Guild Wars 2

Mysticjedi.6053:

Thanks for the feedback.
I replaced Radiance with Valor and played around with my rune sets a little. Divinty runes provided pretty good stats, but Traveler gave my boons an increase in duration. Still a work in progress, and I’m at work so I can’t test, but here is the lastest incarnation.

Considering hammer over sword, but I’m not really sure yet.

Feedback is welcome.

http://intothemists.com/calc/index.php?build=VBBdg;1NFF40M3NGV90;9;4PnQ;0056246148;4INl3L;1sV2DsV2Da0U

You can’t go wrong with hammer. It’s perfect for both DPS/burst and support (in the form of cc and a 5 CD blast finisher). Ring of warding is literally a death trap, and hammer 4 is great to secure rezzes/stomps (launch the stomper or the person being rezzed). Hammer 3 is a no brainer because of how powerful a “piercing” immobilize is, just don’t use it from the full range because it’s easy to dodge/sidestep. If you’re all out of cooldowns, dropping the hammer AA for protection isn’t a bad call, although it’s pretty lackluster untraited. I take hammer on all of my guard builds for these reasons.

kdaddy.5431:

…For to long meta builds in this game controlled every aspect of pvp. In tournaments now you will have to guess who is what and what kind of build they are with in that game. No more 2 cele kit engy with 1 shot warrior 1 d/d ele and a random. The team change aspect of pvp now is limitless…

^This. Can we just delete metabattle.com? If I wanted to fight sheep I’d move to New Zealand. It’s way more fun fighting among this huge build diversity we have now.

WhiteCrow.5310:

Salamander.2504:

I’m using SoV right now and really enjoying it. I try to keep it on passive most of the time, using it only when I need a burst heal or more DPS (I don’t trait for signets). I’m actually using Life from Death as my burst heal instead, because its an instant 1.5-2k heal with a cele amulet. When I don’t need to stall in DS (my DPS comes from dagger AA), I flash it for the heal (7 s CD), so it ends up being a ton of health over time. This strategy is viable because Unholy Sanctuary will put you in DS even when it’s on cooldown, so you won’t die from flashing at the wrong time.

http://intothemists.com/calc/?build=V54-8c;0o2GF014ZJkJ0;9;489A;0158138246;4JJV7J;17V-17V-10I
(Rune can be any power rune)

That actually looks really interesting. I’m a fan of flashing DS, and kinda’ miss an old build I used to run at times that focused on it. The old trait lines enabled you to effectively cast or buff 3-4 different things on a 6 second CD each time you flashed. This build you have looks like another good use of Celestial so I’ll have to give it a go.

Great, I’m eager to hear how it works for you. Yeah, I messed around with that too; it’s definitely a loss that you can’t trait for Enfeeble and Furious Demise with only 3 trait points like we used to, but I feel that DS flashing is actually even better now since the Beyond the Veil trait was introduced and you can pair it with Unholy Sanctuary. That said, I initially went with the Curses line for the perma-fury and weakness, but they ended up being less important than the condi clear from SR, protection from BtV and power boost from Deadly Strength (all in Death Magic), stability from FitG (Soul Reaping), and healing and extra flash from LfD and US (Blood Magic). Cheers.

WhiteCrow.5310:

Axe/Focus is interesting; How effective are they? I’m wondering if Axe would be worthwhile with Corrupter’s Fervor for building stacks, unless it only works on different conditions and not applying multiple stacks of the same one. I haven’t messed with it yet.

Starting a fight with Axe/Focus can actually be really effective (get axe 3 or focus 5 off first), but A/F are really the subsidiary weapons; most of the time you’re going to want to camp D/Wh. I’ll switch to A/F if I need to back off or they are running/kiting hard.

The build as-is doesn’t cast conditions frequently enough to maintain Corrupter’s Fervor stacks, so I switched CF for US during testing for the extra sustain. Corrupter’s Fervor is a great alternative, however, if you take the Curses line for the extra bleeds on crit and Enfeeble trait (and then you can get enough bleeding to switch in Blood Bond over Quickening Thirst), so it’s definitely viable in a variant of the build, but the sacrifice is real: Losing Blood Magic removes a ton of your healing and support, and losing Soul Reaping removes your stability and 7s DS CD. I didn’t find the weakness and CF stacks to be worth it in this build, especially since the extra 300 armor at full CF stacks is only ~11% damage reduction with cele (2480 armor) as opposed to ~14% if you used Marauder amulet (1920 armor).

BlackTruth.6813:

Mrbig.8019:

Foot in the grave is terrible for power nec

It’s not. If you were using the meta power necro with the plague form right now, you would LOVE the sustain and you won’t miss the damage loss. You just never tried it tbh.

+1

Lily.1935:

Salamander.2504:

Lily.1935:

I’ve suggested this twice. First time I suggested it people didn’t like the idea. Second time people really wanted it to happen. So Now I’m seeing this pop up again. Yeah, we should have utility.

