Guild Wars 2

Fascinating. This is super weird; it’s obviously a bug but it’s something that can be worked further into.

Should players be locked into the class they entered the match with?
Should they be able to re-select their character between respawns like you’d be able to in most other class-based games, if swapping classes mid-match is intended?

narcx.3570:

Oh man, and you thought thiefs just bee-line towards the necro now…

Er
No
Everyone beelines for the necro now

This just seems plain incorrect if only for the most basic flaw in the argument: the road goes both ways.

If there are passives, then all players have passives. This means that all players are level in some regard.
You can play around the passives. You know that automatic Endure Pain will proc at 50% HP. All passives have fixed conditions and if you understand the conditions you can play around it.
If you take passive defenses, you are passing up other powerful traits. There’s like, one trait I can think of which isn’t the case, which is Last Gasp.

Mrs Qurly.9372:

Well yes, essentially it’s still a linking server system, but the linked servers would have a different role. Instead of them being filled with players-left-behind-when-everyone-else-left, they will be filled with players wanting to be mercenaries. The link changes could be regular as needed, perhaps max once per week at reset. And there could be a recruiting system for those servers too – based on what time of day you play (to get balance). To start it all off, Anet could offer free transfers to and from those mercenary servers.

Those link servers are already filled with players wanting to be mercenaries. I specifically left Tarnished Coast and joined Kaineng because I wanted to do that.

We had votes not long after the launch of the server-linking system and not enough people voted for 1-month re-links, instead we got enough votes for 2-month.

ANet absolutely should offer free transfers or reduced-cost transfers to these servers. I personally would actually really like it if players on the big 5 servers which don’t currently have links would have their transfer costs to link servers cut to 0. I’ve got casual friends who’d like to WvW but they can’t justify spending the 500 gems to move from TC to Kaineng.

Yannir.4132:

In fact, Spite provides so much sustain for power builds that you can quite comfortably 1v1 druids, scrappers and thieves.

You can comfortably 1v1 thieves? Wish I had that kinda luck lol. Only way I have a chance in that matchup is when I have 75%+ LF and can flip Spiteful Spirit multiple times.

I wish the XP enrichment would affect WXP. If it did, I would recommend that.

I recommend Karma for a roaming PPT player, otherwise Magic Find.

The most obvious thing that should happen is that 4 and 5 should have their CDs reduced to at least match RS 4 and 5. 30 second 4 means a lot for Transfusion.

Another thing I would think about doing is increasing the raw output of Tainted Shackles, perhaps adding another Torment stack or two on the final explosion. According to the wiki the damage is calculated based on unarmed damage and this is obviously an issue which drastically undercuts the potential damage of the skill, and this should be fixed.

Life Transfer is already a fairly strong ability but I would perhaps consider adding a baseline Vampiric effect to it.

Doom is fine. I would perhaps consider removing the “under 600 units” condition and making the 1.5s fear full range.

I would think about changing Dark Path to a ground-targeted projectile instead of a unit-targeted projectile. With the heavily range oriented Death Shroud we have now, Dark Path makes little sense in its current incarnation.

For Life Blast I would either change it into a beam or an exploding projectile rather than a piercing projectile.

Muchacho.2390:

I know that but i am not convinced. Not that it even matter as long as deathmagic is in a bad state.

#replacesoulcomprehension2017

OriOri.8724:

Keep elite weapons tied to the elite specs, but just balance the specs against core traitlines

It’s practically mandatory for future proofing otherwise one elite spec will get better synergies than other elite specs.

I usually call them statspreads.

HeadCrowned.6834:

but I wouldnt see any issues with being able to wear the GS as necro without reaper, or the staff as a ranger without druid.

This is a future-proofing design choice.
Let’s say hypothetically they did as you suggest and decouple new weapons from elite specializations.
Four expansions down the line they have added 1 thief mainhand and 2 thief offhands. This means they need to add and balance… How many 3-slot skills? I think it’s something in the field of 16 in total. They’ve added more 3-slot skills than they have any ‘real’ weapon skills!
For the fourth expansion they decide they want to add a new Elementalist attunement and they’ve already given Elementalist 3 weapons. They’ve got that much more work for themselves but it doesn’t actually add that many options because they can tailor Ele standing weapons and their new ES weapon for the new attunement but they can’t tailor all of the 3 other weapons they’ve done and create interesting player choices. They are adding work (they still NEED to make those extra weapon skills) but they aren’t actually gaining anything from that work.

