Guild Wars 2

You pretty much answered your own question.

The auto attack is very meh and #3 is situational. #2 is great but because it’s a channelled attack (on a profession with low access to stability, no blocks, invulns, etc. etc.) it leaves us in a very vulnerable position for the duration of the cast time.

It’s a difficult weapon to balance so I truly understand how Anet could have trouble with it. It’s a decent weapon, not nearly as bad as a lot of players like to claim, but you’re kidding yourself if you think it’s anything more than that.

That isn’t to say that you’re wrong for enjoying it. I like using Axe/Dagger in WvW from time to time which isn’t a combination I see very often. It may not be as powerful as Axe/Focus but I’m a huge advocate of doing what you enjoy over what’s “better” (unless what you enjoy is intruding on other peoples time).

I wish more weapons in the game were as well designed as Ranger greatsword, honestly. It’s one of the very, very few weapons where every single skill has high value. Unfortunately the majority of weapons, Necro axe included, have only 1 – 3 skills out of the 3 (2) 5 that are useful while the rest are hugely situational or extremely lackluster.

DeWolfe.2174:

SpellOfIniquity.1780:

Magwagon doesn’t have many roamers left but we do enjoy going tagless, squadless and without TS 1-pushing BG guilds. I’m sure someone will find a way to put the blame on us but the KDR doesn’t lie.

Because you omni-blob. That is what increases your KDR. You have a map Q at 3am est. How you are not closed is laughable. The fact that BG was opened is just as laughable.

I agree that it’s silly we’re not closed but I promise you the numbers are not often in our favor when we’re in a tagless “roaming blob” as people on Maguuma phrase it (because we’re aware of how people think of us).

It is often even or lesser numbers when we pick off the backline of guilds that are ignoring us and focusing on pushing PPT. Then they realize how thin they’ve gotten and get rolled when they try to get rid of us. Or other times they’re just bad/trying to push a bad spot and wipe because they think we’d be too disorganized to stop them.

I’m not going to name any specific guilds but I could list half a dozen that we’ve wiped tagless, squadless, without TS and of even or lesser numbers.

But yes, absolutely there are times we have a tagless omni-blob that destroys everything, too. That’s the nice thing about Maguuma, though. We don’t need a leader to get things done (:

Eleazar.9478:

Guess the proper term would be havocing at that point. But maguma thinks 10 man groups are roamers (that’s dipping into zerging territory

Nearly every server is like this. BG thinks they’re special snowflakes but I can count on one hand the number of players I regularly see solo. Same for many other servers.

Magwagon doesn’t have many roamers left but we do enjoy going tagless, squadless and without TS 1-pushing BG guilds. I’m sure someone will find a way to put the blame on us but the KDR doesn’t lie. [QQ], [oPP] and all the other guilds that troll around spawns with 6 – 12 players stealth camping can claim they “roam” all they want but they drop like flies and scatter like roaches when enemy numbers approach their own. The real roamers put tension on the map and players warn other players where that person is at.

Mag doesn’t have many roamers left but that’s just WvW in general. If you think your server is any different from the rest, you’re lying to yourself. The only difference is the personalities (players) within the server which you won’t know unless you’re on the server (or happen to be friends with them).

Don’t use traps or Bonfire (because they are pulsing) and turn off your auto attack. The trait most Daredevils use allows them to cleanse conditions when they evade attacks. If you are not attacking, they cannot evade anything → they can’t cleanse.

Once you’ve gotten at least a couple conditions on them, likely via Throw Torch, Splitblade, etc, sheath your weapons and let the conditions do their work for a bit. Re-apply the conditions after they’ve run their course. Also since you’re using Beastly Warden and Wolf, try to save your F2 Fear + Taunt combo for when they’re getting low and trying to kite/escape, then really lay the hurt on them.

I voted no but honestly, I like DBL for roaming. It’s great for kiting, ranged combat and I don’t expect to get heavily outnumbered every 5 minutes.

It’s less active than EBG and Alpine so many of the fights I have are 1v1/2’s or chasing down small groups of 10< as they PvD things.

I understand the hate for the map, I wasn’t pleased with it being voted in and hated it at first as well. But as time has gone on, I’ve come to enjoy it. Not nearly as much as EBG but to be honest, I think I like it better than Alpine.