This baffles me. Why?

I also suggested that Death shroud might need to be rebalanced, healing in death shroud(all healing), some skill’s flipping their function while in shroud such as spectral skills. People kinda rejected the whole idea.

The second time I just suggested that we should have utility but they should cost life force as to incentivize players to make a choice between burning their shroud quicker and using the utility or saving them for when they exit. The second time was much more popular And I understand why. But people don’t want to have a draw back to anything at all so they didn’t want any of the skills to cost life force.

This is truly a great compromise.

Bagheera.4501:

No, Salamander I dont agree; a bit more it is necessary that just see the utilities. We need far much more than that: where is our stability – we get cc’d so easy, where are our elite skills -we have none, where is our mobility, why do we have such high casting times, what is the point of these pitiful minions, where are our merged traits (why are they so poor), why do we keep being nerfed at every step. Do you see a pattern? Has ANET EVER LISTENED TO THE NECROMANCER FORUM? Have they ever changed/reverted/buffed a skill at our request? I for one, don’t see the point of a forum being there. Sorry folks but this is the truth.
You dont believe me? Read someone else’s opinion: http://www.tentonhammer.com/feature/guild-wars-2-are-necromancers-really-so-bad#disqus_thread

So you don’t want to see our utilities in death shroud? It sounds more like you do agree but want other changes also. I’m afraid that the purpose of this thread isn’t to highlight every single change the necro could possibly have (other threads do that better), but to garner forum support and attention to fix this detail.

After all, no one, including myself, is arguing that allowing us to see utilities in DS will fix all of the issues with necro’s as a class, or that it should be done instead of any fixes to the issues such as those you mentioned.

But it still needs to be done.

It’s fine if you have no faith that a forum topic could provoke change, but when I see 100+ posts on two seperate useless QQ threads about mesmers in the PvP subforum, and <50 on this [constructive] topic, it makes you wonder whether we can’t try a bit harder. So let’s see if we can’t get everyone to respond and make this thread huge to get dev attention. Even if the experiment fails, you’re only losing 10 seconds of your time to +1. Thanks to everyone who has done so thus far.

Cheers.

EDIT: Bagheera, I read the link you provided, and one of his major gripes was primarily being unable to use his utility skills in DS. I’ll note, however, that even seeing the cooldowns would alleviate this disadvantage because then we’d know when it would be best to exit DS to use a utility. Ultimately, the change we’re all promoting would do wonders to mitigate some of the issues with necro. Of course we would all prefer to use utilities in DS, but my logic is that it will be harder for ANet to say no to such a harmless QOL change as seeing the utilities. On the other hand, using our utilities in DS is a much larger change, and may be considered by ANet to require more extensive rebalancing and testing.

SlayerSixx.5763:

They’re unviable in higher levels of play and cheesy, if you can imagine. Builds don’t have to be viable to be cheesy, but any viable build can be justified to be cheesy if you apply a certain train of logic on them. Burning, in terms of numbers, is certainly quite powerful, but playing with the amount of cleanse common to an upper tier build, I can reliably keep the high stacks off before they become an issue. Call it personal salt if you will, but conditions, while not that big of a threat in most cases (even now) are just annoying to fight against. It just rubs me and many other players the wrong way when we have to put thought into our offense and defense when all you have to do is press a few buttons at any time you like and then run in circles while doing pressuring your target passively. I don’t usually like the idea of totally destroying a spec, but ALL condition specs (and perma stealth) need to go if anet wants their PvP to progress.

Also, trying to tank damage using stats (i.e. bunker amulets) won’t take you far with all the raw burst and burning flying around.

So wouldn’t the original suggestion (making the boon protection affect condition damage) help a ton? Vulnerability is such a common condition, converting it to protection would provide counterplay to condition builds. Furthermore, unless I’m mistaken, every class has access to protection, and guardians even have a few ways of applying 600-range protection.

Upon further thought on that last point, making protection affect conditions has the added benefit of pushing more guardians to shouts as opposed to the [fun but stale] medi zerker/marauder meta, which could have a domino effect of bringing back more bunkers (more bunkers=more build diversity, right?).

Forsaker.9213:

Sigmoid.7082:

Necros have extremely high outgoing heals. Necros can have one of the highest healing powers out there because of last rights. Anywhere from 1200 to 2075.

You can literally cast transfusion then drop out of death shroud and heal your team for about 50-80% of their HP.

Also its a beast as ressing because people don’t bleed out as well as you can necro Jesus people through walls and stuff. Preventing stomps and the like.

Well ele can constantly heal + he have mobility + he have dmg + more more more

Yes we can get crazy amoumnt of healing , yes we can go full dmg and get crazy amout of dmg , yes we can go bunker and tank few ppl for very long time but we need to spec for this. Meantime some clases have all of this in 1 build , thats the problem , necro is not a class that can have dmg , sustain , mobolity in one and that was the problem since realese .

