Guild Wars 2

There were massive amounts of changes while the betas and closed betas were going on. Complete remakes of skills, abilities, traits, you name it. Spammable cloak and dagger, almost an entire remake of Necromancer skills, etc.

Were there only 2 devs working on combat during the beta too? It seems odd to me that we have been getting a significantly decreased amount of bug fixes and balance changes during the most crucial part of a new MMO game – the release.

From what it seems, the team must have been larger during the betas to get the game ready for release. But when the most important time of a newborn-MMO came – release, they just decided to let everyone go and work on whatever else? If this is the case, not only is this an awful idea for company profits, but the the previous employees who helped during the beta should have already been brought back to help revitalize the PvP component of this game. This is the kind of stuff that should been been brought the the big-boss’ attention at the regular meetings that happen. And it should be clear to the one in charge that the PvP part of the game needs a hand.

You have your own balancing team already (us), but there should simply be as many fixes as there were during the betas. This isn’t a rant or meant to flame, but there are quite a few bugs and there are additions to PvP that need to be made.

It’s as if the devs seemed happier working on balancing during the betas because it was fun and creative for them, but now that the game is released, the community is so hard and outspoken to insult Anet that they have lost their urge to satisfy the players. But they are taking it the wrong way. We want progress to move as fast as it did during the betas – that would make us happy. We don’t hate Anet, the PvP or the style of combat (we are still here aren’t we?) but we do hate that things are taking so long.

TL;DR

Beta – Lots of changes
Release – Barely any changes?

Gluttony needs to be additive and become the Grandmaster trait.

Even if it was a 1% additive boost and the minor trait, it would be very powerful compared to crap like Reapers Precision – 33% chance on critical to restore 1% life force.

I don’t think multiplicative even works with life force since everything ticks in 1% intervals and you don’t see the actual numbers.

I’d be happy with it as a minor like this because 5% would be way too powerful for a minor:

Gluttony – 15% chance when attacking an opponent to gain 1% life force.

This would make multi-hit skills better like the axe and dagger and increase their viability.

Mark of Revival is one of the best ressing traits/abilities in the game.

HOWEVER!

The Necromancer is the WORST resser/stomper in the entire game.

Is this the definition of ironic?

Death Shroud needs to be able to be used for ressing and stomping. There is no kittening reason to not allow it. You still take damage, it just won’t be your health. You’ll be left with no life force instead, which would get drained REGARDLESS because you’d be using Death Shroud after your stomp or res anyway.

You’re right about Spite. Fixed it.

Adept, Master and Grandmaster now all have ways to grant Might. Good for non axe builds.

TL;DR – Pretty much the same traits that already exist.
Just arranged better and slightly altered.

Best map in the game. Please make the other maps better, I do not want to play the other maps now.

PinCushion.7390:

Wayfarer.2051:

Reaper’s precission desevres an honorary mention!
33% of all crits give 1% LF?
Wow.
This losses even to bugged traits.
Make it 100% crits and at least 2%.

Works a third of the time, every time!

Yeah but it’s crap. Doesn’t even feel like 33% of the time. It is pretty garbage. Signet of Undeath restores more than this trait with it’s passive – Fact.

What’s this about?

I was willing to give skills like Ghastly Claws (Necromancer Axe #2 skill) a chance but then I realized why channelled skills SUCK so much. As soon as you get in melee range the channel will cancel. Whether your opponent is to your side or behind you – anything but directly in front of you.

This makes channelled skills garbage in PvP. It’s a joke.

If I use a channelled skill like Ghastly Claws without a target an spin in circles over and over, does it stop channelling? No. It doesn’t.

So a target going behind you or going slightly off the exact front of you shouldn’t cancel channelled skills. Necromancers axe is technically a melee weapon only having 600 range, but it’s main skill can’t be used in melee? What a joke.

This needs fixed badly.

It’s useless in PvE. PvP only utility.

Levian.6742:

Great ideas, all of them are well though out and well laid out. As they are, I wouldn’t even consider adding a signet for a utility. I’d love for signets to actually be a real contender for a slot or even to be able to make a build around it.

