Guild Wars 2

I noticed the same thing a while ago. Nobody had any idea. All I know from asking around was that it used to do normal damage in sPvP (e.g. the same in PvE), but when it changed I have no idea.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/pvp/pvp/Is-retaliation-damage-reduced-by-1-3-in-sPvP/first#post1633021

So is it just me or does the Chill of Death trait still seem to be triggering at something much lower than the 25% health stated in the tooltip? This is just me eyeballing it from using it on the golems in the mist. The GW2 wiki says it is triggering at 15% but it’s so hard to tell.

Well first of all let me say I have no idea why so many people are concerned with the meta right now. There are no good teams playing anymore, and it’s been that way for quite a while. No teams = no organization = no competition = no meta. There is no barometer to measure build/team comp viability anymore.

But to entertain your topic, it’s really more about supporting your teammates and less so about building your comp around something. Because if you really break down what people mean they say you have to build around a power necro or warrior or whatever, what they really mean is you have a guardian and ele in your comp who knows what they are doing. I’d also argue that you’d need to support a condition necro just the same as a power necro, but not to the same degree of course.

Pretty much all standard hold 2-node team comps starts with guard and ele. I don’t have as much experience running 3-node team comps but a bunker guard isn’t required there, usually opting for 2 eles, and personally I always thought warriors were very good in 3-node team comps.

I would actually highly recommend Soul Marks instead.

So what are you using for your sigils now? Rage doesn’t seem all that great anymore.

Yeah there seems to be very little consistency among the “item budget” across gear. I wish they would do a passover of all the items. Still though nightmare runes are probably still one of the best runes for necro’s out there.

So you’re saying you want 100% of guardians to use shelter as their heal, instead of the current 99.99999999%?

Bas.7406:

Skyro.3108:

You have to realize that predictability was ANet’s design intent. That’s the whole reason they had weapon sets in the first place, why there’s no cast bars but unique cast animations, etc. They wanted players to have a visual cue on what to look out for so they could time their dodges and stuff.

The lack of viable, unique builds and play-styles is something else entirely. That is why IMO each class should be balanced around roles. Each role typically necessitates different play-styles and builds, and if you give each class say 3 or so viable roles they can fill it is a nice balance between predictability and varied play.

That’s an interesting idea, but that would put them back into realizing that leaving a role system was a bad idea. Since their whole premise was leaving roles behind and just having this completely dynamic play, I am not sure they will do that.

Once you start developing roles, people will fall into a holy trinity WoW type or LoL type roles and then we are back to what they wanted to leave behind. Not sure that’s possible with what they want to do with the game.

Their basic combat system originally was designed roles. They were supposed to be support, damage, control. Support morphed into bunker, damage is always just damage, and control is virtually non-existant. If each class was able to fill each of these 3 roles, but in different ways to varied play, that is all you really need.

As with most things in life, you want a balance. You don’t want hard set rules on comps, but you do want the ability to optimization your composition to some extent. If all 3 classes could serve these 3 basic roles people could switch up their roles on the fly to fit their composition.

Bas.7406:

Skyro.3108:

@Bas

In your example you have this incorrect notion that you are “taking no damage” while in DS, when in essense it is basically all EHP. You do not seem to recognize this, even through my many attempts to explain this fact. If consider your health pool and LF pool as one big EHP pool your whole example becomes nonsensical.

It is you who is linking two separate issues, being able to heal in DS and our HPS output, together. If you are making the argument that you think our HPS is too high in PvE, which I have little experience with so I won’t comment, then that is an entirely separate issue. But our HPS is most certainly not high in PvP, which is what you were alluding to with the “unkillable in 1v1” comment.

The whole point of me explaining the optimally short up time of DS was say that in a realistic scenario your DS uptime is short, and the amount of consistent HPS is low (in PvP). This basically means the healing you would receive in DS is minimal, at best. The plus side however is that it indirectly buffs many underpowered traits in the blood line, and promotes more synergy with team members.

And I find it very very hard to believe it is this way due to balance concerns. Like I said previously, I am pretty sure this is just bad coding by ANet.

I can see what you are saying about EHS, but that would be looking at DS as an actual life bar, while I look at it more like a utility transformation state. I can see your point, but my point is that currently when I leave DS I am still at 14k health if I lose it, and with the healing added to DS, I would be back at 28k health in DS or whatever health I currently have which using your EHS means that I would have constant resupply of EHS from two sources making us incredibly difficult kills.

I am not disagreeing with your notion that in most builds you wouldn’t be unkillable. I am saying against a majority of players in a 1v1 situation with a 0/10/0/30/30 build with Cleric’s gear we would be as close to unkillable as the elementalist was pre 30 Arcana nerf.

Yeah, and if your HPS is > incoming DPS, you didn’t need to go into DS in the first place, and you saved yourself all that LF deterioration. I also would highly recommend you do look at LF as an extended life bar (w/ caveats of course), instead of some abstract notion of it that you have in your head.

Also I don’t disagree you would be very hard to kill with such a build, but you still never explained why:

1) you think being unkillable as a bunker with no DPS output is OP when there are already many classes/builds that does this better which are not considered OP

2) why you believe being able to be healed in DS is some kind of balance “tipping point” so to speak for this build, which if anything is currently underpowered in PvP and can already survive 1v1

PinCushion.7390:

Oldbugga.7029:

Well if what Bas is saying IS correct, what evidence is there that ANet are trimming the other profs down to our level? NONE (in fact the opposite..epidemc nerf anyone). This is just the old MMO argument “so-and-so class is OP…devs pls nerf it” and we all know where that goes.