The issue I have with it is that it’s always the red team that gets it. I would have preferred it if all borderland maps rotated every week/second week from Alpine to Desert but that wasn’t the option we were given to vote for.

I won’t be heartbroken if it gets voted out completely some time in the future but I do wish more people would give it a chance. For ranged classes especially, it’s an amazing map for stalking and sniping. I have a field day there on my Ranger pelting people from hills and walls and watching them struggle to reach me before they die :P.

Trying to enjoy playing vanilla builds against elite builds. I dislike Reaper and very much prefer vanilla Shroud over Reaper Shroud. I hate Druid staff and enjoy my high damage vanilla build too much (that requires all 3 trait lines that I’m using). I don’t mind Berserker and will use it sometimes but I enjoy Ranger and Necromancer far, far more than Warrior anyway.

I prefer to play what/how I have the most fun with. Unfortunately, elite specs are so considerably better than vanilla in many cases that when I meet someone of equal or greater skill, I’m usually either forced to run or fight a very steep uphill battle.

Probably because most of the “1v2’s” were just 1v1’s with the other person coming in late or hardly contributing. As well as missing/being kind of careless with Warhorn 4 usage.

Good kiting and good player but not as impressive as I was anticipating from pro-league. Nice to see that vanilla Necromancer usage in the beginning though.

I’m intrigued by the fact that so many players dislike outfits for the same reason they love tonics.

A lot of players dislike outfits because they can’t customize their look and/or because they dislike looking like everyone else. You can change the dyes, face and hair of your character but in a tonic form, you can change nothing.

Outfits are promoted while most tonics are not. Make something unobtainable/uninteresting for long enough, then make it shiny and new and everyone wants it?

I like the Kodan tonic don’t get me wrong, though I also never had problems with outfits. I just find it a bit ironic that so many love tonics yet I wouldn’t doubt that many of the same players hate outfits. It’s not all that different, you can change both when ever you please. One is just more commercially advertised and the other is a toy.

In zergs and occasionally when in outnumbered fights if I’m not properly managing my pet are the only times they really die. Though, I also don’t use Birds or Felines, both of which do die usually within 60seconds even in a 1v1 if I’m not really careful about pulling it back and sending it in.

That said, I really do wish there was a more reliable way than just keeping your pets on passive while in zergs to keep them alive. Something like scaling their health depending on the number of players nearby similar to a champion. Knowing how much other players hate pets though, I could see something like that receiving a lot of “too OP” complaints.

As for poor tracking, Smokescale and Moa hit their targets pretty easily for the most part, both of which have 170 attack range on a number of their attacks. I think increasing the attack range for all pets would be an easy enough solution for Anet to implement. It might make dodging pets a bit more difficult due to phantom range but considering how rarely they hit their targets in their current state, I’d say it would be a more than acceptable change (also making it so that channelled attacks like drake F2s track during the cast animation).

And as has been said many times in the past…. Something I and many others really want, a freaking hotkey for keeping pets on passive.

Ways to mitigate power damage:
Dodge, block, invulnerability, Protection, Aegis, Toughness

Ways to mitigate condition damage:
Dodge, block, invulnerability, Resistance, cleanse, Vitality

Time it takes to deal 10 – 20k damage with power:
Between 1 and 10 seconds

Time it takes to deal 10 – 20k damage with conditions:
Between 15 and 30 seconds

After your health has disappeared from a large critical hit from power, that’s it. Your health is gone. You can heal, if your heal is available, or it’s gone forever.

After enough conditions are applied to you that they could potentially deal a massive amount of damage (eg. having 15 stacks of Bleed transferred to you from a Necromancer), your health is still there but going down quickly. You can remove the Bleeds or apply Resistance if you have access to it negating the damage completely. Imagine if you landed a 20k Gunflame (Berserker F1 burst skill) and someone “cleansed” the damage and went back to full health. That would be pretty annoying, don’t you think?

Conditions are fine. Players are just moronic.

There’s already [Wind], an all Ranger guild, otherwise I would. I don’t think it would get enough recruits to be significant ):

Fluffball.8307:

It’s just personal preference, but I wouldn’t take sic ‘em any more. I used to always take it, but there are so many awesome options these days I think it’s a little lackluster. I couldn’t list a replacement suggestion without basically naming every skill we have… even untraited stuff like spike trap, GoE, GoT, QZ, LR… All kinds of good stuff, since you already have tons of swiftness and regen.