Muchacho.2390:

No he is right. The healing from US needs to be buffed though doubling the output is probably too much. I think the base healing should be around 200. And i think you overestemate the usefulness of auto-shrouding. Not that is bad but with proper shroud use it is only in a few cases good.

I really don’t agree on overestimating the usefulness of auto-shrouding. It does a lot of work especially with tools like BB/Spiteful Spirit which gives you at most an instant 850 hp with no healing power as soon as it fires. You can do weird stuff like back-to-back deathshrouding, you can bait bursts by manual DS dropping and allowing the burst in groupfights, it will protect you from Moa, you can do a lot of work with it.

Just with BB/US healing, granting you many heals per second while you’re spamming AA with Spite and Strength sigil, I have a hard time really saying that it should be buffed.

Poelala.2830:

Look. The only other viable damage build for ele was cele sustain. Cele is not coming back anytime soon and anything to mirror it would be too much work. This is the closest you can come to viability. Fresh Air’s burst abilities with Tempest’s AoE abilities will bring an entirely new aura to the battlefield.

you haven’t actually made an argument. “fresh air’s burst abilities with tempest’s AoE abilities will bring an entirely new aura to the battlefield” is (apart from being a sentence that doesn’t make any sense, that’s not what aura means) a horrible idea. either you create an elementalist that does what it currently does but also does a ton of pressure (more than it already does) or you get an elementalist that is just milquetoast in every regard and all your buffing has been pointless waste of time.

these buffs specifically that you’ve mentioned in the OP are just plain buffs. they aren’t buffs to FA, they’re just plain buffs and they don’t target FA. you are not making FA viable. you are making the already viable elementalist tempest support spec more viable by increasing its pressure… and that’s it.

focus on something else. focus on a new elite spec. focus on buffing the core elementalist tools. buffing tempest will NEVER make a viable Fresh Air build.

Poelala.2830:

You’re wrong about so many things, supreme, but mainly that ending statement. Why shouldn’t we assume the meta will remain the same? IT HAS FOR OVER A YEAR.

you’re joking, right?

in season 1 there were only 4 viable meta classes by metabattle’s standards. there are now 9. every single class has a role in spvp.
necromancers have changed from condi to power boonstrip.
mesmers have changed from bunkers to shatterspam.
warriors and thieves have changed from poop to viable classes.

you just seem miles out of touch when you say things like the meta has not changed.

Poelala.2830:

I multiclass now because ele is terrible at the moment and as someone with thousands of games that isn’t ele, the biggest thing I worry about when I see an enemy ele’s lightning overload on a node is the shocking aura they get from the trait.

okay and? if the elementalist is sending the most important aura to their friends, a buff to their friends, and creating a damage zone, they are having an impact on the battlefield. it may not be the one you want but they’re having an impact

Poelala.2830:

Look at it this way. There’s 1 viable build on ele, which is bunker, so their overload air does very little damage, so you don’t have to worry about it. The hopeful eles that run dps amulets and fresh air overload air spam die almost instantaneously (unless they’re invuln) in a mid fight.

which is simply a mistake in interpreting FA’s role in a fight. FA is there to duel and clear sidepoints. yeah, you blow up on midfights- you’re like a necromancer or a thief, trying to enter the center will just get you killed.

Poelala.2830:

I want overload air to have a real impact, not 3k damage over the course of 5 seconds on the battlefield, especially when you can simply walk out of the overload or interrupt the overload.

overload air lasts longer than that, the total channel and pulse time is more like 8 seconds

Poelala.2830:

Also, why is bringing lightning orb into fresh air a bad idea, exactly? Good AoE cleave damage, hard to see, impossible to stop, easily evaded, with my buffs lightning orb may actually be worth swapping to warhorn.

reread my first post.
because Fresh Air is not a Tempest thing.
it is a core elementalist thing.
tempest is an area control spec, shouts are area support tools, overloads are area control and support tools, warhorn is an area support weapon. Fresh Air is a single target spec designed to burst down individual targets.
trying to make Fresh Air viable through Tempest is like trying to fit a square peg through a round hole.
if you want to buff Fresh Air, buff the other core elementalist trait lines. particularly, play Arcane instead of Tempest.

