Guild Wars 2

What? A buff? Like a real buff?

Really?

I bet this is QQ’d about instantly.

Sounds like this is PVP. What build? I use them both.

Evan Lesh.3295:

You were favored in your first two matches, so you lost one point in both. The third match was even, but you got over 400 points so your ladder points didn’t change. This is working as intended, but it sounds like you think the match prediction should weigh premades more versus solo players.

It should weigh them more.

Fear chaining at the start of the fight like you describe is bad technique and doesn’t accomplish much. Fear chaining as part of a condi-bomb or to interrupt a heal and seal a fight is an entirely other story.

I know as soon as a necro fears me early that I can likely heal without a problem… And they can’t. So that’s pretty much the fight right there between two Necros.

But otherwise yes, an early fear chain isn’t very damaging and you’re right to think it’s sort of useless for them. There is also a chance though that you’re getting hit with nightmare runes and reapers protection, so it could be passive procs.

I would think that peppering in some specialization info would be a great way to maintain hype. We don’t even have a release date so it’s probably still months away, and we’re unlikely to get big balance changes before specializations come out, so I wish they would give us some info about it already, because it’s already been a decent wait, and we know there is plenty of time to go, so to me it feels like the HoT hype is losing steam and spec. info would help.

I think your mistake is caring about the leaderboard. You had 3 losses, some were close. Doesn’t sound so bad.

I can see the bugs, but I was expecting the bugs where you can’t stomp. Otherwise I was expecting game modes, balance updates, and matchmaking. Oh or the leaderboard.

Life blast you can get behind, lich form you can’t.

Do you have any advice on what a thief should be doing at the very start of the match? I find I’m used to more bruiser type classes and used to head mid, but on thief it seems like it’s not too smart. What’s the best way to start off?

Dawdler.8521:

Roe.3679:

And before I get advice, I already run double energy sigils, Swalk, Wurm, and even warhorn. There was no hope of escape.

Which kind of says it all, doesnt it?

PvP is not won by escaping. You dont get points by escaping. You dont have to use either spectral walk or wurm, there’s absolutely no point in using evasion skills. That is just going to make you loose matches. You are limiting yourself by using 2 out of 3 skills for absolutely no gain. You’re going to die in PvP and that’s perfectly fine, as long as you die on point and kill the enemy more. Imagine if the rest of your team decide to “hybrid” and use 2 out of 3 escape skills. All you’re going to do is escaping and getting cut down.

Go either full damage (ie zerker and meta spec) or full bunker (something like sentinel wellmancer or minionmaster). Some choose the middle road (like celestial) but tbh I fail to see the point. With either spec its pretty impossible to get 0 points unless your team is horribad – the bunker will always be in the thick of battle at the center point and probably be responsible for winning the match while the zerker will +1 slaughter everything in sight and *necro bomb any major engagement. *

When I played zerker I usually ended up among the top scorers every match. Bunker, not so much (hey you have to sacrifice something for trying to win).

Because you were so arrogant about your post, I’m going to put this bluntly: you sound like you are a low skill level player.

I bolded everything about your post that is either ignorant, completely out of touch with the meta, or indicative of low skill. Also, it’s lose with one O. Don’t get all preachy with grade school spelling errors, please.

…So bad that you literally ended with 0 points? I played a match recently (against a premade with full pugs, mind you) that I was focused so mercilessly that I literally ended with no points at all. Whenever I showed up to a fight, I was immediately greeted by 2 and even 3 players chasing me as far as I could last all over the map. Whenever I actually downed someone, their team was there to help them back up and I obviously never got a kill.

The most frustrating thing was that even with them devoting seemingly all their resources to keeping me dead, my team couldn’t make any headway and capture any points. I wasn’t even the only person on my team with 0 points.

I mean clearly this was awful matchmaking, but it was one of the worst matches I’ve experienced. And before I get advice, I already run double energy sigils, Swalk, Wurm, and even warhorn. There was no hope of escape.

Does this happen to anyone else on their necros? It’s getting a little old for me.

My toon is female because it has one of the only pants options I know of. I can’t think of the armor name right now – I’ll try to edit this post and let you know.

EDIT – Primitive Legwraps.