And another personal preference, I nearly always take quickdraw. I would go so far as to say LB/staff isn’t worth running without it. I’d drop MM and LtW and rely on QD to buff your LB skills. (And that could lead to a traited spike trap or even HS if your group needs it.)

The reason I refuse to run without QD is because it’s both offensive and defensive depending on what you need. Offense, you can double up on RF, barrage, lunar impact, Natural Converg. if you’re cleaving rezzes… I’ll even use vine surge twice sometimes especially if someone is already disabled. For defense, you can double up on AG, SC, HS, or Rejuv. tides.

Edit: One final thought on your sic ‘em, I’m currently using untraited LR and SoR because druids are surprisingly weak against immob. Right now your only way out is CA or VS which can be a death sentence if someone is paying attention to you.

I can vouch for the Quick Draw awesomeness. I’ve grown so attached to it that I feel at a disadvantage when I’m using anything else. Though, to be fair, I also use vanilla Ranger so the extra kiting potential from Swoop x2 makes an insanely huge difference. Same can be said for Hunter’s Shot x2, Point Blank shot x2 or Counterattack x2.

I may be overselling it but I truly feel like QD has got to be in the top 3 best traits that we have. If you can work Skirmishing in to your build, do it just for that trait.

Also, Lightning Reflexes is one of my personal favorite skills in the game across any profession. Not only is it a stunbreak, it’s an evade + Vigor. Being able to stunbreak away from the source of the CC, on top of evading follow up attacks, gaining increased endurance regeneration and ignoring immobilize is amazingly powerful.

If this skill gets any of the suggested nerfs here, I’ll be sure to go out of my way to rally complaints for other skills/traits to receive nerfs as well. And I have more than a few in mind.

Reducing the radius is the only acceptable nerf this skill could get. Anything else and it becomes more situational than it already is, which would put it in line with a plethora of other useless utilities that Necro has.

I feel like the multiple threads that have popped up about this are inadvertently trolling me because of how much it’s kittening me off. I love Necromancer to death (no pun intended), I’ve been playing it for 3 years with over 3.5k hours in it and I am so kitten tired of having every good toy we get taken away from us. Necro is the one class that can’t run, stealth, regenerate insane amounts of health or block/invuln spam and yet we always get the kittening short end of the stick.

/rant

I’m avoiding these threads from here on out. With some of the suggestions put forth I can already tell they won’t be worth reading and will only kitten me off more.

Akashi.3245:

Change it so condition damage applied from sources that are not the necro, dont scale off of the necros condi damage. Huge part of the problem (that people cant seem to adapt to) solved for wvw

So many people on these forums seem to not even know how the skill itself functions and im glad non of them are in charge of balancing things.

Which would mean when using it while not in a group (solo PvE for example) it would be useless, correct?

Ugh, here we go… The threads begin en masse and Necro will soon receive yet another nerf.

I’m going to suggest what I think would be the most balanced way to adjust it repeatedly so that if it does happen to get nerfed, perhaps they will go the route of the following suggestion:

Reduce the radius.

There are plenty of blocks going around in zergs, making it blockable is not a fair solution. Neither is making condition damage scale from the source because it then makes the ability too much of a wild card. And again neither is making the amount of stacks it can copy static because proper usage of this ability is what makes it so rewarding. It already has a hard cap on how many conditions it can copy, we don’t need to reduce it further.

It is absolutely a powerful skill, there is no way around that. But it requires stat investment on behalf of the Necro (unlike the problem with Signet Of Inspiration where the Mesmer didn’t need any boon duration. Necro with Epidemic however needs condition damage and duration to get the full benefit from this skill), it has a whole 1 second cast time coming from a class with low access to stability and 8 times out of 10 it will get interrupted, the target will move out of range, will evade or reach downed state before the skill goes off. It’s far more dangerous coming from a co-ordinated group but there aren’t many of those.

I am partially responsible for some of these complaints, I guarantee it. Last night between SMC and Anz I was downing people from the Epi source like dominos left and right. Proper usage of this skill can be devastating but given how often it fails/misses and that it requires heavy stat investment, I’m strongly against the idea of having this nerfed. It isn’t nearly as game changing as Signet Of Inspiration was unless it’s coming from a heavily co-ordinated group. In which case, there are tons of other things that are extremely dangerous as well.