Lordrosicky.5813:

Yeh thats what regen should do. If in shroud it should give regen to your life force. In addition, traits like unholy santuary need more healing. It should have its healing increased by around 100% at least.

I don’t think Regen should increase your LF. Regen should just heal through shroud.

Maybe Blood Magic should Unholy Martyr replaced with “Regeneration on you grants 1% life force when it ticks” or something.

Unholy Sanctuary should not be buffed. It is not a bad trait and if the rest of the tree were viable it would be worth thinking about simply for the sake of auto-shrouding.

Poelala.2830:

The title was supposed to be “5 buffs to tempest to make fresh air tempest viable” but that was too long. At any rate, buffing 1v1 builds for a conquest game is a waste of time. 1v1 builds are to 1v1, not anything else. That’s why staff thief can beat any and every class it comes across but everyone uses d/p shortbow in legendary play.

okay but why tempest FA

Poelala.2830:

I wanted fresh air tempest to be viable so things like overload air and lightning orb can make a real impact on the battlefield compared to how it is now, to both push it out of utter unviability and push it out of the 1v1 build hole it’s(fresh air ele) been in forever now.

firstly that’s absurd, overload air has an impact on the battlefield

secondly, shoehorning lightning orb into an FA build is bad

Bridget Morrigan.1752:

My suggestion was essentially to wait until the attrition more or less occurred on its own anyway and no one cared about that particular content anymore, then open up the accessibility via smaller groups or solo modes and lesser difficulty at that time.

Dungeons are past due for this treatment, tbh.

To be fair you already can make dungeon pushes and raid pushes without 10 players. Dungeons don’t actually need to be changed other than to have a few mechanics adjusted so that you don’t need to have a full party (like the 4-brazier room in CoF1)

Korgov.7645:

Why jump the extra loops to buy Flax Fibers with Badges of Honor, craft Flax Fibers into Linen Supply Sacks, craft Linen Supply Sacks into Bags of Energy, craft Bags of Energy into Schematics, put Schematics into Assembly Device?

because it’s more interesting & holistic.
if you just put the objects that Flax Fiber is required to create on the vendor directly, you immediately tank the prices of not just Flax Fiber but all the other items required to create your wvw upgrades.
it gives casuals a reason to care about badges of honor because they can spend their badges on flax fibers.

Korgov.7645:

Memories of Battle and Shards of Glory are not needed for PvE. They are for crafting legendary weapons only. You get the same stats from ascended gear. I don’t play PvE, but I am pretty sure PvE is fully self-sufficient when it comes to acquiring ascended gear.

Upgrades (Flax Fibers) are used in WvW as part of the daily warfare. They are more that just some cosmetic touch.

i’ve acknowledged that in the part of my message you’ve pruned, and you haven’t directly countered the point that these materials link the economies across the three distinct game modes

ignore the scale for a moment, ignore HOW IMPORTANT it is; is it important to HAVE those links between the three game modes?

‘wvw should be a self-sufficient game mode’ sounds nice but falls on its face.

wvw and pvp have memories of battle and shards of glory for a reason. that cross-mode dependency helps to keep each mode profitable.

are flax fibers a fair pve→wvw dependency? maybe, maybe not- but that dependency should exist to some degree

Korgov.7645:

Suggestion: Let the siegemasters sell the upgrades for Badges of Honor.

letting the siegemasters sell flax fibers is better, keeps the fibers market-facing

why would you buff tempest to make fresh air viable?
tempest is an elite spec
address core class mechanics and traits otherwise espec 2 ele FA will not be viable anyway and you’ll end up with overbuffed tempest

Lordrosicky.5813:

It should heal through shroud. That would make it viable and would not be OP

It doesn’t atm? Thought it did
Absolutely needs to yeah

Lordrosicky.5813:

Well of blood = should heal through deathshroud, should be a water field (makes no sense I know) and should cleanse a condition each pulse.

Nah it makes sense. Blood is mostly water.

narcx.3570:

I’d like to see Parasitic Contagion moved to a spot where you can actually consider taking it. Or just merged into Vampric Presence—although that’d prolly end up being OP and getting things over-nerfed and leaving us in a worse state.

Parasitic Contagion is fine where it is, it just needs to have an actually decent amount of healing, and if possible some form of Healing Power scaling.