Don’t let the ele stack might and problem solved, no? Also, as I understand it, ele’s constant powerful healing is in water, where an ele has no damage. (Signet heal isn’t the sustain we’re talking about). The viability differences between the cele ele build you’re referring to, and a comparable cele necro build have shrunk a lot. Necro now has access to great support and decent damage. As you mentioned, I agree that there’s no way out of the low mobility.

SlayerSixx.5763:

Salamander.2504:

SlayerSixx.5763:

…Tell us, op, why conditions deserve to be on par with zerker or marauders.

So that people use them.

“On par” means viable; I’m not endorsing bursty condi builds.

Before patch, conditions were already cheesy. Throw in amulet buffs and burning being stackable and that’s the reason why we have all these conditions flying around at the moment. Of course, I have far too many bones to pick with the way anet tweaked amulets (thieves and mesmers burst too hard as well thanks to the new zerker).

Honestly, my only gripe is how powerful burning has become. I’m running so many cleanses they may as well call me Mr. Clean. Granted, I haven’t faced many condition mesmers yet so I don’t have a solid opinion on them yet. As long as people can stack all of these cleanses and burst so kitten quickly, conditions will never be viable unless anet makes it possible to build for bunkering AND conditions.

I’m not sure I understand you. You’re saying that conditions are both cheesy and unviable? I’ve bolded these sections in your post; please clarify.

Edit regarding your last comment: Isn’t the whole point of conditions builds that they are bunkier than zerker builds? As I understand it, a condition build can already be an effective bunker; less so than a dedicated cleric bunker, but much moreso than a zerker.

SlayerSixx.5763:

…Tell us, op, why conditions deserve to be on par with zerker or marauders.

So that people use them.

“On par” means viable; I’m not endorsing bursty condi builds.

Forsaker.9213:

Salamander.2504:

Forsaker.9213:

Well still necro is pretty much usless , every other class will bring more then necro , atm stacking eles + soem dps like thief/mesmer and u are rdy to go.

Necro cant bring anything , slow ezy to kill walking target. Now we got patch witch made some classses so ezy to play , its funny how i made ele played few games and was able to duel and win vs a guy who play necro since realese.

I’ll agree that the standard power necro is getting melted pretty fast, but so are most power classes. Obviously the lack of disengage, blocks, and invulns puts a glassy power necro at a disadvantage, but necro is currently capable of a lot more attrition at the moment if you trait for it. If you haven’t tried anything besides condi/pure power, I’d recommend going power on the tanky side (I’m getting good results from cele amulet). I’ve been playing a tankier necro and am finding it to be really effective at holding points, dishing out some decent damage, and healing and rezzing allies (LfD and Transfusion can be total gamechangers). Personally, I think necro is much better off post-patch, and I’m having a blast playing it. The two things that really stand out is that axe needs a slight buff, and we need to be able to see our heal/utility/elite cooldowns while in death shroud.

Ofc that necro is in betetr sport after patch but still completly usless in top tier pvp. Why u take some sustain necro with medioce dmg when u can take ele or war who will sustain much more and bring 10 times more dmg.

See, I’m not convinced this is true. I’ve held off 3 people on point with the build below, and I sit at over 2k power. You don’t need to be bursty to succeed in the current “meta”. Don’t underestimate Transfusion, either. I’ve literally seen it win games that would have otherwise been lost. All I’m saying is to try something new. As far as necro not being viable in top-tier PvP…perhaps, but that really remains to be seen.

http://intothemists.com/calc/?build=V54-8c;0o2GF014ZJkJ0;9;489A;0158138246;4JJV7J;17V-17V-10I

Lily.1935:

I’ve suggested this twice. First time I suggested it people didn’t like the idea. Second time people really wanted it to happen. So Now I’m seeing this pop up again. Yeah, we should have utility.

This baffles me. Why?

Forsaker.9213:

Well still necro is pretty much usless , every other class will bring more then necro , atm stacking eles + soem dps like thief/mesmer and u are rdy to go.

Necro cant bring anything , slow ezy to kill walking target. Now we got patch witch made some classses so ezy to play , its funny how i made ele played few games and was able to duel and win vs a guy who play necro since realese.

I’ll agree that the standard power necro is getting melted pretty fast, but so are most power classes. Obviously the lack of disengage, blocks, and invulns puts a glassy power necro at a disadvantage, but necro is currently capable of a lot more attrition at the moment if you trait for it. If you haven’t tried anything besides condi/pure power, I’d recommend going power on the tanky side (I’m getting good results from cele amulet). I’ve been playing a tankier necro and am finding it to be really effective at holding points, dishing out some decent damage, and healing and rezzing allies (LfD and Transfusion can be total gamechangers). Personally, I think necro is much better off post-patch, and I’m having a blast playing it. The two things that really stand out is that axe needs a slight buff, and we need to be able to see our heal/utility/elite cooldowns while in death shroud.