Bunker guards are always tricky because it is actually possible to be out sustained by them because they are so hard to kill. Usually what I’ll do is pop locust swarm and dagger 1 them and well bomb to start – they’ll usually pop some cooldowns as an answer. Then back off, hit DS, and life blast them for a bit. Be ready to interrupt shelter at this point. When you’ve hit them for a little bit with life blast, head back in with dagger and locust swarm, and by the time your wells are back up they should be dead or close to it.

Don’t waste your wells – they are unblockable and will add a lot of damage. If done right, they’ll be forced off point or eat the damage, and you can decap. Locust swarm is key because it generates enough life force to outlast them and will take away aegis for you.

The real trick is killing them before their team shows up. And for the record attacking a bunker on point isn’t always a good use of your time to begin with.

Rising Dusk.2408:

Yeah, this would be great and would seriously warrant its use over the Spectrals as a stunbreak.

Signet of the Locust
Passive: You move 25% faster.
Active: Steal health from nearby foes.
Stunbreak
Damage: 970 (0.5)
Healing: 970 (0.5)
Number of Targets: 5
Range: 900
Cooldown: 40s
Cast Time: 3/4s

This is awesome. I would use this.

I’m really hoping the specialization gets plenty of access to life force generation (assuming we are still using DS) as well as stability, and hopefully protection, blinds and weakness to mitigate damage. They could also give us traits that say, you can’t be crit while in DS or something like that.

I’m equally interested in how they might change necromancer as a base class as I am in what happens to the specialization.

If run fear me, save it for slick shoes. Also leaping away or hitting them with LB 5 could work for that. Otherwise I would think that trying to keep yourself alive through condi clears and keeping condis on them would be your best bet. Keep your fire field and fire aura up – they only have so many condi clears. Then hopefully you can wear them down and get a final thrust in that seals it for you. Dodge magnet pull and their rifle jump attack, along with crowbar, thhose are the heaviest hitters.

Oh, and don’t stand in any poison. I would think this should help?

I main necro so getting rezzes off in busy situations is usually suicide. But my wtf moment is when I am rezzing a mesmer, thief, or ele with plague form, blinding any cleave, and then they move away and I can’t rez them again.

Also hate when I’m absolutely going to get a rez off for a warrior and they use vengeance.

What exactly does this screenshot prove?

Laraley.7695:

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

Laraley.7695:

The only passive thing is Renewing Stamina, you’re saying that ele should just camp one attunement in case he’ll get hit by a trait without any ways to avoid it. No, rest of the boons are gained by actively switching your attunements. It’s how the class works but your suggestion is not to play the class how it works but how one passive trait forces me. But hey this necro just did 4K damage without any skill or good game play and that’s fine.

Also, if someone is playing a mesmer, should they not shatter in case of getting hit by passive proc?

You can’t really compare passive damage procs and boons.

There is such a thing as letting boons fall off. You don’t need to hold back for long, just to let the proc be wasted. D/D builds don’t seem to have an issue with Chill of Death, interestingly (sure it hurts, but it’s not killing them), so this clearly isn’t a profession-wide problem.

Since you commented that you usually play Fresh Air ele, I counter with this: Why, when you are playing what is literally the squishiest build in the entire game, are you complaining about anything doing a large portion of your health in one hit?

Nope. Thieves can do that very well. I don’t complain because even though Steal is instant damage, you can at least predict the gameplay of the thief, he has to actively press his skills to do damage. People seem to missunderstood. I chose to play this spec, I like it. I know it’s very squishy and I’m gonna get hit hard BUT I do not like that I take this much damage from something that is just a trait wich requires no skilled play really.

To others: It’s not really hard to get a fresh air ele to 50% hp. It’s probably the easiest thing you can do in the game. Obsidian flesh 50 sec cd, Chill of Death 20.

Defend this passive kitten as much as you want, it’s still not ok.

The weapon skill is 20 second cd, the passive proc is 60.

You could either make sure that your health stays above 50% – you did say it’s no skill, but they got you to 50% health – or, save your focus skill invuln for when you are near 50% health. Boom, countered.

Make Necros the worst class in game by a mile. Got it. Great suggestions. /sarcasm

I especially enjoyed the last sentence of being constructive after dropping this trollish thread.

Exedore.6320:

Queues
Combining ranked and unranked has its merits. It creates a larger player pool, which would improve matchmaking and lower queue times. That would bring more players into PvP and keep them around more often. The downside is the psychological effect, which is hard to quantify. When ranking is at risk, a lot of people become apprehensive about competing if they don’t feel that they can give it their best.