Anet, please… I know how you like to appeal to the whiners but I beg of you, be rational if this skill is going to receive any changes. Let Necro’s have something good. 3 years I’ve been playing it and every time we’re capable of something effective we get our toys taken away from us.

I enjoy imagining people screaming at their screens when fighting me going “WHY WON’T YOU DIIIIIE?!”

Necromancer certainly doesn’t have the sustain of certain bunker builds but played properly, you can be amazingly difficult to bring down. I love being in situations where I feel like I should be long dead but I’m still kicking because of Life Force management and health protection.

There are a number of reasons I enjoy Necro but honestly, it all comes down to the fact that I just find it the most fun. Different strokes for different folks and Necro appeals to me in so many ways. It has it’s problems, as does every profession, but I’ve stuck with it for 3 years and I haven’t regretted a minute.

As some have said, it has a pretty significant cast time which can make it unreliable to use. 8 out of 10 times my target will dodge, cleanse, down or be completely defeated before I can get the full cast off. I try to save Epi for downed targets since they can’t dodge or cleanse but if you don’t play Necro, you’d be surprised how often they die or get hit with an AOE cleanse before you get the cast off. Better yet, you get CC’d in the middle of the cast.

Considering the cast time, how many blocks are going around in zergs and relatively high Resistance uptime, I think the Unblockable component on Epidemic is okay.

If it’s going to receive a nerf… Which I really don’t believe it needs, I think the best way to balance it would be to reduce the radius. It has a pretty large area of effect for being Unblockable and potentially extremely deadly. While it can be a very strong skill, like Meteor Shower for example, there are a lot factors that make it insignificant more often than devastating. You don’t need a brain to press Epi, I can agree with the poster that said that, but you definitely need some know-how on choosing the right targets.

VunDola.7596:

It might be important to note that this aspect is also applicable in zerg/guild raids in wvw due to the fact that you often focus target on one or two targets. If the targets were using kodan tonic and dodged, you would put your skill on full cd instead of stowing it.

These small things sound like they don’t really matter but sometimes fights can be won or lost due to these things. If they continue with this trend of adding combat tonics and in the worse case scenario just use basic animations (see lowest quality character model animations) this means that no combat animations would be distinct and the level of skill in wvw would drop dramatically.

I don’t see how it matters that the dodges aren’t visible when stealth already exists. You have plenty of things that can hit you from stealth, which means you can’t see them coming, only predict.

Kodan tonic has all the animations and they’re even larger than normal making it easier to fight. The dodge has just turned in to a quick step instead of a roll which is more difficult to read but no harder to predict.

I don’t think it needs to be disallowed when it has only one small issue that some players are making a big deal out of because they’ll blame anything instead of themselves for a loss.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/wuv/Roaming-tier-list/first#post6411223

This is the personal build I use in WvW

With Fury and hitting from beside or behind, this build has exactly 100% critical chance as well as +5% damage from Force sigil, +7% from Ranger runes and +10% with full endurance from Steady Focus.

Of course it isn’t perfect but it serves me well in what I enjoy doing and it carries over nicely to PvE due to it’s high damage and critical chance. You can adjust it to better suit your needs, I’ve just shared it as I play it and hope that if you choose to use it, you enjoy it as much as I do (:

A couple things to note:
The Knights stats on the greatsword is just for a little bit of defence when I’m forced in to melee range.
Sigil of Agility works nicely with Tail Wind for Swiftness and kiting potential, Energy sigil is also great for those emergency dodges.
Remember that Clarion Bond now provides unblockable pet attacks. On swap Wolf is great for denying blocks with it’s AOE fear.
Soften The Fall rarely comes in handy but it’s saved me enough times to warrant taking it over Oakheart Salve (which I consider useless, personally).
And Saffron Soup is awesome for removing a third condition on heal.

jamesdolla.3954:

Jayne.9251:

jamesdolla.3954:

Trajan.4953:

jamesdolla.3954:

Mag doesn’t like this cuz,

No blood lust

Super hard to get around

No one goes to them but ppters

The server that has the red BL is put at a disadvantage

every keep can be glitched into

Do us all a favor and get rid of them. thx

Fixed that for ya.

the activity levels are super low on red bl’s in all tiers from eu to NA. might as well have an underwater map.