I’ve been reading a lot of posts about how the condi (i.e., burning) ticks are perhaps OP. Somehow, I personally haven’t experienced this (I’m anal about cleansing), but it’s hard to argue with some of the insane screenshots being posted.

I’ve heard talk about nerfing the condi damage into the ground, but this makes me nervous, because I don’t want to see the meta go back to 1-2 viable builds/amulets. I think having condi builds be viable is really healthy for PvP. I’m really enjoying the build diversity that we’re seeing at the moment. Maybe it’s short-lived until the meta settles (?), but it’s a ton of fun.

So what if the protection boon also reduced condi damage by 33%? Would this be a sufficient fix instead of nerfing condi’s? My feeling is that this wouldn’t kill condi builds since condi durations typically exceed protection durations, but it would alleviate some of the multiple-k burn ticks we’re seeing. Is this a great idea, or a terrible idea? I’m just throwing it out there, but I’d like to hear your thoughts on this suggestion, or any alternatives you can think up.

Cheers

I’m using SoV right now and really enjoying it. I try to keep it on passive most of the time, using it only when I need a burst heal or more DPS (I don’t trait for signets). I’m actually using Life from Death as my burst heal instead, because its an instant 1.5-2k heal with a cele amulet. When I don’t need to stall in DS (my DPS comes from dagger AA), I flash it for the heal (7 s CD), so it ends up being a ton of health over time. This strategy is viable because Unholy Sanctuary will put you in DS even when it’s on cooldown, so you won’t die from flashing at the wrong time.

http://intothemists.com/calc/?build=V54-8c;0o2GF014ZJkJ0;9;489A;0158138246;4JJV7J;17V-17V-10I
(Rune can be any power rune)

I’ll just quote another user in a different thread, who I think made a reasonable suggestion to modify axe:

Sigmoid.7082:

All it needs is damage coefficient changed from 0.7 to 0.85, range on #1 and #2 increased from 600 to 900, and #2 be a whirl finish and #3 be a blast.

And when I say that we should see our utility skill cooldowns in deathshroud, I’m also including the heal and elite skills.

Had a fun time playing with the new changes. Minus the CC baloney, necro is definitely viable (siphoning through DS is cool), even gasp with a cele amulet (pack rune, signet of spite).

But boy it sure would be nice to see our utility cooldowns in death shroud…

+1 this would be a great change.

Plexxing.2978:

…you could check the livestream, they’re in there when he talks about it.

Apparently I’m terrible at the internet—where can I find the recording of the live stream which includes the necro changes? Thanks!

What’s the problem with the protection on leaving Shroud (BtV) trait? I’m really pumped for it. It may not synergize with the other 2 death magic minors, but hotkitten if it doesn’t synergizes with F1. (I’m not defending the necro changes).

Really, only 7 people want to be able to see utility cooldowns in death shroud?

bumpity

Zin.6170:

They should make it that if a necro procs one of the sigils they apply 10 stacks of vuln to themselves. For balance reasons.

Are you serious dude? This is a terrible suggestion because vuln stacks at 25. If you want balance, make Necro apply 10 stacks of poison or bleeding to themselves on a sigil proc.

gavyne.6847:

flow.6043:

5. Weakening Shroud:

No icd confirmed. Functionally identical in this case just means it’s the same but also a seperate skill from the dagger’s so it woudn’t interact with Quickening Thirst.

Wow, no icd on Enfeeble, that’s pretty awesome. I was leaving options open for another trait line but this kinda seals the deal for Curses for me. Which means every 7 seconds if traited, we get to go into DS and aoe weakness. Solid.

And if you have the Beyond the Veil trait, you can nearly perma 45% incoming damage (weakness+protection) if you cycle Shroud.

Roe.3679:

Gryph.8237:

Do the devs realize that the stupid nerf to cc keeps us in combat? Didn’t Gee specifically say they took away the poison cloud from the curses minor that reduces fall damage because it puts us in combat? Now our heal not only puts us in combat, while every other class has four seconds to get away and reset the fight where we will still be in combat, but it makes us more susceptible to being bursted. I mean mesmers can just wait for us to cast it and then unload and watch us drop in one rotation, let alone thieves. Necro in PVP is done! Too many nerfs, when our class was not even close to competitive. I just don’t get it. Last tournaments proved that Necro was not viable, except for on outlier in a pvp team that has long played together. Eu does not run necros and hasn’t for a long time because they simply are not viable. Nothing has changes, if anything what we did bring to pvp has been weakened.

Yeah, it doesn’t put you in combat.

But it would keep you in combat, no?

Air/fire sigils need to be removed altogether (this is from someone who uses them; if you can’t beat them, join them). They aren’t fun or interesting in the least, and they don’t promote skilled play. Actually, the above suggestion for these sigils to proc on condition is a good one, but I’d prefer that they just get removed.