To answer your question about top players doing unranked: the leaderboards are meaningless to them unless they queue as a full team and unranked has slightly faster queues. You get crappy maps from time to time, but that’s not a big enough detractor. And since a lot of top players are solo or partial queuing, the matchmaking isn’t too horrible; no worse than ranked at least.

I don’t see why you suggest combining queues and then splitting them again. That’s defeating the purpose. Splitting by game mode just fragments the community and creates animosity. Stronghold is really popular right now mainly because it’s not released yet. Wouldn’t it be better to keep both modes together, maybe giving a preference to Stronghold for the first month or so, and then see where the community goes?
.

The way I see it, the community is already fractured. Plus, when stronghold was announced, there were dozens of posts about how it needed a separate queue from players interested in stronghold, but not conquest. How many in game players does that represent?

I’m also fine with the idea of one queue to rule them all – in fact, I personally prefer it – but if we’re going to fracture the community as it is now, it should be over something more meaningful like game modes instead of leaderboards.

This suggestion really revolves around a few things: the weak and nearly meaningless leaderboards, the lack of requirements to enter ranked games, etc. So maybe this suggestion is way out of line, and handling it another way is actually best.

First, thank you for the responses.

Laraley.7695:

1. I’m glad some people have the decency to do unranked first and we don’t have all new players in ranked.

Some people get it right, but plenty others don’t. I played a ranked game yesterday and someone said, “sorry for any newb mistakes guys, it’s my first game!” Its complained about often enough that is is certainly happening. I think unranked makes sense in theory, and I like the idea, but with the way it’s working now, it’s completely meaningless. Top players are in unranked over ranked, new players in ranked over anything – it’s not working.

Laraley.7695:

2. Everyone hated those maps, people still do. The frquency of getting them in unranked is WAY lower than before because it was pure rng and you have a say in it.

Then the maps should be removed from competitive queues. They were experimented with and it wasnt received well. They get limited votes. Clearly they aren’t popular. Why keep them for unranked? Just remove them and combine the queues, then.

Laraley.7695:

3. Not enough people for separate queues for TDM, conquest, Stronghold.

By that logic, are there enough people for the 2 queues we have now?

Laraley.7695:

4. Eh, that’s now how it works. Thief doesn’t might stack, guard doesn’t either, cele engi not really. Engi’s heal is interruptable (gotta predict when he’s gonna heal, usually after block). Some of your points are valid, but not all. Also, the meta is shifting a bit, people are trying different comps and it’ll even more with new specs. Should probably wait after xpack release.

I never claimed that these are the sole reasons these classes are in different positions, these are simply all facts about the classes. Thief can blast fields for stealth, or might, or whatever, because they have blasts finishers, and smoke fields. Hammer guards have a blast every few seconds on that weapon. Eles and warrs are blasting all the time through normal gameplay – but then you have 3 classes with no group blasts or desirable fields – the same classes that are at the bottom of pvp. Coincidence? Surely it doesn’t help, and could be addressed.

Laraley.7695:

6. No, it shouldn’t be 100%. You complete reward tracks easily anyway.

I never said it should be 100%, only pointing out the disparity Wvw ranks are completed easily enough, but they get a 100% boost. Why only 10% for pvp rewards? Remember that reward track points and rank points in PvP are not the same thing, so this only changes the rewards, not the speed of ranking.

Sorel.4870:

About the uninterruptible heals: that is kind of the point. For example, Ether Renewal is amazingly strong for the condition removal it offers. It is also really easy to interrupt, that’s why most favor the signet. The turret heal is interruptible, but it’s the only one with a built in condi removal, that’s why engineers take it (otherwise they could take the uninterruptible healing kit). Withdraw and Hide in Shadow are both excellent, and you see more tanky thieves (mainly WvW condi thieves) take HiS, but Withdraw is just more adapted to the squishiness of the meta builds. Mesmers and necromancers are almost forced to take the easy to interrupt heals, because there is no better alternatives.

That’s precisely my point – you need to take these hard/impossible to interrupt heals. They provide a huge advantage in risk/reward compared to something with a long cast time and obvious animation. The real point of my post isn’t to try to nerf other heals – it’s to try to expand realistic options to necro, mesmer and ranger. Actually the real point is to look at all these similarities as ways to realistically even the classes out.