The alternative then is to seek an increase in necro abilities to match because that argument above will get us nowhere.

EDIT: and the line of least resistance (effort) for the devs is to buff one or two of our abilities rather than nerf one or two abilities for 3 or 4 professions. So if buffing us is improbable I would say nerfing the others is even more of an improbability purely on the effort required.

It isn’t about the line of least resistance. It’s about creating a level playing field where every profession has a variety of builds with which they can contribute in both PvE and PvP. In PvE it prevents content from becoming (more) trivialized, and prevents players from being shoehorned into roles and builds that they may not actually enjoy. Both of these add to the game’s overall longevity and marketability. In PvP it prevents matches from becoming foregone conclusions based purely on which group has the “correct” class composition, and also creates a certain amount of unpredictability in gameplay. How many times have you seen a Warrior with a Greatsword in PvP or WvW and knew exactly what he was going to do and how to react to it? That’s a problem. There aren’t enough ways to build a solid Greatsword Warrior that players actually want to use, so GS Warriors are painfully predictable to the point of being boring. That’s just an example, but there are countless others. D/D Elementalists are another build that is very potent, but also incredibly predictable.

You have to realize that predictability was ANet’s design intent. That’s the whole reason they had weapon sets in the first place, why there’s no cast bars but unique cast animations, etc. They wanted players to have a visual cue on what to look out for so they could time their dodges and stuff.

The lack of viable, unique builds and play-styles is something else entirely. That is why IMO each class should be balanced around roles. Each role typically necessitates different play-styles and builds, and if you give each class say 3 or so viable roles they can fill it is a nice balance between predictability and varied play.

Yes. I feel for all the warriors out there but that is a completely separate issue. Honestly I had more of a problem with quickness stomps than the DPS aspect of it.

But regarding warriors though they should re-introduce frenzy “stance dancing” they had in GW1 where stances canceled each other (so you can cancel the debuff), and the stances themselves had very low cooldowns to flip in and out of constantly. It was a beloved mechanic both by the players playing it and the ones playing against it.

@Bas

In your example you have this incorrect notion that you are “taking no damage” while in DS, when in essense it is basically all EHP. You do not seem to recognize this, even through my many attempts to explain this fact. If consider your health pool and LF pool as one big EHP pool your whole example becomes nonsensical.

It is you who is linking two separate issues, being able to heal in DS and our HPS output, together. If you are making the argument that you think our HPS is too high in PvE, which I have little experience with so I won’t comment, then that is an entirely separate issue. But our HPS is most certainly not high in PvP, which is what you were alluding to with the “unkillable in 1v1” comment.

The whole point of me explaining the optimally short up time of DS was say that in a realistic scenario your DS uptime is short, and the amount of consistent HPS is low (in PvP). This basically means the healing you would receive in DS is minimal, at best. The plus side however is that it indirectly buffs many underpowered traits in the blood line, and promotes more synergy with team members.

And I find it very very hard to believe it is this way due to balance concerns. Like I said previously, I am pretty sure this is just bad coding/overight/bug by ANet rather than any design intention. Remember that DS used to be activated upon being downed, which if I were to guess is the reason they disabled healing in DS in the first place.

PinCushion.7390:

This is one reason I always questioned the value of all the traits that require you to hang out in DS to function. Life Blast does ABC. DS causes Vuln. By using these traits I’m hurting myself more than my enemy because I have to burn through X amount of effective health just to use them.

It isn’t really relevant to the patch notes, but it’s bugged me for a while.

There is nothing to consider. All the DS traits that require you to stay in DS are complete and utter garbage because of this very fact.

@Bhawb

Like I said above, syngery with other classes is a good thing, not a bad one. It promotes teamwork and coordination. Right now the fact that you can’t be healed is both unintuitive and not fun. It’s like this:

Necro: “Help I’m getting focused”
Ele: “Ok tossing my big heals on you!”
Necro: “Crap I had to DS to eat that 100B burst”
Ele: “…”

In regards to balance, I think the my whole argument is just flying over everybody’s heads. Let me explain it in another way. Don’t think about HP and LF as two separate pools, but consider them all one big effective HP pool, except when you’re in DS you lose 600 HP/sec (the amount of EHP you lose in LF assuming 0 SR and 25k HP).

So to even break even in DS, you’d have to be healing 600 HP/sec. In what world are you generating a HPS output of 600 HP/sec on a consistent basis? You maybe hit if you have regen and you trait up all your siphon traits and using life transfer w/ the healing trait, but life transfer is on 40s CD and you’re committing a ton of trait points into a line that is frankly incredibly underpowered in PvP.

What this all means is that staying in DS for long periods of time is deterimental to you EHP. You want to maximize the proportion of damage you take in DS while minimizing your uptime in DS, which essentially means you want to take all the high spike damage in DS while taking all the moderate levels of damage to your normal health bar.

So in reality the whole scenario about being some invulnerable juggernaut simply due to being able to be healed in DS is completly and utterly false because you do not want to be in DS for very long stretches if you care about optimizing your EHP. A Necro optimzing his EHP in this way is probably only going to get a few hundred more EHP (depending on the build of course) if they change it so you can be healed in DS.

@Bas

I was directing my post to you because to you painting an unrealistic scenario. If Necro had access to Ele heals while in DS or something I could see that being a bit over the top, but that would have less to do with DS and more to do with Ele’s high healing output. Regen only ticks for a couple hundred even at really high levels of healing power, is no way game breaking and nowhere near invulnerable. Our siphon skills have a HPS rate in the hundreds as well, similar to regen. We do have in any way shape or form a high HPS output in any normal scenario.