Dirame.8521:

Odeezee.7362:

Dirame.8521:

My question to you is, why are they not viable in PvP and WvW? What exactly makes them unviable to you?

in PvP they only bring damage and very limited soft CC some of which is being gged with next week’s patch. due to Shoutbow being meta and instant press and forget condi clear, condi Necros are not viable. MM Necros though while being cheese are also not viable in Ranked play. Power Necros as well are not viable in high ranked play unless they are baby-sat and even then they are a liability due to their inability to handle focus fire due to limited evades, no blocks, kittenty access to stab, etc

This might change with the new traits in Blood magic if people aren’t stuck trying to make their old builds work.

Fact is, people need to start thinking like the Warriors and Guardians. Warriors haven’t used their Strenght line in ages, Guardians don’t even touch Zeal, why are we so adamant about using Spite? Because of some procs?
I mean just look at the current Mediguard. If you wanted to deal damage, those traits are in no way the traits you should take but they took them and they are viable in the meta somehow after years of people saying Hammer isn’t viable, Mediguard isn’t viable etc etc.

Odeezee.7362:

as for WvW, they are only viable in zergs, roaming is so much harder as a Necro due to limited in and out of combat mobility and with the nerfing of soft cc on leaps, professions losing to you will just disengage, reset and come back and kill you while you are looking at your cooldown timers waiting so you can actually fight back.

This is true. I guess Reaper might remedy that somewhat.

This post, and the post above it are 100% gold. You guys nailed it. Dirame, the idea that warriors/guardians don’t need to trait for damage (i.e., go into the power line) is really insightful and thought provoking. I will point out, however, that guardians have a leg up: they don’t need to trait into Zeal for damage because their damage modifiers are naturally high on the canonical “burst” skills. Look at GS 2, Hammer 2, Mace 3, Torch 4, Focus 5—a medi guard can be bursty with ~2.1k power (just a power rune and zerker amu) because of the inherent “fast cast” (except GS 2) and high damage coefficients these skills offer. Necro doesn’t really have anything comparable—[perhaps] because of its vampiric traits (i.e., the way the class was designed), it relies on long-lasting but with numerous fast-hitting skills. Life blast is probably the closest thing, but it isn’t burst.

The bottom line is that the dev’s never intended necro’s to be bursty, but to be an attrition class. The current meta requires some kind burst (unless you’re some kind of support role, which necro cannot fulfill). As a result, necro’s are kind of “forced” to go full into power. Unfortunately, their burst fundamentally isn’t as impressive as the other classes, and they can’t stand any focus. You can start to see the problem.

TLDR: If Necro wants notable “burst”, the best way is through traiting into power for spinal shivers, whereas classes like guardian can trait defensively to cover their weaknesses because their weapon skills are inherently bursty.

Josh Davis.6015:

How about this?

• Shield of Absorption cooldown goes from 30s to 24s baseline.
• Shield of Judgement cooldown goes from 25s to 20s baseline.

Added to the release notes maintained in General Discussion.

Edit: For clarification, the shield recharge trait is still there on top of this. It brings the cooldowns from 24>19s, and 20>16s.

It’s not the CD’s that are the problem, it’s that the skills themselves simply can’t compete with every other offhand. A bad skill with a low CD doesn’t make it more useful; if it did, we’d see necros using the axe auto-attack

Shield 4 needs a group aegis, and Shield 5 needs to remove the channel (so you can move after casting) and either (1) heal on cast, rather than on cancel; or (2) a much stronger heal (i.e., base healing needs to be higher, or the modifier (currently 0.2) needs to be stronger.

And as mentioned above, the shield trait shouldn’t compete with communal defenses or strength in numbers. Even if I used a shield the other two traits would always win out.

Linnael.1069:

The dev that worked on mes/necro seems like he really knows his stuff; put in some well thought out changes for the most part.

Hunter.4783:

Yet there were 3 full word pages of changes for the mesmer and necro class whereas guards got boring number changes and little to no functionality diversity.

Hunter and Linnael, you guys are aware that necro got straight nerfed right? Don’t compare the necro changes to guardian changes unless thats what you want.

Also, please rework shield; reducing base cooldowns don’t make useless skills more appealing, it just means I can spam “useless” more often.

Edited to fix quotes

Adjust.6903:

I’m currently levelling my guardian for pve and PvP. How badly were they affected? Should I give up and play something else or carry on? My main is a lvl 80 engineer but haven’t paid much attention to it. My alts are mesmer, ele, ranger…

The main nerf to Guardian was the added 1 second ICD to the might-on-block trait. Yeah, its a bummer that you can’t stack 12 mights on a Shelter now, but this trait wasn’t build defining (look how necros got shafted in this regard). Unclear yet how build diversity will be effected, but first impressions seem to reinforce the meditation meta, although sword and scepter got shafted, mace and torch got buffed.