Below are some things that I felt like I wanted to bring up to the community and see what others think on these topics as well. Thanks for reading.

The Current and Future Queue

Why are unranked and ranked queues separated? First, I don’t think more inexperienced players are always choosing what they “should” be choosing, so I’m not sure the practice/play/compete concept is working as intended. Second, all it truly accomplishes is separating the player base into people who sort of care about the leaderboard and people who don’t. How many bad match ups could be prevented by having both pools of players together?

I heard at one point that team queue did not have Spirit Watch and Skyhammer because top teams disliked the maps. But whenever I watch members of The Abjured on Twitch (some of the top players that stream in my time zone), they always queue in unranked. It’s not true of all high end players, but it doesn’t seem to make a difference to them. And why would it? Isn’t this an old idea?

It makes far more sense to me to have queues specifically for stronghold, courtyard, and maybe conquest, and then a mercenary queue with higher rewards that can be pulled into any matches. Or, when you queue, have an option to select the maps and modes you want – your own wait time is determined by how flexible you want to be. This way, players are not arbitrarily fractured among ranked and unranked, and instead separated only by what modes they actually want to play. You could give rank points to everyone, not just those “Competing” instead of “Practicing.”

These aren’t perfect suggestions but I think both are better than two of the same (but slightly different) queues.. Two queues worked when it was solo and team, but ranked and unranked seems silly in practice.

Class Balance in Regards to the Current Meta

Among the top classes (ele, engi, warrior), all can make great use of swap sigils, cele amulet and might, as has been discussed plenty of times, but they all also have very easy access to burning. It’s harder not to apply burning than it is to apply it with these specs.

Among classes mostly in the meta (ele, engi, warrior, thief, guardian) all have a heal that is uninterruptible, or nearly uninterruptible. Except for engineer, all of these classes have easy access to useful combo fields or finishers, or both.

Among classes on the fringe of the meta (mesmer, Necro, ranger) all have easily interrupted heals, and none of their strongest builds can fight on point for long, if at all. Only rangers have some finishers (including projectiles) and there are no truly useful fields in any of these classes. Mesmers have utility with portal, but that is mostly all of the utility present for these 3 classes. None of these classes have strong defensive trait lines.

Stronghold

While I’m not one who will bemoan PVE in PVP, I think that Stronghold is toeing a fine line with the PVE elements it introduces. There are already classes that are weak in PVE and – surprise! – some of them are also quite weak in PVP. While I know little of how balance changes, Revenants, and specializations will shake things up, I do hope that this is something being considered with HoT. As an extreme example, I’d hate to see Stronghold groups with “No Necros” being advertised.

Birthday booster

Currently, the birthday or celebration boosters add a 100% bonus to WvW rank, magic find, experience and gold, but only 10% to PVP reward track progress. To me, this means that the time spent under the effects of those boosters are more rewarded elsewhere and it should be the opposite. I can’t exactly foresee a crashing the economy over some dungeon armor and random loot bags.

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

Roe.3679:

Forsaker.9213:

Well i hope terror will do dmg even with the resistance buff up becouse its not condition doing dmg but trait :P

It will work the same as berserker stance, so no damage.

Works very differently. Berserker Stance prevents conditions from being applied. Resistance just prevents the condition from doing anything.

Details. Damage wise it will be the same.

Forsaker.9213:

Well i hope terror will do dmg even with the resistance buff up becouse its not condition doing dmg but trait :P

It will work the same as berserker stance, so no damage.

Ragion.2831:

Roe.3679:

Grinding to dragon in hotjoins or custom arenas does not make you good, skilled, or knowledgable. Hotjoin is completely different in so many ways from unranked or ranked it’s not really the same discussion. Either way I think I see why you have such skewed views of necros in Pvp.

To OP, you can make power necro work if you work at it. Just don’t expect it to not be a bumpy ride from time to time.

grinding? lol i hate grinding, was pretty big on actual matches when leveling. Not so much now for some reason.

I’m not sure I understand what you mean, especially since you aren’t on the old leaderboards.

Grinding to dragon in hotjoins or custom arenas does not make you good, skilled, or knowledgable. Hotjoin is completely different in so many ways from unranked or ranked it’s not really the same discussion. Either way I think I see why you have such skewed views of necros in Pvp.