The sheer fact that you aren’t taking damage directly to your health pool while being able to heal your health pool is not game breaking in itself, otherwise they would disable healing when using invulnerability skills like mesmer distortion, guardian elite, etc.

TLDR:
1) DS is optimally used in short bursts, making any notion of healing up to full while tanking in DS unrealistic
2) our HPS output is not high like Eles or Guards, and is much easier to countered by another player
3) Nothing else in the game works in such a fashion, where a transformation or game state (e.g. invulnerability) prevents healing
4) I am 99% sure the reason we can’t be healed in DS has to do with ANet’s coding/bugs/whatever than anything to do with balance concerns

Bas.7406:

RashanDale.3609:

Bas.7406:

Because we would become incredibly difficult to kill. It would basically be you can’t hurt my health, I am recouping my health, and you are being hurt in the process. If you traited for the 5 percent CD on DS, you would essentially have invulnerability with regen while dealing damage every 5 seconds. Considering Life blast can hurt and you could use fear and Life Transfer to heal. You would be next to impossible to ever kill 1v1.

i read this answer at least 6 times now and it still doesnt make sense in my head. why exactly would it be OP? and what is this about invulnerability??

at least we should be able to receive a portion of regeneration/heals, while in DS, like 50%.

It’s considered invulnerable because you aren’t taking any damage to your health. Regen even at 200-300 per tick. Which is completely possible with life siphoning traits as well as regen, and 1400 healing power you can get pretty legit.

Well of Blood is incredibly strong.

Example: I drop well of blood, hit ds and sit in it while you hit me. I recoup all of my health, while dealing damage to you. To top it off, I come out hit you with staff 2, Focus 4, and then transfer condtions to you, 5 seconds are up, back into Death shroud. Now I have Regen ticking, I picked up Life Transfer heals, siphon on hit, and another siphon ability. Now I am hammering you with fear, then the amount of damage you did on me is healing back up and I just life transfered for another 2k before my health is gone.

I could essentially become a regen machine, not to mention if you have a guardian or ele next to you keeping regen going. Now do you see what I am saying.

If they reduced it to say 25 percent that would make sense, but full heals in DS would be crazy.

@Skyro, talk with Nay and Del Onasi about our healing abilities. I once felt like you did and then watched their support builds keep three minions alive through an entire dungeon. I no longer disagree with them.

You’re living in a fairy tale if you really think that is how it is going to play out in PvP, where nobody has knockbacks for your Well and interrupts for your channeled siphons. And I don’t even know why you bring up dungeon runs.

If you are packing 1400 healing power and 30 SR/blood you’re a bunker, you’ve devoted 60 points and your ammy into defense so yes, I think it is fair that you should be unkillable 1v1, which is not OP and more like a minimum threshold to being a viable bunker. What you fail to realize is that nobody brings Necro bunkers to high level tPvP because it’s not just about surviving 1vX, it’s about support and most importantly node control. The guardian is unmatched in this aspect.

Necro bunkers are not good because they have no stability and no node control. If you wanted an off-bunker there are also many better choices (Ele for instance, who also happens to be better support, mobility, and can still dish out good damage).

And if you’re getting beat on, and you are actually staying in DS for long periods of time, this is bad bad bad. You are going to run out of LF incredibly fast, and will no where near be invulnerable.

I’ll give you a pro-tip on why you want to be in and out of DS quickly whenever possible. For example, the cost of casting one life blast essentially costs you 1 tick. 2 life blasts (which comes in at just under 3 secs of total cast time) costs you 2 ticks. 3 life blasts however will cost you 4 ticks. That last life blast essentially cost you 8% life force.
This example is to illustrate the increasing marginal cost of staying in DS the longer you are in it (e.g. you stay in DS for under 1s there are no ticks, 1.99 secs for 1 tick, 2.99 s for 2 ticks, etc.)

So if you’re staying in DS for 5s (at the cost of 20% LF) as a bunker to somehow take “advantage” of regen while in DS, that is just not efficient at all. You’re much much better off timing DS to prevent huge chunks of spike damage, and then just taking more moderate levels of DPS from your regular health pool.

One of the main reasons the Near Death trait is strong is because it lets you manage your LF deterioration much much better, by continually getting in and out of DS right before a tick would hit and having it available more often to time to negate spike damage. I’d also argue the stability trait is much much more useful in more situations in PvP than Near Death is, even though I think it is a great trait.

Bas.7406:

Skyro.3108:

How disappointing. I don’t really see a reason why heals shouldn’t work in death shroud.

Because we would become incredibly difficult to kill. It would basically be you can’t hurt my health, I am recouping my health, and you are being hurt in the process. If you traited for the 5 percent CD on DS, you would essentially have invulnerability with regen while dealing damage every 5 seconds. Considering Life blast can hurt and you could use fear and Life Transfer to heal. You would be next to impossible to ever kill 1v1.

I’m not sure how you came to that conclusion. Necro’s healing ability in this game is pretty weak, and healing in general in this game isn’t very strong. The only two classes that have strong heals are Eles and Guards, and in that case it creates more synergy between the classes which is a good thing. I think you are vastly overrating Necro’s healing abilities.

IMO this isn’t a balance issue at all, and right now it only serves as gameplay mechanic that is unintuitive and not fun. DS is not something you stay in for long periods of time because the LF deterioration penalizes it harshly. You’re not going to be getting low on health, switch to DS and tank damage for 30s while you regen all the way back to full health. This is not how it works in reality.