Ultimately, Guardian received a buff because numerous traits were consolidated, allowing more defensive options to be taken with the build-defining altruistic healing or meditation traits. Keep playing Guardian.

Laraley.7695:

Salamander.2504:

Laraley.7695:

Salamander.2504:

Laraley.7695:

Salamander.2504:

rchu.8945:

Argilla.8340:

Honestly, it took 2 years to rebalance this game and all youre doing is destroying all the balance you had over this time

Just think logicly for a second, this won’t benefit anyone

I am glad this is happening, the classes I play the most are not part of the meta, so I am glad there is a chance to “reset” and let see how things play out.

The people that are crying because their mains are part of the meta, that’s just too bad.

Really? What do you play? My impression from the changes is that they reinforce the meta (exception: mesmer).

Are you saying that mesmers either weren’t part of the meta at all or are you saying that mesmers won’t be part of the meta? Because neither is true. They definitely weren’t as common as thieves, but they were still played way more than ranger or necro. At least on EU.

My comment was pointing out that most classes currently in the meta got buffed (Ele, Engi, Guard, Thief), and those that aren’t in the meta got nerfed (notably necro); I haven’t read up on the ranger/warrior changes yet. The exception to this is the mesmer, which was not meta and got a buff.

What are you smoking? Mesmers got the most buffs of all.

Yeah man, reread my post o0

Oh yeah, I missed that. But still applies what I said before. At least on EU mesmers were seen quite often.

I’m not really arguing that, just noting that the current meta (Yes to Engi, Ele, Guard, Thief, No to Necro) is reinforced: That is, meta builds were buffed, non-meta builds were nerfed). The exception to this** is Mesmers, because they aren’t technically meta (despite your numerous mesmer-sightings), and they were buffed. Cheers.

**I haven’t included warrior or ranger because I haven’t read their changes yet.

Laraley.7695:

Salamander.2504:

Laraley.7695:

Salamander.2504:

rchu.8945:

Argilla.8340:

Honestly, it took 2 years to rebalance this game and all youre doing is destroying all the balance you had over this time

Just think logicly for a second, this won’t benefit anyone

I am glad this is happening, the classes I play the most are not part of the meta, so I am glad there is a chance to “reset” and let see how things play out.

The people that are crying because their mains are part of the meta, that’s just too bad.

Really? What do you play? My impression from the changes is that they reinforce the meta (exception: mesmer).

Are you saying that mesmers either weren’t part of the meta at all or are you saying that mesmers won’t be part of the meta? Because neither is true. They definitely weren’t as common as thieves, but they were still played way more than ranger or necro. At least on EU.

My comment was pointing out that most classes currently in the meta got buffed (Ele, Engi, Guard, Thief), and those that aren’t in the meta got nerfed (notably necro); I haven’t read up on the ranger/warrior changes yet. The exception to this is the mesmer, which was not meta and got a buff.

What are you smoking? Mesmers got the most buffs of all.

Yeah man, reread my post o0

Laraley.7695:

Salamander.2504:

rchu.8945:

Argilla.8340:

Honestly, it took 2 years to rebalance this game and all youre doing is destroying all the balance you had over this time

Just think logicly for a second, this won’t benefit anyone

I am glad this is happening, the classes I play the most are not part of the meta, so I am glad there is a chance to “reset” and let see how things play out.

The people that are crying because their mains are part of the meta, that’s just too bad.

Really? What do you play? My impression from the changes is that they reinforce the meta (exception: mesmer).

Are you saying that mesmers either weren’t part of the meta at all or are you saying that mesmers won’t be part of the meta? Because neither is true. They definitely weren’t as common as thieves, but they were still played way more than ranger or necro. At least on EU.

My comment was pointing out that most classes currently in the meta got buffed (Ele, Engi, Guard, Thief), and those that aren’t in the meta got nerfed (notably necro); I haven’t read up on the ranger/warrior changes yet. The exception to this is the mesmer, which was not meta and got a buff.

+1

Message body length must be at least 15 characters

rchu.8945:

Argilla.8340:

Honestly, it took 2 years to rebalance this game and all youre doing is destroying all the balance you had over this time

Just think logicly for a second, this won’t benefit anyone

I am glad this is happening, the classes I play the most are not part of the meta, so I am glad there is a chance to “reset” and let see how things play out.

The people that are crying because their mains are part of the meta, that’s just too bad.

Really? What do you play? My impression from the changes is that they reinforce the meta (exception: mesmer).

Khenzy.9348:

1- Mesmer
2- Engineer
3- Thief
4- Elementalist
5- Ranger
6- Guardian
7- Warrior
8- Necromancer

Mesmers recieved so much love and attention as if they were an absolutely crappy underpowered class, which wasn’t the case, at all. I’m not saying Necromancers are weak by any means, but they could have recieved so much more love than them and it would have been fairer.