I’m quite happy with it. It’s really hard to say with the content droughts on either side of HoT in mind. Or maybe it’s really easy to say.

LouWolfskin.3492:

Isn’t the reaper gs pretty tanky?
We have a blind field, lots of chill, an AoE pull… it sounds tankish for Guild Wars standards.

No. Reaper GS has no blocks, no evades, no immunes, relatively little blind (it’s only four blinds, and it’s on a 25 second CD), and the AoE pull is a pressure tool, not an interrupt/defensive tool. It has poor lifedrain potential (slow attack speed doesn’t synergize well with Vampiric/Vampiric Presence) and has no boon generation for the sake of Blighter’s Boon. Gravedigger’s lifedrain is rarely applicable in real combat. Its lifeforce generation relies on striking multiple targets in melee.

In reality, Greatsword is likely the Necromancer’s least tanky weapon. Axe, Scepter and Staff all allow you to act from range, and Dagger has a high attack rate for generating BB/lifedrain and an actual genuine lifedrain tool.

Maybe reduce base Shroud skill CDs.

Astralporing.1957:

Also, remember when they introduced Twilight Assault, which was at that time significantly harder than the average dungeon? It was so unpopular, that Anet decided to cancel any further dungeon development altogether.

Do you have any evidence to support this assertion?

Would rather have epidemic than bunker meta. Honestly I’m just reading people complaining that their group isn’t invulnerable; you’re not supposed to be.

Duo queue was implemented for a reason. I have no interest in going back to full-group queues.

I’m not so bold as to say that TC doesn’t want/deserve to be in T1 but I did get the distinct feeling while on TC that they didn’t really enjoy the stacking mentality that the other two T1 servers seem to have picked up.

Maybe the pop cap changes will address that.

Vicariuz.1605:

All the misinformation could have been dispelled very early on if Arenanet would just be transparent. But that’s not their style.

How’s it misinformation? They changed their minds. Transparency is one thing, telling the future is another.

Even if they hadn’t changed their minds they have always been transparent in saying that they will implement a back door to earning these skins.

They’re fine as they are. You’re not supposed to send your team to them. You’re supposed to send one person to clear them, maybe two if you need to clear it quick.

Byron.1902:

By the same logic, T1 and T2 would be a carousel of leaving guilds and be left as zombie pug hordes. Good work.

And then they’d drop as ‘lower’ tier servers filter up and beat them based on skill and organisation?

Hmmmm.

McKenna Berdrow.2759:

For population balance reasons, we’ve lowered the population thresholds for a world to be considered ‘Full’. This is to keep the population disparity between high pop and low pop servers more similar.

Very glad to hear this. While the details are a bit skinny (and understandably so) it’s good to hear this.

Does this mean that we can regularly expect every server to have a link partner?

Have you thought of renaming the achievements to match? I don’t think I mind them being changed to permanent too much but I think renaming them or condensing their achievements if possible may be a good idea.

I play a similar build. It’s limited, but fun to play.

Shaogin.2679:

Corrosive poison cloud definitely seems useful, but doesn’t it give you issues always have to use a condi cleanse right after or suffer from your self-inflicted weakness?

Not really, not if you’re running a condi send. Also, good practice for me is to lay down CPC and then immediately CC because the projectile destruction field helps to keep people from hitting you with Head Shots or whatever.

Shaogin.2679:

Also, after dropping Soul Reaping and staff do you ever have issues with Life Force generation. It is something I’ve been considering, but I’m worried about a drop in sustain.

Yes. Greatsword LF generation is way more unstable than Staff LF. You can fill your LF by 60-70% if you land Grasping Darkness->Death Spiral on several targets, but that’s a big if.

Dawdler.8521:

BrotherBelial.3094:

Not really, cc’s/blocks kill warriors. Someone skilled with a warrior is always gonna be tough, but then that’s goes for anyone.

You can CC and block a warrior all you want – they’re still gonna regen 1000 hp/s.

Pretty easy for bunker buster necro to outDPS that.

Mushin.3928:

Why not give everyone a 25% movement speed buff in PvP?

Because Swiftness becomes practically pointless

Gwaihir.1745:

No. Just give them a trait that rewards them for breaking stuns. Active play not throwing yourself into crap. Like warrior 3k heal on stunbreak. Just make it a 1s block every time you break stun.

Not very good.