Plus it would indirectly buff the blood line which badly needs some buffing, allowing life siphon and the transfustion trait heal to work while in DS.

How disappointing. I don’t really see a reason why heals shouldn’t work in death shroud.

So has anybody tested if heals work (regen, life transfer heal trait, etc.) work while in DS now?!?

So can we get healed while in DS now? If so that would be a huge buff to necros.

I think the Necro’s role would be to stick on the ledge on your team’s side of the map when possible and focus on snaring players chasing down your orb carrier or the enemy carrier, fearing people off ledges, and AoE around the carriers in general. Epidemic can still be pretty powerful due to the narrow ledges and the tendency to clump around the orb carrier.

While it’s true Necros don’t have an awesome 1v1 build, most popular necro builds do pretty well vs glass cannon dagger thieves as long as you have life force. Perhaps tell us your build, the thief build you are having issues with, and then we can help you. Without those details nobody can help you.

1v1 builds are pretty pointless at the end of the day. Perma-stealth thieves abusing blinding powder → heartseeker stealth stacking + stealth regen/condition removal traits and BM rangers beats everything else in duels pretty much.

If you want your necro to be some sort of solo roaming juggernaut I’m sorry to say that isn’t possible. If you want to do that pick a class specifically for that purpose (thief or ele).

I do not think community map making is feasible since it’s 3d. Wouldn’t it be too complicated? To my knowledge all community map makers were for 2d games? Obviously I mean in terms of gameplay, not graphics (e.g. SC2 has 3d graphics but 2d gameplay).

Balance is something that should be left to the devs since they have the raw data. I’m not sure why there isn’t a test server though.

Bottomline though is that they have to find a way to monetize sPvP better, since if sPvP generated more revenue I’m sure they would devote more staff resources toward it. The only way I see that happening is by making the sPvP side of the game free-to-play to increase the playerbase, and add a TON of aesthetic things to purchase such as skins and dance animations. Perhaps the ability to use custom artwork for guild emblems. Custom servers will be great too obviously, whenever that gets put in.

The only way I can see ANet leveraging community development would be through custom servers if enough customizable options are made available, and UI mods.

The whole comparison of cripples/chills between classes is not genuine. Like the comparison with Ele chills? Ele’s can only use one weapon and so while they have a higher number of skills that chill, they are all tied to separate weapons. Necros have the most access to chills, which is all that really matters. Their AoE cripple abilities (Sc 2 and Axe 3) have long durations on short cooldowns.

The issue with players being able to get away from the Necro has to do mainly with the abundance of condition removals, plus the mobility skills of other classes (also has to do with Necro’s lack of swiftness and teleports, but that seems to be by design so I will disregard that). For example it’s quite easy to chase a warrior who has the worse condition removal in the game plus has no teleports.

I doubt much is going to be done with condition removal, and you can easily make the argument that is intended, provides counterplay, etc. But I see no reason why mobility skills shouldn’t be affected by cripple/chill. RTL, whirlwind, etc. should move slower when they are crippled/chilled. IMO it should affect the distance you travel while dodging as well. Only thing that shouldn’t be affected is teleports.

TLDR: it’s not the lack of cripple/chills that makes it so people can run away from Necros, it’s the effectiveness of those cripples/chills.

Mesmer – if they are using Staff forget about it and target something easier to spike. The low cooldown on Phase Retreat makes it virtually impossible to lock them down with Dark Pact -> burst. If you have to target the Mesmer you pretty much have to use Spectral Grasp to counter teleports, make them burn distortion on your first spike, and then actually get them down on the 2nd one.

Bunker Guardian – the stability trait helps alot to prevent knockbacks when you are trying to spike. You have to keep track of their heal cooldown before trying to spike since pretty much every guardian uses shelter. Well of Corruption is strong here. If your spike is well timed you pretty much force them to use their invulnerability elite.

Glass cannon Thief – These are pretty easy unless you are caught with your pants down. Fear them immediately once they get on you (although watch if they use Lyssa which gives them aegis and stability), chain fear with Dark Pact -> burst. Your auto-attack will still hit stealthed players who are in front of you (you can tell by your entire auto-attack chain going off). Usually they die from one spike. If not just keep on the pressure. Thieves use stealth to catch their breathe but Necro’s have many ways to continue to do damage to stealthed players (Dagger 2 channel if you locked on before they stealthed, Life Transfer, Marks). I like to throw down Mark of Blood at my feet whenever possible when they are stealthed due. Due to Mark of Blood’s low cooldown it doesn’t matter if they dodge it and it gives me an idea of their position, so I can dodge once it is triggered or whatever I need to do, plus it gives me regen. Lastly make sure to save your fear mark for their shadow refuge. Really the trick is to keep the pressure on so they can’t catch their breath.

The only GW1 tournies with large cash prizes were funded by ANet themselves, and I did not know a single person who actually watched GvG matches who didn’t themselves play the game alot. GvG was a ton of fun though.

Energy was a needed balancing mechanic in GW1 because you had free reign over what 8 skills were in your bar. GW2 is totally different with only 3 utility skills and 5 pre-defined skills tied to your weapon sets.

GW2 is more akin to Team Fortress, and GW1 was more like Magic the Gathering. I think a lot of the overarching design decisions they made in GW2 were good from an esport perspective, such as unique attack animations, skills tied to weapon sets, etc. GW1 was too arcane to be understood by anybody other than players well versed in it themselves. If GW2’s combat system was a complete failure the PvE population would also be struggling but it isn’t.