Buffing Engineers, Elementalists and Thieves to a higher extent relative to all the other professions is something extremely dissapointing. I don’t think I need to say anything else that wasn’t said already regarding these professions.

Rengers have gotten some interesting sinergies such as Bark-Skin+Protective Ward or even high regen uptime without much investment. The new Allies’ Aid is awesome. Also their beastmastery line is really really good now.

Pigeonholing Warriors to be crappy Shoutbow support or Rampage one-trick ponies is exasperating to know. Most of the traits are incredibly bland with some mandatory ones that greatly reduce their build diversity. I don’t think DPS Warriors will perform better than DPS Thieves/Mesmers/Guardian/Rangers and so on.

Not much can be said of Guardians besides no buff to Shield and the inclusion of an ICD on Amplified Wrath and Might of the Protector where now well timing blocks don’t have an added reward. Scepter trait is still in a symbol line, so you better equip some weapon with a symbol along with it.

^This. My impression from reading these changes is that there was consideration only of how to modify each class, but not how to modify them in the context of all the other class changes. Judging from the changes (and watching the Ready Up stream), it sure seemed like each class had a team of dev’s working on it, and communication between the teams was minimal.

Hey, has it been announced where the extra boon duration is coming from now that it’s removed from traitlines? Thanks!

The good, the bad, and the ugly.

nekretaal.6485:

Why did you ever swap to necromancer in the first place.?

Change of pace. It may sound weird, but it irks my pride to play a class considered by all to be “facerole”. When I stomp someone, I want to know that I’ve outplayed them and not relied on broken game mechanics.

When I rolled necro I realized I’m just big fat juicy theif/ranger bait (I’ve no hate for these classes, but option are limited).

Because when I roll a necro, I’m a liability to my team. And I will continue to be a liability come the new trait changes.

I was so excited for the new traits because I was convinced ANet would use the opportunity to put necro on an even playing field. Obviously, that didn’t happen.

I like the idea behind the necro class, and I had a ton of fun playing it, but its just not practical. /rage

Lordrosicky.5813:

4, Add weakening shroud back to previous version with more bleed and weakness but with a 15s cd (not 25s anet)

^This. Or just keep the current version of 6s bleed, 2s weakness, with no ICD. As far as I know, the Enfeeble trait isn’t broken or anything. The 25 CD removes all reliability from this trait.

Zietlogik.6208:

Short Version:

• Hotjoin/Practice is now only Custom Server specific.
• Practice button becomes Volunteer Button.
• Unranked is simply “Play”
• Ranked remains the same.
• Leaving non custom games will result in dishonor stacks.

---

Practice becomes Volunteer:

The practice button will be renamed to Volunteer and function as a substitute system for currently running games. Players who select Volunteer is be queued and brought into running games where an AFK kick, leaver, or non-loader exists (any non-even match) and be given a rank bonus for being a volunteer.

Leaving a match as a volunteer will still provide Dishonor stacks.

Custom Servers:

These will remain the same, acting as a quick hotjoin method of playing PvP and setting up player-made tournaments.

New methods should be available for players to setup their own custom servers, and more options should be available for server creators to customize points, team size, objectives, etc.

Unranked becomes “Play Now”:

Unranked currently sits as a standard method of PvP, but with the ease of access of Hotjoin and the more imposing nature being named even with “rank” in the name is off-putting for some players.

This would now simply be “Play Now” and function the same as it currently does, a non-ranked standard match using matchmaking. With the combination of Hotjoin and Unranked populations, queue times should stay relatively unchanged, or faster.

ANet, please do this, or something like it. It would solve all matchmaking problems because there would be a much larger pool of players to match from. Making a custom arena should be easier in this scenario, as outlined by the OP.

Gorath.5076:

Salamander.2504:

NtD=Near to Death, the trait which reduces the DS CD from 10 s to 6 s. By shroud dancing, he’s taking advantage of the low 6 s cooldown to constantly switch into and out of DS.

ahhh, alrite
I have to admit I have not even looked at alternative traits and builds so far, as I wanted to get comfortable with the classic Power Necro first. Could you post the build you are using? I will definitely have a look at that.
Boon stacking in a 6 second interval sounds pretty cool.