Right now, I would almost never consider getting rid of well of darkness for anything. As a dagger build, nothing is better for melee fights.

I still think that DS#3 should be an aoe fear, either PBAoE on the caster, PBAoE on the target, or a wave like underwater DS3

Agreed with a wave of fear for DS #3. It’s clearly not overpowered under water so I don’t understand why we wouldn’t have an AOE above water.

You have to hit with a spell for it to do anything. It’s as simple as that. This is a L2P issue. If I hit the enemy with spectral grasp and they are invulnerable will it do anything? No, because they are immune.

Try waiting until they’re not invincible…

As a Necro I enjoy killing this noobiest of builds in the entire game by standing in their caltrops they drop and throwing 20 bleeds back on them.

Jumping in PvP doesn’t do anything. Stop jumping and that will solve your problem. Where would you shadow return to? The air?

Tried the Terror trait after the patch hoping for ninja buff. Still did 76 damage LOL.

I think Ascii is right, actually. I test on golems every single day and with the exact same build I had before the patch I’m definitely killing the golems faster.

Something was changed. Also Necrotic Grasp is 1400 rnage now which is pretty sweet with it’s increased speed.

Don’t look at the tooltips, they are outdated once again. Focus doesn’t even show that it adds 4 vulnerability instead of 3 now.

Jon did good with damage boost.

I agree that the Thief’s stolen Fear is pretty overpowered as it is already. 3s AOE Fear every ~35 seconds? That’s just nuts. That skill should be nerfed to 1s IMO. It would still be on a faster cooldown than our Mark of Fear. Not sure why the Thief was given such a powerful ability(s) that just involves 1 click.

For Warriors I think it’s fair though. That shout of theirs already has an 80s cooldown, requires 3 adrenaline bars and they won’t be putting 10 conditions on you anyway. Chances are that their average Fear Me! would be 4 or 5 seconds which seems fair IMO for the requirements to do that.

Fear is also a removable condition which the majority don’t realize because it’s usually over by the time you even need to remove it lol.

I find Conditional Might would really fit into certain builds really well, without becoming a trait that outshines the other traits in that line. It competes with Spiteful Marks, Training of the Master and Chill of Death. Those traits all work with very niche builds (staff, minions, burst), as does Conditional Might (conditions, hybrid). So I don’t think it would be underwhelming if your build supports it.

These solutions aren’t overpowered and will solve a lot of issues. You can use them Anet, really.

Behold! The solution to some of the Necromancers problems!

The issue with being a DoT (Damage over time) class is that your damage can be removed, and in the case of the Necromancer, we have no way of countering the opponents counter. Everything a Necromancer does is damage over time – everything. So this is indeed an issue… but it has a clever solution.

This video explains DoT problems pretty well for the most part:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=Skgqsry_imM#t=3004s

This is a very serious suggestion and I’ve done quite a lot of research on current issues in the game and I believe this will solve a portion of those problems for PvE, PvP and WvW. I focused on Fear and Signets because the solutions I’ve come up with go hand-in-hand and a major Necromancer issue is their lackluster Fear abilities.

Reikou – Sylvari Instagib Thief / Reira – Sylvari Simply Overpowered Mesmer / Iroha – Sylvari Bunker Guardian

If you limit the forums then we will all use these OP builds as well and be in top leaderboards. Argument invalid.

To be like Dante from Devil May Cry with dual pistols.
Unfortunately Daggers were better

I’m one of those people who have set their hopes really high for Nov 15th. I am expecting a gigantic list of things. Guess we’ll see lol. There’s a lot of emphasis on being put on Nov 15th and I think they will deliver.

Unless I’m mistaken, isn’t poison cloud the 2nd best poison skill in the entire game?

It’s duration is 12s (Tooltip is wrong, it isn’t 15s. Report the bug and maybe it’ll be buffed lol) I use it in my bunker buster build for killing Guardians with a 32s cooldown. The poison is nice for wrecking their regens.