The problem with GW2 really comes down to the lack of interesting team combat mechanics in PvP. AoE is too strong (especially vs downed corpses to prevent rezes), CC is too weak, burst is too high, and there’s no strong support or healing classes. The complete lack of interesting team fight dynamics makes the game mostly revolved around forcing favorable engagements via mobility and map/node control.

While the game will never be an eSport (that dream is dead IMO), ANet can still salvage the game to at least appease the remaining fanbase. For example, they said on a SotG that when they tested team deathmatch internally it wasn’t fun because everybody just waited until their elites were up before going in and that wasn’t fun. And while I’m no fan of TDM as a competitive game mode, that should’ve alerted them that powerful elites on big cooldowns make for poor team fight dynamics. And that is just one issue. Some other ones off the top of my head:

-They already said they are looking into toning down AoE, but very slowly due to its affect on PvE. But what they can do right now is buff the rezes so every class has a viable rez. I think they need to tone down downed state abilities and HP as well. I see the need for a downed state in PvP, otherwise burst comps will rule all, but they have to make this a bit more dynamic. Viable rez sigs on all classes is at least a start.

-Make support and control builds viable. The game was advertised as rather than having a tank/dps/healer dynamic, it would have a control/dps/support dynamic. In PvP it is really only a bunker/DPS dynamic, with everybody running more or less self-sustainable builds. This will require a lot of balancing, but the end goal IMO should be toning down individual bunker defense, increase team support such as healing, condition removals and buffs, tone down spike DPS (which they already said they are going to do by adding a “boon hate” mechanic instead), buff CC, nerf vigor in some fashion so people can’t spam dodges all day, and put a greater emphasis on the combo mechanic by making fields/finishers less abundant but have a stronger effect. I could go on and on but at this point I think I should start charging ANet.

If you’re talking about a duel I think the only class that can beat it consistently is a perma-stealth thief abusing blinding power + heartseeker with the heal/condi remove in stealth traits, but it’d be a long duel.

If you’re talking about actual tourney play in a team fight it is best to just go after somebody else. Most of the damage is tied to their pet, and all pets outside of the bird can simply be kited in circles and they will never hit you. If there is things like ledges around (such as around the mid node on Legacy) that makes it even easier as pets cannot jump down ledges.

If you need to attack a node with a BM ranger guarding it you can send a bunker there with strong node control (probably a guardian) and focus on knocking the ranger off the node to neutralize the point. Although honestly vs tanky 1v1 specialist builds like these it’s best to just to try to force team fights where you will likely have an advantage.

Trap Rangers, Condi Engi, and Condi Necros are the top 3 classes that serve the role of sustained AoE DPS/pressure roles. This is pretty much common knowledge. Each have their own strengths/weaknesses. To any particular class is superior to the other in this role is selling the other classes short. You’re either biased or trying to strengthen your own argument with an opinion that is not shared by many.

Mesmers and Warriors are spike DPS, and both are actually not very good in team fighters by comparison but viable in comps for different reasons.

Staff Eles are basically extinct in high lvl tPvP. The only time they were viable was pre-Evasive Arcana nerf and that was a bunker spec. I really have no idea why you even bring them up. If you honestly think they dish out more sustained AoE DPS/pressure in a team fight I don’t think any logical reasoning is going to help you.

And Guardians are the bunkers. Again, different roles.

Bottomline all of the Necro’s weaponsets are viable and each bring their own strengths and weaknesses. The spite, curses, and soul reaping line are all pretty strong relatively speaking, although there are UP’ed traits in these lines just like all classes have. Death line is highly tied to MM’s, which I won’t comment on because I’ve never seriously tested a MM spec. Blood line needs some serious work to make it viable in sPvP.

All in all Necros are great team fighters, with various builds they can use serve that role. If your argument was that we lack diversity in roles then I would agree with you.

The main issue with running Necro on side points is the lack of mobility, plus MM or bunker Necro builds do not contribute as much in team fights. It’s not all about bunkering/holding a side point, it’s more about what else do you bring to the table. For example, even though a BM ranger is more tanky and a better 1v1 class than a trap ranger, you’d want a trap ranger on backpoint since they contribute more to team fights. Common back point defenders like trap rangers, Eles, and Mesmers all bring something else to the table, and none of these classes are true bunkers or top of the food chain 1v1 specs.

If they buffed Flesh Wurm teleport range enough so that you could teleport from the mid node to the back node Necro’s may be able to serve a backpoint defender role however.

I believe you can use the “remove condition on DS” trait to remove fear since you can use DS while CC’ed.

Necros are team fighters, not roamers or 1v1 specialists or whatever you might think. They put out large amounts of sustained DPS in big team fights, and they are one of the best classes at doing it. Once that is understood you can start to get a clearer picture of what is and isn’t viable.

The 30/30/10/0/0 is somewhat outdated. The strength of the build revolves around Wells and the extra condi duration you got from going 30 in spite. It’s pretty glassy. It’s still a nice build to bomb from the ledges on Forest though.

The most common build is still the regular condi Necro build of 0/20/10/0/20 with 20 points to float around to grab some combination of lingering curse, reaper’s protection, and foot in the grave. The bread and butter Necro build that is more or less viable on all maps.

Power Dagger Necro, which also relies on Wells to a great extent, I think is pretty good on Forest as well due to the tight choke points around keep. It synergizes very well with a Guardian in node fights as you need the protection/support the guardian offers to really get the most out of this build IMO.