That’s not true for EU.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Gw2WvW/comments/5dnngw/euna_kill_stats_1111_1811/

It is m8. lowest activity levels in nearly all tiers. eu and na.

EU players think they’re special snowflakes. Let him dream.

Given the name, Reaper’s Touch, I think a decent change would be the following:

Reduce aftercast (obviously)
Remove Regeneration
Increase the stacks of Vulnerability applied per hit by 1

Rework it to behave like a mini-Gravedigger -

Since Spinal Shivers deals extra damage per boon removed, how about making Reaper’s Touch deal extra damage based on how much health the target has?

If target is at 75% health, it deals 5% extra damage
At 50%, 10% extra damage
25%, 20% extra damage
Downed, 50% extra damage

Everything said here is accurate but I’d also like to add -

Although Necromancer is a bottom tier roamer, being skilled with the profession and having strong map awareness can make it totally doable. Once upon a time I did a lot of solo roaming on Necromancer and I know there are others out there that enjoy doing it even now.

While it will struggle to survive during outnumbered fights, anything besides Thief and Mesmer will die anyway if the group fighting them is determined enough to run them down. I’ve seen (and been) plenty of nike Warriors with tons of mobility, Rangers with staff/GS, Engi’s with Sneak Gyro and Toss Elixir S, etc. be chased down until they’re dead no matter how far they run. On Necro it just means you don’t have to waste your time running for 5 minutes only to get killed anyway.

Also note that the borderlands are often much better for solo roaming due to being larger and less populated. If you plan to roam on a Necromancer, it’s a lot more forgiving to do so there than it is in EBG.

I’d say some of the lists given here are pretty accurate as well.

Thief, Mesmer, Warrior, Ranger, Engineer are all top tier.
Revenant, Elementalist, Guardian mid tier.
And of course Necromancer bottom tier.

Often with their elite specs of course, but note that the top tier roamers all have solid access to stealth and/or strong mobility.

Thief, with quick reflexes, can disengage from anything at will. If you find yourself overwhelmed, you always have the option to gtfo and 90% of the time you’ll survive. That said, you should place discipline over survival if you ever plan to improve. Sometimes dying and learning something is better than running away.

Warrior stands out in that it fares quite well against pretty much anything. There aren’t really any builds that you’re going to have an uphill battle against if you choose to play Warrior. That’s not to say that it’s OP or better than Thief, just that it’s versatile.

Glassy Mesmer played well is an amazingly dangerous opponent that can total even bunker builds. It’s not as commonly seen as condition Mesmer but both and the many variants in between are very strong roamers.

Everything else is kind of second best compared to these 3 but are still absolutely relevant if played properly. I know more than a few Rangers, Revenants, Guardians, Elementalists and yes even Necromancers that probably win more outnumbered fights than the top 3 meta roamers. Which just goes to show, skill and understanding will take you a lot further than meta, meta is just the lowest effort for the same success.

I actually am beginning to like it strictly because I can solo roam and not expect to get ganked every 10 seconds. Was having a good time there last night and getting some decent 1v1/x’s. The downside is if you die, you have a mile and a half to run to get back to where ever you were.

blitzkrieg.2451:

Ranger lacks depth compared to most classes, sorry but it’s the truth. With this lack of depth comes a lack of skill ceiling

Not feeling that.

Although Ranger is an easy class to pick up, like Necromancer and Warrior, it also has a very steep learning curve once you out-grow the idea that it’s an archer.

There are plenty of quirks to learn with the Ranger and many of them come from evade frames, pet animations and manipulating/coordinating with pet AI.

While I do agree that it’s an easy enough class to play, I very much disagree that it has a low skill ceiling. I’ve seen enough Rangers that are truly skilled with the profession to know that it has lots of potential if you’re willing to learn it. Working with your pets rather than loathing them is one of the keys to unlocking that potential.