Strange that some of you say hybrid for PvE and not PvP. I haven’t done diddly squat in PvE only being level 20. In my opinion, hybrid is the way to go in PvP because of all of the condition removal, which isn’t going to be going away in any meta situation.

I agree that Carrion is the best for Necro as well. The only issue I’ve found is trying to get toughness built up because the toughness traits suck so bad that I refuse to use that line… blegh.

IMO every other class should be slower like the Necro. Then there will be less spam and more skill involved.

I see a lot of people complaining about trait attributes and traits that increase direct damage in the condition line.

Just wanted to get this out there – Stop going all out conditions when making a condition build.

Rune of the Undead, Bleed duration to the max, 1400 condition damage and whatever else. You’re building wrong. Don’t know if anyone has actually noticed but scepter attacks do direct damage as well, as do all of your skills, which can all crit and do 150% more damage.

Feast of Corruption – Strike your target, dealing additional damage and gaining life force for each condition on them. Can easily crit for 1500 being a hybrid. 10s cooldown.

Life Blast – Blast a foe with accumulated life force, dealing more damage the more life force you have.

Barbed Precision – Critical hits have a 66% chance to cause bleeding.

Target the Weak – 2% increased damage for each condition on a foe.

*Might is a boon which increases power and condition damage *

The key is hybrid.
None of your skills should be useless, including Life Blast. If your Life Blast does at least as much damage as your Scepter #1s total damage output when at ~75% or more life force, then you have built correctly.

There are things wrong with Necromancers obviously, but building wrong isn’t one of them.

Only issue BiP has is that it isn’t situational. Low cooldown, long duration, just boosts damage. Might as well have it on auto trigger.

I can personally say that I have stumbled upon the holy grail of Axe Power builds and the secret is Tribrid. So please keep asking for buffs. I will only become even more powerful than I already am! MuAHAHAHAHA!

Arcades Saboth.5139:

My Charr necromancer. I’m quite proud of him.

That’s a hardcore looking Necro lol. Kinda scary.

digiowl.9620:

Honestly i feel like DS should be more like this than its current state.

Such a good idea. Why the kitten do so many of our traits suck? Look at all the amazing possibilities. Did they really design Reaper of Grenth and not think about making it part of Death Shroud in some way or making it the base ability? Like… seriously? Are you kittening kidding me? lmao. It is so similar.

Nope. We get 8? traits for minions. We get similar traits that are strangely separated. Clearly it would be a stupid idea to combine some current traits and make better ones. That’s why they’re the devs right? Our current traits are perfect!

Pathetic.

I am exactly 50% wins/losses from doing all hot join. I usually seem to be the only one who tries to go for objectives while I watch on the map, every single one of my allies rush to the waterfall while I proceed to say in my mind, “Wtf?” And then at the end of the game we lose 500-200 because everyone’s a moron and zergs all the time and ignores important things like not letting your Lord die in the first 60 seconds.

It’s funny losing 500-200 because even though we lost, all of my allies who zerged for the entire game have the highest scores of 200-300 and receive more glory than anyone else.

This is the typical hot join game.

As someone who actually plays the game properly, I should be rank 40 by now. Hot join needs to become more like Tournament PvP where people actually play the kitten game. You don’t see people in Tournaments having huge scores of 300 or even upwards of 400, because they play the game properly.

Oh and what else that’s neat is seeing at the end of a match how we lose while all of my allies are rank 1-8 and the opponent has ranks 20-40. That’s really neat.

You Guardians are in dire need of a lot more nerfs than that so stop whining. I know you all like to play your overpowered profession and faceroll SPvP but that’s too bad. You need to be nerfed. The only class I’ve seen that can take out a good Guardian 1v1 is a boon removal Necromancer.

Stop complaining. Guardian is OP.

Does this Spinal Shivers also remove Boons?

“Spectral Skills Grant Life Force” Corruption? Signets? Minions?

I feel like adjusting the cooldown traits to all grant additional life force when used would solve a lot of problems, like conditionmancers not being able to generate a lot of life force, or improving minion master builds because more minions grant more life force.