I also like lettucemode’s hybrid necro. It essentially plays exactly like the condi necro but with an axe instead of scepter. The damage is higher and you have burst from fear + Axe 2, but it’s more glassy than a normal condi as axe range is shorter than scepter range and you don’t have reaper’s protection or foot in the grave. Its main strength I feel is it is a backline fighter in team fights. I was skeptical about Axe in a hybrid build at first but it’s pretty strong due to the high rate of fire from Axe 1 and 2 which leads to many Barbed Precision procs. This is one of the reasons it is strong vs Eles who focus on high toughness and low HP which gets eaten up by high damage, short duration conditions.

Not sure about MM or bunker specs, haven’t experimented with them much.

Yes but you need to time it right (split second after activating DS). Practice on the NPCs in the mist.

SAtaarcoeny.8476:

my facination with entangle is i belieave its the strongest 1v1 elite and strongest teamfight elite so if i compare that to the others its the best elite. you have to blow break stuns to get out of it but usually take dmg by then and thats hoping u have a break stun for it.

You can condi cleanse the immobilize and then immediately dodge roll out of entangle. It’s never felt all that game changing in team fights to me personally, but I suppose it is underrated because the pbAoE is quite large.

Larynx.2453:

Sanis.1096:

Skyro.3108:

You are aware that ANet themselves funded their tournaments right? GW1 PvP was great, but it was no eSport.

so gw1 pvp was so kitten that only anet would fund tournaments? well… why the hell ppl want this to be like gw1 then o.O

WoW doesn’t even have tournaments. It doesn’t mean it doesn’t have fun PvP. GW1 wasn’t an eSport, neither is something like Tribes. It doesn’t mean either of them are bad games.

If eSport success is how we judge how good a game is, there’s about 3 or 4 games worth playing in the world atm.

The OP was implying GW1 had an eSport/tournament scene by showing videos from ANet’s self-funded world championships, which simply was not the case which I pointed out. Like I said GW1 PvP was fun, but it was never some popular, bustling PvP community. It was a fairly niche game overall. Still a much bigger PvP population than GW2 though of course (although GW2’s PvE population is much larger than GW1’s so from ANet’s perspective they’re probably pretty happy).

Nuka Cola.8520:

There is no need to increase its duration (completely another story when it comes to pve tho) because clones generation is easy so re-applying confusion is no problem but the damage is. Again, i’m talking about a mez in full Rabid set with high condi damage, good precision but very low crit damage and none existent Power. It doesn’t matter if wvw dynamic is ‘completely different’ because that’s not my point. My point being is, i want condition mesmers to be useful in spvp and confusion damage increase would instantly makes that a strong option. This may not be the ONLY thing needed but it would help more than removing vulnerability on winds of chaos for example. And as i mentioned this applies to high condition damage builds ONLY, not a mix of power/crit damage/precision/condi damage with condi damage at ~500. Its the increased duration that will make confusion OP because everyone will be stacking 15+ stacks easily and not everyone can remove them especially when they will be covered by other conditions. My idea gives the enemy a chance (short lasting confusion as it is) but if he’s not paying attention or bursting x target he may also get self owned by high damage from my confusion.

Our only real source of high confusion stacks is via shatters, so it’s not about clone generation, it’s about shatter cooldowns. That’s why hybrid shatter works, because you need the power to leverage the direct damage from shatters, and that’s why Carrion Amulet is so much better than Rabid for Mesmers.

Like I said above, you are confusing 2 different issues. You are linking confusion damage as the reason why a rabid amulet based pure condition mesmer is not viable in sPvP. The real reason is much deeper than that and rooted in the Mesmers traits and skills. Mesmers lack adequate condition application, lack consistent poison, lack a strong pure condition based Phantasm, a sub-par “X on crit” condition trait, etc. Even if you increase confusion damage they would still not be viable, and Carrion Amulet would still be better than Rabid.

TLDR: Stop using Rabid Amulet on your Mesmer.

Nuka Cola.8520:

what kind of elementalist are you attacking with those 8 stacks without him removing them instantly? Its not eles that are missing condi removals… About the pressure, yeah, mez pressure with burst shatter and that’s about it. Run a condi build and see how you’ll be pressuring.

You hit them with confusion after they swap out of water attunement. Most of their condition removal is in water attunement. Unless they slot cleansing fire (50s CD) they pretty much have to wait it out.

You are aware that ANet themselves funded their tournaments right? GW1 PvP was great, but it was no eSport.

Nuka Cola.8520:

Skyro.3108:

Nuka Cola.8520:

what do you mean you can’t make a build that relies on confusion lol? solo roam in wvw running a confusion build and see how irevelant it is, its not. On mez you can build confusion based builds and rely on it as your main damage. If you swap weps on recharge and have decoy/mirror images illusions generation is really good, not exactly hard to perma confuse your enemy while having 3 illusions up. High confusion damage on a condi build would only compensate none existent burst and right now a condi mez has no burst nor can you pressure with confusion. Of course if vulnerability wasn’t on WoC or replaced by poison it’d make condition builds much better but that’s not the point of the topic.

What does WvW have to do with anything? This is the sPvP forum, and I’m talking about sPvP. The bottomline is confusion relies on your opponent using skills to do damage. If your main form of damage is by relying on your enemy to use skills then you’re going to have problems vs good players.

Confusion is a supplement to your damage, not your main form of damage, and as I stated above, serves as a shutdown mechanic vs good players. Good players aren’t going to be spamming skills non-stop taking multiple 1300+ confusion ticks. That’s why it’s so good on defense-oriented builds, but pretty bad with glassy build. A duration increase on confusion would be many times stronger than more damage in high level tournament play. Higher damage is probably better vs bad players though.