Sure, but I have to warn you, this really nontraditional, and I’m still in the testing phase. Whether this build is going to beat out traditional power builds for me is not yet resolved. It won’t be resolved until the new trait changes, and I’ll explain why. Here is the build: http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fRAQRBIhdu1IHNF12YjtN83m4YQk9zk4CQ90hBB-TJBFwACeIAn2foaZAAnBAA

So when you enter and exit death shroud, you gain: stability, fury, stun break, 1 condi clear, and an aoe weakness/bleed. You can repeat this every 6 seconds by never staying in DS (except to stall, absorb a burst, prevent a stomp/rezz, etc.), which means you have 100% fury uptime and 62% stability uptime (but just 1 stack). While we’re not talking 5 stacks of stability, it is going to make you into a stomping machine (pop DS for a stability stomp). Sometimes it works (their teammates cc’s are on CD), sometimes it doesn’t, but it will let you stomp more with the 6 second CD. We can quibble about my rune choice, but it provides ~60% protection uptime in the current build. The rune is going to be more important come the new traits because it provides 100% protection uptime with the new Beyond the Veil trait. To see what I mean, here is what my build will be in the upcoming trait system: http://dulfy.net/gw2traits#build=AgQCuAOsBdQ~

It pretty much stays the same, with 3 changes: (1) 100% protection uptime with constant shroud cycling, (2) slightly less aoe weakness uptime from the enfeeble trait, and (3) the trait Unholy Sanctuary. You won’t use Unholy Sanctuary for the health gain since you’ll rarely camp in death shroud. Instead, it allows you to always cycle DS, so that your DS can be on CD even when you’re about to die; the trait will proc and you’ll be put into DS and have protection (instead of dying!). It’s not really a big deal, but its the best synergy since you need to be in that trait line anyways. There is no synergy in any of the Curses GM traits, so that’s just a matter of preference. Like I said, I’m still testing the build, and while it’s getting a buff (100% protection uptime) in the new system, it may end up being unviable compared with other builds because of the upcoming siphoning changes, in which case camping DS may in fact be more beneficial. Only time will tell. In any case, I’m having fun with the build and it’s a very active play style. Cheers.

Thanks for the responses everyone.

roachsrealm.9284:

fun fact: if you commonly have enemies located near the top of the screen (near their health bars) and you use a ground targeted skill while your mouse is on their health bar instead of the enemy itself, the targeting ring defaults to centered on your character.

I just keep my mouse over the map, which accomplishes the same thing but is a little easier. That being said, I still find it to not be an “easy fix,” and would prefer a way to disable targeting altogether.

lukejoe.1592:

It’s a good option from where I am. Running mostly double daggers with wells, I really don’t want to be forced into ground targeting either.

Bingo. We shouldn’t be forced into it.

Gorath.5076:

Rym.1469:

I…make little use of Life Blast, focusing on Shroud dancing eith NtD.
And I’m pretty successful with that.

what is " Shroud dancing eith NtD." ?

NtD=Near to Death, the trait which reduces the DS CD from 10 s to 6 s. By shroud dancing, he’s taking advantage of the low 6 s cooldown to constantly switch into and out of DS. He mentioned he doesn’t really use Life Blast, so most of his damage is going to come from dagger autoattack. If you get serious about “shroud cycling” (as I call it), you can have serious uptime (traited) on stability, stun breaks, fury, aoe weakness, condi removal, and come the new patch, protection. My power build is based around this; I only use the DS life pool to stall/bunk on point, absorb bursts (guardian’s WW, thief’s backstab, etc.), and use DS #3 to stop stomps/rezz’s. The rest of the time I’m shroud cycling for the boon fest.

Being able to choose whether some skills are ground-targeted or not is crucial because it is annoying to have to aim a ground targeted skill that you want to land at your feet anyways (am I the only one?). Unfortunately, numerous ground-targeting traits are becoming baseline in the upcoming patch. Keeping my cursor over my feet/skill tab/map is a really inconvenient way to disable ground-targeting.

What would be really great: if there was a button to click on each of your equipped skills so you can choose which ground targeting skills you want “active”, and which you want to land at your feet. At the very least, it would be an improvement if there was a button we could click in the options tab that would disable ground targeting so that all ground targeting skills would occur at your feet.

I know this (optional!) feature wouldn’t appeal to everyone, but if you use your mouse or a USB controller for movement, its a night and day QOL change.

Lily.1935:

Foot in the grave is really powerful. Why don’t you think its worth a grandmaster spot? Makes sense to me. Its an awesome trait. Maybe Up the number of Stab it gives but beyond that it doesn’t need a whole bunch of work.

^This. Foot in the grave (a traited 6 CD stunbreaker) needs to stay GM. It could use either (1) another stack of stability; or (2) a 1/2 second duration increase.

Thanks for the responses everyone. I didn’t feel like making a new topic, but I have another question on an unrelated note:

Why is Deathly Invigoration now (pending the upcoming patch): (1) a GM trait; and (2) Heals on entering deathshroud? Won’t the [negligible] heal only work on allies? Thanks!

Hey, I couldn’t find this anywhere: Are the 15% damage increase (deadly mixture) and 20% CD reduction traits (fireforged trigger) going to be baseline? They aren’t in the upcoming trait specializations, which is kind of a bummer if you’re into using the flamethrower.

With the loss of might stacking on juggernaut, is flamethrower going to be useful at all (besides switching to for a stomp)? Thanks!