As I’d said in an earlier comment, I fully understand why many players dislike their pets or why they want the option to permanently stow them. I don’t think these wishes are unreasonable but I do think that a lot of these players aren’t bothering to understand their pets and just want to get rid of them. If that’s the case, other posters here have already covered the options available to you and have stated that permanently stowing would require basically a whole new profession. You really can’t just go; pets are permanently stowed → get buffs across the board to compensate. You know how OP longbow would be if it got a + 30% damage buff (pets being 30% of our damage)? I can currently hit players for 4 – 5k auto attacks with my build. That means I’d probably be two shotting people doing something like 8k Long Range Shots and 30k Rapid Fires.

Say what you will but if we got the damage to compensate for our pets being permanently stowed, we’d probably be hitting like Warriors. In which case why not just play one.

nicknamenick.2437:

there is no dodge animation for this new Tonic..

Meanwhile Thieves can crit you for 10k + with Bound (a dodge) from stealth. But tonics are a problem.

Okay.

Pre-note that there are more positives than negatives but I explained the negatives so as to be more constructive than complain-y.

Positives

Braham’s outfit is beautiful, very well designed.

I love Bitterfrost Frontier, also beautiful and very immersive. I see a lot of players wearing coats to bundle up, myself included.

The Kodan torch skills are really fun and the mechanic is simple enough to not feel unnecessary. I also love the combat Kodan tonic which I’d love to see more of.

The character’s (at least for human female) and Braham’s voice acting in the final chapter of the story are very well done.

I love the events during the cold storms!

Mini’s being awarded in game are a nice feature that I’d like to see more of. Of course it has been this way for some time, but I enjoy this theme.

I’m happy to see under water combat being acknowledged with the ascended aquatic head gear.

Negatives

The new map is annoyingly difficult to traverse as highlighted by another poster in the Living World section of this forum. Two waypoints and very isolated thermal tubes force you to do a lot more walking than what feels necessary.

A couple of the mobs, particularly the Svanir shamans and Icebrood Kodans hit a little harder than I think a level 80 mob should. Don’t get me wrong, I’m all for more difficult content but I’ve been literally one shot (or at least multiple attacks happening so quickly it amounts to a one shot) by these two particular mobs. Earlier this morning a Svanir shaman hit me for 9k, 8k and 8k with that ranged attack that they do and my character has 2.8k armor. That’s a pretty nasty attack for a non-veteran.

The first half of the story, bonding with Aurene is extremely boring. Escorting the wounded soldiers in particular is very uneventful. If you destroy the portals before beginning, it’s a pretty snooze-worthy event walking NPC’s from one side of the room to the other uninterrupted. The story itself, as in the lore and dialogue are decent but the combat (at times lack there of) isn’t very enjoyable. I particularly disliked timed attacking with Aurene because of how you are basically forced to circle strafe for 60 seconds until you can attack because you can otherwise do very little.

The final boss has way too much CC coming at you. This CC obsession has to stop and I’m confident that a lot of players agree with me. It’s one thing to have attacks that punish you, it’s another to make it a game of “no matter how much stability you have or many times you dodge, you’re eventually gonna get hit.” I did the story 3 times and not getting knocked down by those 932042830948320 AOE’s was impossible and just felt irritating.

The thermal tube that sends you to the Mastery Point in the Bitter Cold half of the map is very unintuitively placed. I’ve seen a lot of players asking how to reach it and it took me quite some time to figure it out myself. I actually wound up gliding to it from the hot springs area and realized I could have gotten there a different way.

EphemeralWallaby.7643:

Combat tonics were talked about briefly in yesterday’s ama (just a fyi for this discussion):

Are we going to start seeing more tonics like the Endless Kodan tonic to play as races/creatures that are too minor to become a fully playable race?

It’s very unlikely that we will add combat tonics of races that don’t share animations with the player races, like Skritt or Quaggan. Those creatures don’t have a large number of animations that are needed for player combat. However, both Linsey and I are big fans of combat tonics, so we’ll likely have more in the future where we can fit them in.

http://dulfy.net/2016/11/21/gw2-a-crack-in-the-ice-developers-reddit-ama/

~EW

As I’d thought then, yeah. They don’t plan to implement any that don’t already have the animations in game. Thanks for the quote/link.

I’m really hoping that combat tonics are something we’ll see more of in the future. For the sake of hype and desire, list what things you’d like to be able to transform in to here!