That said though I don’t think it needs a buff. A hybrid shatter mes on backpoint defense is pretty good already. People still talk about glass cannon shatter all the time but it can be abused as a backpoint defender by numerous classes.

What has wvw has do with anything? Confusion damage, that’s what. Good players won’t be spamming skills and eat 1300 damage, no, but if you can perma (or close to it) keep multiple stacks on the that player he has no choice but to use skills and take damage or get out. Called pressuring, and that is none existent in gw2 but at the same time was the main mesmers mechanic in gw1 which i’m sure lots of people are missing.

WvW has nothing to do with sPvP. The dynamics are completely different.

So you’re basically agreeing with me that an increase in duration would be more effective? Because right now there’s no way you can even come close to keeping a high uptime of large stacks of confusion on a target.

I like how confusion is currently though. A lot of the effectiveness of it currently is timing it right as your opponent wants to spam skills (usually their DPS rotation), e.g. right as an Ele swaps out of water attunement.

And even if you did want to increase the damage, having some “magic” number breakpoint to unlock crazy confusion damage is not a good way to go about it. Nothing else in the entire game works that way, and would be completely confusing (lol) to newer players. If ANet wanted to increase confusion damage they would simply increase the scaling per point starting at point 1.

jportell.2197:

Nuka Cola.8520:

jportell.2197:

Nuka Cola.8520:

kidbs.8920:

The bottom line is condition builds sucks all around for the most part. They can work if you’re built for bunkering and can tank several people at a time to keep reapplying it, but for pure damage all condition builds suck. This isn’t a unique problem to mesmers.

Confusion doesn’t need to do more damage necessarily, especially since mesmers can also have retalliation at the same time.

the problem is that retaliation scales with power and pure condi build has less than 1k power so that’s irevelant option.

And the build that focuses retaliation as its source of damage has it’s “tank” (pDefender) wiped down extremely fast in team fights. So it is great if you know you are fighting one maybe two people while trying to maintain a node…. But anymore than that and the build becomes toast.

Not sure if i understand your comment correctly but what’s your point with x build? I was pointing out that retaliation isn’t good on a build with low Power. I don’t follow random names people give to builds so i’m not sure what’s that pDefender build is but i’m also sure that it has less than 1200 condi damage (as my suggestion states, to unlock pve confusion damage requirement) and have high enough power to make retaliation powerful. This is what i want, balance. You go pure condi and do great or go burst and do as well but differently in a way.

It was more to the person above you stating that we can stack good retaliation AND confusion at the same time… And no it just doesn’t work that way really… The retal build focuses on having phantasms up and full self retaliation up time… And pDefender is the Phantasmal Defender… Which is the best way mesmers can bunker.

Simply using Sw/Fo alone gives you close to 50% retal uptime (depending on boon duration increases). I recently found out that retal damage is nerfed by 33% in sPvP though. I don’t think I saw the nerf mentioned in any patch notes either.

Nuka Cola.8520:

what do you mean you can’t make a build that relies on confusion lol? solo roam in wvw running a confusion build and see how irevelant it is, its not. On mez you can build confusion based builds and rely on it as your main damage. If you swap weps on recharge and have decoy/mirror images illusions generation is really good, not exactly hard to perma confuse your enemy while having 3 illusions up. High confusion damage on a condi build would only compensate none existent burst and right now a condi mez has no burst nor can you pressure with confusion. Of course if vulnerability wasn’t on WoC or replaced by poison it’d make condition builds much better but that’s not the point of the topic.

What does WvW have to do with anything? This is the sPvP forum, and I’m talking about sPvP. The bottomline is confusion relies on your opponent using skills to do damage. If your main form of damage is by relying on your enemy to use skills then you’re going to have problems vs good players.

Confusion is a supplement to your damage, not your main form of damage, and as I stated above, serves as a shutdown mechanic vs good players. Good players aren’t going to be spamming skills non-stop taking multiple 1300+ confusion ticks. That’s why it’s so good on defense-oriented builds, but pretty bad with glassy build. A duration increase on confusion would be many times stronger than more damage in high level tournament play. Higher damage is probably better vs bad players though.

That said though I don’t think it needs a buff. A hybrid shatter mes on backpoint defense is pretty good already. People still talk about glass cannon shatter all the time but it can be abused as a backpoint defender by numerous classes.

Yes, but they need to put more emphasis on the secondary mechanics and less on the actual bunkering of nodes. I think temple/spirit watch were much better balanced between holding nodes and the secondary objective.

That said they should add more game modes, hopefully via custom servers. DM will never work as a competitive mode as there’s not enough depth in combat. MOBA-style would be very interesting if they could pull it off, but that would be a ton of work.

Confusion already does good damage. 8 stack confusion from my CoF procs for like 1300+ on my hybrid shatter build. That’s the thing about confusion though you can’t make an entire build around it because it is based on your opponent using skills to do damage. So while it might kill bad players, good players will cleanse it or just wait out the duration. So in higher level play it becomes more of a shutdown mechanic, so it is only effective in hybrid or tank builds. So if you really wanted to buff confusion it would be by buffing its duration, not its damage, to enchance its shutdown capabilities.

OTOH, the problem with a pure condition mesmers has nothing to do with confusion. It’s simply the lack of adequate DPS condition application. You pretty much need ample access to poison to be an effective pure condition class, which mesmers don’t have, and the only strong condition damage weapon we have is the staff, and that is only good because our clones still do full condition damage.