To OP, you can make power necro work if you work at it. Just don’t expect it to not be a bumpy ride from time to time.

witcher.3197:

Roe.3679:

You missed a few groups:
- (…)
- players who really don’t care and choose this map to troll players like yourself

Call me an elitist any day, at least I’m not playing for the sake of preventing other people from having fun.

First, it’s pvp. It’s literally about killing and controlling other players. Is that fun for them? It’s not fun for me to get focused on my necro, the same way it’s not fun for the engineers that I condi-bomb. Second, it’s not their problem if you don’t have fun in courtyard, it’s yours. If it rustles your jimmies so much, isn’t that just to your opponents advantage? You can queue ranked if it’s so bad.

witcher.3197:

Odyssey.6523:

Funny you mentioned this because for a map I traditionally thought was unpopular it was the top vote 5 times today in my unranked que’s with over half the votes. (None of them me)

99% of players who love this map fit into one of the following categories:

• Low MMR ones who are too dumb to learn conquest.
• WvW zerglings.
• Premades who want a quick win.

It’s still not popular among actual PvP players imo.

On the topic

It’s a horrible map and a horrible gamemode. However 2v2 or 3v3 Annihilation would be extremely healthy for the game (annihilation = no respawns, respawning is just chaotic in such a small map where there are no objectives to split the team).

You managed to fit quite a lot of elitism into such a short post. Bravo!

You missed a few groups:
- people who want a change of pace because we have one dominant game mode
- players whose preferred builds don’t mesh as well with conquest
- players who simply prefer death match
- players who really don’t care and choose this map to troll players like yourself

I find these forums so funny sometimes:
“Anet give us new game modes!” “No not that one! My subjective definition of real pvpers means that they won’t like that pvp game mode”
“Anet give us more balance patches!” “No, don’t buff that class! My subjective view of these classes doesn’t align with these changes.”

I’d be very surprised if all of the specialization info comes out from betas. I’d be willing to bet that Anet makes some sort of post or ready up to go over specializations and any profession changes.

I wouldn’t really begin thinking of getting this info for another month, and even then it may be some time.

A truly talented thief is a nightmare. They’ll avoid or escape your damage and wear you down with smart hit and fade tactics – they’ll eventually use up your life force and interrupt your heal before you’re done. But most thieves are just lunch – the really great thieves are rare.

I like the idea to put it in DM and the one that gives it a longer duration. But as it stands now it’s not at all worth a GM slot. Hopefully this opens up an opportunity for Anet to make it useful, as I’ve said before.

Oh also the idea to make it give stability upon leaving DS to cover the heal was really smart, but not really enough on its own. Like if it gave 2 seconds on entry and 2 seconds on exit or something.

Courtyard is fun. Just don’t run a conquest build in TDM, it’s not the same.

You can turn every form of currency in the game into gold one way or another. Karma, skill points, badges of honor, dungeon tokens, all of it can be turned into gold either by salvaging or using the mystic forge.

I just play the game however I feel I want to (I pvp and wvw only) and when I have a lot of stuff saved up, I start converting to gold. I’ve never had thousands of gold but I always have enough for whatever I feel like I want. Grinding feels like work – I don’t any to play a game to work.

I’m 99% sure that this is an NPC like spoj said.

Well I wish it were buffed – I was playing around in pvp with signet of spite and a power build – the highest this ever hit was for just under 4k. I would love to see Necros get more of a combo that needs some sort of set up and actually has high rewards for doing it.

Ithilwen.1529:

An L2P issue? No, I play well enough to make Dragon rank. The old L2P saw is a thin disguise to deflect criticism. Truthfully, I’m sick of hearing it.

My comment was directed at OP, not you. Although it still applies to you if you play necromancer and are having this much trouble with longbow Rangers. They have almost no condi removal.

Also dragon rank is meaningless, in case you didn’t already know.

Don’t you play necro? This is a l2p issue.

Most necro mains who post about this stuff remember the Dhuumfire buffs and the reverberations that had on the class. Becoming OP lead to nerfs to amazing skills like putrid Mark and corrupt boon, as well as Mark of blood and grasping dead.

Being OP lead to destruction of the spec to a shadow of what it was. The community as a whole doesn’t want that again, just improved effectiveness.

Are you sure it wasn’t lightning flash followed up by close range Phoenix?