A couple I’d like to see:

Ascalonian Mage
Grawl
Svanir
Ley-Line Anomaly
Ogre
Tengu
Hylek
Flame Legion Shaman

Keep in mind that it’s likely ANet would implement combat tonics depending on the in-game NPC versions and which animations said versions can perform. As in – Kodans come in various types, some wielding axes, greatswords, etc. so the animations are already there. If we’re asking for any combat tonics, they will probably need to be able to perform all the weapon animations. I think Grawl would be an easy one since they use a lot of different weapons.

I’m really hoping that combat tonics are something we’ll see more of in the future. For the sake of hype and desire, list what things you’d like to be able to transform in to here!

A couple I’d like to see:

Ascalonian Mage
Grawl
Svanir
Ogre
Hylek
Flame Legion Shaman

Keep in mind that it’s likely ANet would implement combat tonics depending on the in-game NPC versions and which animations said versions can perform. As in – Kodans come in various types, some wielding axes, greatswords, etc. so the animations are already there. If we’re asking for any combat tonics, they will probably need to be able to perform all the weapon animations. I think Grawl would be an easy one since they use a lot of different weapons.

Justine.6351:

so ignore the pet? like there is seriously zero drawback from not having a pet to not noticing you have one. Put it on passive and you got a giant mini pet. And if you like archer and standing on walls and stuff pewpewing your pet is near useless anyhow except maybe if you want to use a smokescale field for blind procs and whatnot. But once you start doing that you will realize having a pet is a boon to a ranger, not some kill stealing auto attack noob side kick.

^

I love my pets. I understand why a lot of players dislike them but besides their bad AI, they’re strong companions that can provide you with a lot of benefits if you take the time to learn them. Yes a percentage of our damage comes from our pet but that doesn’t mean we’re weak. It means we need to put our targets in a position that allows our pets to reliably attack – hence why we have so many immobilizes, to keep our targets in place. If you’re on a Warrior, do you just start doing Hundred Blades in the middle of a fight and hope every swing hits? No… You CC first. You should do the same for pets with long F2 cast times. You don’t just cast Salamander Drakes F2 which has a 2second (?) cast time and hope it all hits. You lock your target down first.

You can also manipulate pets attack chains by properly managing their active and passive states. I keep mine on passive so that I have on demand CC for example. Wolf always starts with a knockdown at a certain range and same with Smokescale. I keep my Smokescale idle beside me for a period of time so I can send it in for it’s Smoke Assault when it’s most beneficial.

Again, though I absolutely understand why a lot of players dislike their pets, people gotta stop neglecting them. If more people took the time to learn them they might start to love them. My pets have saved my life countless times and although they can misbehave at times, I miss them when I’m on another class.

EDIT: The most recent time my pet saved me was a couple days ago during a duel. Had a really close fight with a Warrior, was forced in to melee range, had 2k health left and him about the same. Literally in the middle of his Arc Divider he got knocked down by my Wolf and downed from the damage. That fight was so close for both of us but my Wolf decided the fight.

Swamurabi.7890:

T1 needs to be opened up for more players because anytime there’s a 3-way fight in SMC and you can have any skill other than 1 work means you need more players.

Feel free to take players from the lower servers because they don’t play WvW the way it should be played, it’s not like they’ll be missed or that they’re needed.

Eventually we’ll be left like EotM with three servers.

If you could believe it, there were even larger fights I think it was last week between us, FA and BG. I actually took a couple screenshots because in all my time in WvW, I had never seen that many players in SMC lords room at once.

The entire south corridor and out to the gate was filled with FA, all the way up the ramp and on to the third floor as well as the ramp behind me was filled with BG and the NE and NW corridors were us.

I was saying during the fight that I’d wager each side must have had 60 – 70 people totalling nearly 200 between all of us. The lag was legendary… I just wish I had gotten some better screens to show the scale of the fight.

Chessur.7326:

Jeknar.6184:

I’m still trying to see what’s the problem of losing some structures in a game mode where “winning” means nothing.

Fine. Let’s use your logic. Why do you play Guild Wars 2? Why do you spend hours, day after day, playing a game where there is no “winning”?

I don’t know about Jeknar but since I quoted him I’ll say;

Because it’s fun.

I don’t care if my server wins or loses. I do a lot of scouting and I don’t care if the objective that I’m scouting gets captured either. I do it because I like to do it not because I care what happens to the tower/camp/keep.

