d opt to take the trait that provides a lot more personal might and try to manage vulnerability with other traits and skills.

Thoughts?

spoj.9672:

Oh? This is a little disappointing. That trait seems like a really good one. I can understand that 5 vuln stacks might be a bit too much. But I would like to see it remain as a no ICD vuln stacker equivalent to blind exposure in functionality.

I don’t know the exact form this trait will take, but I strongly pushed for it to retain no ICD.

@Nike: Those ideas are right in-line with the suggestions a number of forum specialists have been pushing for, so hopefully we’ll get at least that.

EcoRI.9273:

It was originally in the general discussion forum but got moved by a modQ.Q

Oh, well that certainly makes more sense then.

I appreciate the message you’re trying to convey, Eco, but I don’t think this is the right audience. I mean, every speed running guild member who views these forums already knows the importance of team support. Every argument against or for anything in meaningful discussions (I’ve read them all) for the past forever invokes team support. The only people who talk about damage like it is the end-all-be-all of dungeon clearing are bad players who don’t yet know better. Even the people who think going fast or berserker gear is an exploit are more common here than your target audience. :P

Axelwarrior.9084:

Oh boy~
You mean something that hasn’t been mentioned yet?

The rework they mentioned in the livestream does not end with the couple changes they noted. I know there’s more to it than that, just not what the actual changes themselves are because they are still WIP. Suffice it to say that it should be good and fit in the offensive support category.

xDudisx.5914:

They are reworking the way condis work for HoT.
Poor blind access? Plague form, well of darkness, etc..
Poor vuln acess? The new specialization will have plenty, also well of suffering.

• Reworking the way condis work for HoT won’t make the Necromancer any better at applying them.
• Plague and Well of Darkness are both terrible; the former drops your DPS to near-zero and the latter wastes a utility slot for at best 5 seconds of AOE blinds that the Thief or Ele can easily out-do.
• They will not be keeping Bitter Chill or a number of the other overzealous vulnerability applying traits that they’ve added as they are come release. This will, however, get a bit better in HoT regardless so that’s good.

xDudisx.5914:

Not every class needs to be the same. We have plenty of classes that bring blast, fire fields and reflect. If it does not fit your playstyle then reroll. Don’t expect them to make changes based on a very specific and niche build like dungeon zerker speed runners. Leave your bubble.

No one is asking for fire fields or even reflects. Asking for a blast finisher or two is not unreasonable, and adding a projectile absorb is also not unreasonable. Just because the classes are different doesn’t mean that one, by design, should be useless. That makes fundamentally no sense, and is the very antithesis of proper game balance.

Anyway, I can speak for ANet a little bit here when I say that they agree with Spoj’s opinion, and they are currently making some changes I think you guys will like. The core reason we haven’t yet seen so many of these changes is, really, because of PvP/WvW. It has nothing to do with the class’s design. Necromancer is very strong in WvW and has incredible burst DPS in PvP. They don’t want to create Dhuumfire Mk. II and want to gradually try to phase the buffs in. Regardless, the forum specialists have been pushing them on the matter of the Necromancer, and that is what inspired the Blood Magic re-rework and a few of the other changes, so stay tuned.

BlackDragon.3752:

well you casted mantra before dungeon start :P

So this is actually an issue, since the timer should have started when he cast the mantra, which was before the video started going. Technically we shouldn’t approve it in this form because of this, although I think looking at the video it really wouldn’t have mattered for the time so it’s probably fine.