Sorel.4870:

I mean, I see the logic. But don’t you think it would be a bit OP in a coordinated team? At the moment, when a player gets focused, he has to burn through long CD to be able to survive and get his team to help him. The change you suggest would mean that even if you land the most coordinated burst on the necro, all he has to do is pop DS and let the elementalist heal him. I know that necro is now one of the first targets in a team fight (low disengage abilities, high offense pressure), but the fix you propose seems extreme, in higher tiers at least.

On the other hand, it pains me a bit to see all these good heals wasted on a necromancer. I suppose in soloq, it wouldn’t be much of a problem.

It’s either good in PVP or it’s not. PVE and wvw is another story, but by your own argument (coordination should be rewarded), the elementalist in your situation is coordinating to heal his teammate who was focused, and that should be able to happen, right?

Oh I do have some sort of overall rotation where I usually start a fight with staff, hit DS, do some damage with those, get out the dagger and build life force back up, then switch to staff for DS damage again. That’s sort of a rotation I suppose, but nothing like what does and some other classes have.

GhOst.4019:

Tissitra.4153:

Maining a mesmer, I know what I am talking about.

Great argument. You don’t main necro, so you know what you are talking about; because you main Mesmer?

Lol. Jesus christ, some people in this thread.

He’s saying he knows what it’s like to see a necro and think it’s basically a punching bag.

NeXeD.3042:

Different folks different strokes. Elementalists, engineers, and to some extent theives and mesmers all have sort of rotations. If you go into necro wanting to do rotations then your best bet is condi. Power is different there is no rotation timing your skills against what your opponent is doing is far more important.

This. Especially the last sentence.

I personally think that our autos are the main source of damage so we can manage our positioning and life force.

If the weaker classes had any defensive traits worth taking, they would have to, you know, give up offensive traits to take them. It’s almost like it would take care of itself!

Shiki.7148:

Rym.1469:

Shiki.7148:

Rym.1469:

It’s better than it was.

I’d say that Power necro is now more viable than Terror. Corrupting got a hit, since we can’t really throw away our CCs besides golem charge to rip stacks, it’s just a nerf to corrupting Elites like RaO.

Corruptions are less valuable than before. D/P Thief strips stability better than Necro now.

Uhm… if you corrupt stab it corrupts the whole thing, not just one stack of it.

And then Stability reapplies, so you just bought yourself 3 more seconds with 40 second cooldown instead of shutting down the elite.

Actually, nope, as stability doesn’t reapply as long as you are CC’d, at least it shouldn’t if they managed to code it correctly. Meaning : corrupt it, chain cc, RIP. Just like before. Fear->Fear->Fear-Daze->Immob. Thats a looooong time that they get CC’d before STAB reapplies, and, let’s be honest, after that you are out of CC’s as a Necro, anyways. The difference is now it takes more skill to chain the effects to get the most time out of it. Oh and you might even get a fourth fear after STAB has reapplied.

Stability reapplies even when CC’d. I think what you’re thinking is that it doesn’t break the stun, which it doesn’t. But you can’t just continually chain cc and prevent them from getting any stab, what would be the point of that with this change?

As has been mentioned, this is a buff against boon strip classes and a nerf in almost every other situation. Looks like lich won’t be much use in any bigger fights if the other team has a brain or enough people.

I have hopes that the specialization will bring some real viability to power necros. And maybe condi Necro will get improved? Maybe? I’m not going to revenant, though, it seems way too rigid as far as the skills for my liking.

xbutcherx.3861:

Jelzouki.4128:

For everyone saying no class should be this strong in downstate, well no class should be able to revive themselves through use of a pet but then you have rangers. It’s a downstate form people, learn to deal with it. I would much much much rather have a mist form like elementalists or a port and stealth like a thief but no I have strong damage while in downstate, DEAL WITH IT.

Seriously? do you know how long does it takes a pet to revive? or to stand as a warrior? That Necro in the video killed a GUARD, yes a GUARD with more than 50% health in less than 3 secs. That is what we talking about here, DEAL WITH IT.

That guard didn’t do anything to secure a stomp and was hit for noticeably longer than 3 seconds, he got off his downed 3 skill that you are saying takes so long. He starts the stomp at about 60% health, it just so happens that chill of death was off cooldown which did 50% more damage because of the trait. Just a big proc.

I’m thinking that the specialization may lose minions, instead of getting more. Either way I really hope there aren’t more minions. AI has plenty of weaknesses and it’s hard to imagine more AI being a good use of the limited new skills we get.