-1% crit damage is a lot more DPS than 10 precision as long as you have a decent crit rate (which your build has). Plus the +5% dmg while > 50% LF adds a lot of damage as well. Bottom line your DPS is higher with 10 in SR than in curses, plus you got a larger LF pool.

-Same with Ogre. Higher DPS with Ogre. Plug your stats in a DPS calculator to see for yourself.

-If you use Axe then I agree Near Death isn’t as needed because your LF generation isn’t as high as Dagger. Near Death is mostly for defensive purposes so I don’t know what you are trying to say about weapon skill rotations/cooldowns. But what is this DS CD reset bug you are talking about?

-I’m not sure why you think Life Transfer is so awesome. It’s a nice AoE/LF generation skill in a power build sure but the DPS isn’t all that great. DS is primarily a defensive skill, but to not leverage the power of Life Blast in a high LF generation build is a waste. Life Blast is our higher DPS ranged auto-attack we have.

-Because Staff cooldowns are so long outside of the #2 skill you spend a lot of time in Axe if you use Axe, so I like Axe Training. Axe 2 is your biggest damage skill for axe and Axe Training reduces the cooldown and adds 15% damage to all axe skills. Close to Death synergizes much better with Dagger since it combos so well with things like Wells and such but you’re likely not going to use your damage Wells with an Axe. I actually like to run hybrid with Axe since Axe’s fast rate of attack procs a lot of bleeds.

Pendragon.8735:

I’ve only been down 30 SR as a secondary to conditions, but it seems really weird to play any kind of DS dancing build without having it at 5 sec recharge. Would seem ideal for cleaning a condition, and keeping fury and retaliation up.

Yeah I find 5s recharge trait pretty crucial for a DS build since you’re going to build LF so fast a 10s recharge is too slow to take advantage of it.

-I would go 30 SR instead of 10 in curses. +5% damage and both GM SR traits is better than bleed procs and the life force on crit trait is fairly lackluster. Plus having a bigger LF pool is very good for high LF generation skills since it indirectly makes those skill gain more LF per hit since everything is percentage-based.

-I would also recommend knight’s amulet. Your LF pool scales with vit and it makes the build far far less glassy. In fact, I would consider it more of a sustain build at that point.

-I would take unyielding blast. Life blast hits hard in power build, and is one of the main reasons you go for a high LF-generation build in the first place.

-Ogre runes also add a lot more DPS than eagle runes do. Plus the rock dog is another source for more LF

-Both Axe and Dagger are viable, but if you take Axe I would recommend the Axe Training trait instead of close to death.

Energy denial was a core component of Mesmer game play in GW1 as well that I miss. Mesmers in this game just feel nothing like they were in GW1. I don’t believe you need a universal energy/mana resource system for balance for depth reasons, it’s just the old Mesmer playstyle I miss. I still think some of that old Mesmer-y playstyle can exist in GW2 if they made the Mesmer interrupt traits worth a kitten

I thought it was pretty good. The focus of the questions was very geared toward what ANet is trying to do to get the sPvP player population to healthy levels, such as incentivizing PvE/WvW players to sPvP, more rewards, etc.

These things, along with custom servers, is going to have a muuuuuuuuuuuch bigger impact on the player population than a solo q will. I’m not even a fan of solo q to begin with in this type of game format and with such a small playerbase currently.

One thing ANet should do though to accommodate solo q’ers is the match-making system should form your team first so that you can get people on TS, organize your team composition and roles, talk strategy, make sure people aren’t afk, etc. before you actually submit the team into the queue.

I’m only going to speak from a sPvP perspective because the SotG was about sPvP, not PvE or WvW:

-Necro’s weapon sets are in a good place. They have buffed Axe, Focus, and WH last patch, and now every one feels useful for different reasons. Imbalance b/w weapon sets is a core reason why some classes have little build diversity, and this is what I think the devs meant about Necro build diversity.

-There are of course still many underpowered traits and utilities. This can be said about every single class in the game though unfortunately. This is the next area ANet needs to look at. The blood line (and life siphoning in general) is very underwhelming in sPvP.

-The other big thing ANet needs to tackle is the DS UI (which they said they are already working on), and healing in DS. I think you should be able to be healed in DS, so that life siphoning, regen, etc. can work while you are in DS. This will only be a slight bump to Necro survivability, make life siphoning in general more viable, and promote more DS use. I have no issues with the DS abilities themselves.

-Lastly they need to work on minion AI, but this goes hand-in-hand with ranger pet and mesmer clone AI as well.

Staff can work for any build. It is more of a support weapon, not really a DPS-focused one, although the staff 4 ability hits pretty hard in a power build.

Esplen.3940:

So you want mimic to be a mini-feedback around yourself until it absorbs one projectile then it disappears?

A mini-feedback around your character would certainly make the skill a lot more interesting for sure. But if they don’t want to go that far simply making echo instant cast will do wonders for the skill IMO.

Valkyriez.6578:

I haven’t watched it yet, but was there any mention of sPvP getting anything new, Anything at all, in the coming March 26 patch?

Custom servers? First implementation of leader boards? A new map is in the pipeline with another unique secondary objective?

I don’t care about balance changes. I just want to know if there is any features, at all, in the march patch or is the end of April the ETA on something for sPvP?

The repeatedly said they were already internally testing leaderboards, custom servers, and spectator mode and they just have to make sure there are no bugs with them before shipping them out, so they sound very close to being done.