Also, the 2 signet traits and the 2 spectral traits should be combined with each other, as well as a couple of minion traits. New and better/useful traits should then be put in place. No one in their right mind uses the trait for 3 Might when activating a signet. The signets are on ridiculous cooldowns lol. 180s? 90s? That’s a joke.

Or if they only want spectral skills to grant life force, then combine it with the cooldown trait. Combine signets cooldown trait with the might gain trait (and make it grant 5 Might for 10 seconds), adjust the corruption cooldown trait by making it so activating a corruption skill also does direct damage.

Those are just a few ideas but as you can see Anet, it isn’t hard to come up with fixes for this class. It’s actually really straight forward and simple. The traits are way too spread out right now. What are there, like 8 minion traits? That’s ridiculous.

I think you forgot to mention a few other bugs.

Also it takes 5 seconds to cast. This must be a bug as well so it should be added. No weak skill should have 5s cast time.

The only thing that has changed is that even MORE bugs have been found and none fixed.

Staff 1 isn’t fine so stop trying to ruin the Necro/keep it crap. Seriously the only thing that ruins classes is players being oblivious. Use your staff 1 in a 1v1 against me or anyone else and you will be guaranteed to have 0 life force the entire time. Nobody cares about PvE, it is so easy you can do it with 1 weapon and no off-hand and even no armor.

Staff 1 is way too slow.

Nah this bug is different. Happens when your actual health bar is below 20% with that rune and trait.

Siphoned Power Trait: Gain Might when hit and under 25% health.

Superior Rune of Svanir (6): You become a Block of Ice for 5 seconds (Invulnerable) when hit and under 20% health.

When you become invulnerable you no longer gain any Might from Siphoned Power when being hit.

Yeah I searched if this was in there but couldn’t find it. Was it there?

Siphoned Power Trait: Gain Might when hit and under 25% health.

Superior Rune of Svanir (6): You become a Block of Ice for 5 seconds (Invulnerable) when hit and under 20% health.

When you become invulnerable you no longer gain any Might from Siphoned Power. This is the only situation where Siphoned Power (and maybe Rune of Svanir) would even be useful. I want to break out of the ice like a beast with a 25 stack of Might and use Life Transfer on their kitten

You are still being hit when you’re invulnerable… you just don’t take any damage.

This needs to be FIXED.

I disagree.

Stability needs to stay a boon but skills like Dagger Storm and Lich Form need an entirely new effect like Unshakable.

I’ve used axe for a month so far and yeah it does suck no matter how you build, unfortunately. The only thing I liked was the retaliation which does nice damage with 3000+ power, or so formulas show anyway. I’ve never noticed retaliation make any difference whatsoever with the 3s going into death shroud trait or axe #3.

Just switched back to scepter and just looking at the damage it gives is overpowering vs the axe. Every auto attack is 1000-1500 damage with scepter. Axe needs a serious buff =/

I am now using a sort of hybrid between power and conditions with Scepter and Focus.

Try sceptre 1 without any traits or condition increases and you will see that it is 4.

Edit: Nvm the tooltip is a PoS like every other. Didn’t realize the actual bleed is 5 ticks

1 piercing life blast doing 3000 damage to each enemy is way more powerful than waiting for bleeds to do 3000 damage to everyone.

:(

That’s the only mask that give you white demon eyes. (Making white eyes isn’t the same)

Is it possible? I haven’t seen any info about this at all anywhere. It’s the mask you can choose to start with when you create your character.

That Thief Fear I find so kittening overpowered. If he uses it when you’re getting low on health then it’s an instant win for him. He gets to spam heartseekers on you for 3 seconds with no risk.

Life Transfer never increases your life force whether 1v1 or 1v9000. It either (barely) stays the same or continues to decrease.

This must be a bug so add it to the list.

I played 400 games as a Thief and I would like to thank Necros who think minions are good for the free 10K HP heal with Dagger Storm and Signet of Malice.