Rousing Resilience is good because Warriors can poop out stunbreaks everywhere. All utility stances, Berserk, Outrage, and Headbutt all stunbreak. Headbutt even gives you a stun for you to break yourself. It’s not hard to get Rousing Resilience regularly sending you heals and bonus toughness.

Necromancers can’t get the coverage of effective stunbreaks that warriors can. They don’t have as many, they’re not as powerful, and they’re on longer cooldowns. There’s also no local synergy (in Death Magic, there is only one skill that stunbreaks – Flesh Wurm – and Flesh Wurm saves you from danger anyway). The only way it could be effectively used would be through FitG, and even then it’s not really amazing. A lot of the time the issue is recovering from interrupts, not recovering from hard CC, and not many players can stunbreak Head Shot.

If it were “block for 1s when you use a stunbreaker” it would be servicable but would still make Soul Reaping mandatory, and with DM/SR/Reaper you really wouldn’t have much outgoing pressure. Necromancers are dependent on Curses and Spite to create effective pressure; you wouldn’t even be able to fit Deathly Perception or Dhuumfire because FitG is necessary. You’d have a meaty bunker build, but that’s not really what Necromancers are for at the moment, and Death Magic would still not be an option for halfway builds; it’s still all-in or nothing.

ProtoGunner.4953:

Most dungeons are a joke with the new builds (and most were a joke before even HOT came out). But the main problem is that they seem to ignore the dungeons. They don’t even create new ones. I don’t know what the problem here is. Every MMO releases dungeons in a regular way.

GW2 does release new dungeons regularly in Fractals.

Would like it if they removed the cap but made required Magic Find scale exponentionally after 300%.

X2 and more elite specs

That’s all I really want

They do seem to have been a bit quiet. I suspect they’re waiting for the spvp season to end before unveiling rewards because it’ll likely be the T2 Triumphant gear, ascended quality, as a skirmish reward, and they don’t want rewards-driven players to filter out of spvp just yet.

Dead Muppet.9718:

The ice sigil I just cant see being worth it in any circumstance due to its proc rate and cooldown?

The greatsword itself, the cooldowns and animations are so long how is it favourable over a staff?

Ice Sigil is worthwhile when you are using both the Bleed On Chill and Vuln On Chill traits, if you already have Sigil of Hydromancy, and it needs to only be a one-of. Otherwise, it isn’t worthwhile. I’d have to doublecheck to see if this build uses Ice Sigil.

Staff is probably preferable, but as far as I can tell this is supposed to be a greatsword build. It’s not a greatsword build if you don’t have a greatsword.

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

Doesn’t help prevent the initial disable, but it does make chain CC much harder to pull off.

Chain corrupt the stab, troll dat necro

Nothing about Soul Comprehension?

Would def like to see AB ML being solved. AB ML is completely breaking PvE rewards schema.

More rewards for TD would certainly not go be bad either.

Towatha.4671:

no thank you. This will only add more exclusive rewards for raiders. I’d prefer they start working on wvw.

what this dude said

raids are providing content for their target audience, they’re fine.

if you want normal mode raids, you can do Silverwastes, Verdant Brink, Auric Basin, Tangled Depths and Dragon’s Stand.

DEATHsCLAW.1978:

ahh ye I forgot the second reason that necro only has 2 condi weapons.. (offhands excluded)

Then why is the current ‘meta’ ranked Reaper build, Power Boonstrip, using it, if it’s a Condi weapon as you say?

DEATHsCLAW.1978:

and the procmancer is no optimal build in my opinion but thats not part of the topic..

It’s also your opinion that staff needs to be buffed even though it appears in every single viable PvP necro build since the launch of the game.

I’m having a really hard time thinking of any other weapon, in the entire game, from launch to today, that has remained such a consistent pick. Maybe Thief D/P, but even then, they had a phase where S/D was popular. Understanding the absolutely dominating grip that Necromancer Staff has had on Necromancer builds, where does this idea that it needs to be buffed come from?

DEATHsCLAW.1978:

lol staff numbers are laughable if it hadnt a good LF regen nobody would play it..

And yet people play it.

Even Metabattle’s Procmancer which doesn’t take Soul Marks, which is the source of all that LF generation, uses it.

Staff is fine. I am extremely skeptical that it would need to be buffed in any way considering its role and the availability of both a second weapon set and Death Shroud(s).