I understand that winning is important to some people but having fun is important to others. My fun is not mandated by my servers victories but by how much I enjoy being around the players on my server. We can come dead last every week for all I care. I sign on every day to laugh and collect bags.

It’s OP against Necromancers. Nothing else, really. Having fought Druids on a number of different professions, pretty well anything has a somewhat reliable way to escape this lockdown. Necromancer however, once you’re pinned, you’re pretty much down for the count unless you have transfers up or you’re a power build and can just destroy the roots (but if you’re glassy you may have died from kiting before you even got pinned).

Not OP, just frustrating on a particular profession and on niche builds that don’t have the tools to escape/prevent it.

Jeknar.6184:

I’m still trying to see what’s the problem of losing some structures in a game mode where “winning” means nothing.

AnariiUK.7409:

The nerf to Pink Moa was understandable since 3×2s daze was extremely strong for a pet.

I don’t like how the Black Moa is currently the best pet for CC on small hitboxes though. Feels like I’m at a disadvantage if I don’t have the hall of monument points, those pets should be clones as intended.

I don’t think it was too strong.

Strong, yes. Too strong, no.

Fortunately Moa’s have quick attacks so they hit their targets pretty reliably. The F2 daze however is not all that quick and requires proper management (ie. immobilizes, CC’s, etc.) to actually land. In the event that it does land, how ever strong it might be (speaking in terms of PvP), it still required proper management and therefore I believe that it was fine as it was. Because it was a rewarding skill, unlike Wolf fear howl for example which doesn’t require any proper management and is still very strong.

I would agree that the nerf was warranted if the daze was AOE but it’s not, it’s a cone. So I’m honestly still very upset about this change. It was one of my favorite pets and I no longer use it because it’s not worth taking over other pets that can provide CC.

I’ve been on the majority of NA servers. Only 2 have ever been strongly focused on fights over score, at times ignoring capture and defence all together if there are good opportunities for fights.

Maguuma, (at least the veterans and players that came here for reasons other than because their giant bandwagon guild decided to move here cough, Kazo, hS, KILL, SoX, cough) cares only about large scale combat. Many of our tags focus on attacking objectives to pull the enemy out, not because we want to capture it for score.

Since YB literally avoids fighting if they can help it, I believe we decided that forcing them to fight by being right at their doorstep was our plan of action. There are absolutely players that care about PPT on our server but they’re in the minority. Most of us just want battles large and small scale but in the upper tiers, a lot of servers would rather hug their PPT to protect their place on the leader boards.

I’m not going to say that spawn camping is a nice thing to do but I will say that being aggressive is a part of the Maguuman personality. Either you push us to our own spawn or we’re going to do it to you.

Haha, JQ, TC and BG probably all have PTSD from being farmed so hard by us and are rejoicing that they can have a good old PPT focused match like the old days.

Enjoy your karma while it lasts. We’ll be seeing you all real soon (: <

coro.3176:

It’s also too fast to be dodged without luck or telepathy. Unless you’re at max range, it’s probably going to hit you before your dodge evade takes effect.

I’ve reviewed video of it hitting me at medium distance (~700-900 units). I dodge almost immediately after the hook projectile is launched and it hits my character mid-dodge, but still hooks. Maybe that’s lag, but I have decent ping. If anyone is interested, I could post the slowed down clip.

It is an extremely fast projectile, yes. Reducing it’s velocity would be enough to balance it out, imho. It is currently the strongest pull in the game and one of only two that’s unblockable. If anyone needs an unblockable pull, it’s Necromancer. I would still love to see Spectral Grasp either become a non-projectile (like Magnet) or become unblockable.

I’m okay with it being blockable. Personally, I’d like it to grant 2 seconds of Super Speed for repositioning.

BG’s population is nothing to be afraid of. Even when they have one gigantic omni-blob that’s 80 people deep, they don’t win every fight. Their coverage can be troublesome but many players have stopped caring much about the score long ago. BG, YB and NSP are probably the only NA servers left that have a large community still interested in maintaining score. Every other server just wants good fights and focuses on attacking objectives to draw out the fights.

JemL.3501:

I am amazed how some people want and prefer that a single miserable guy is able to even cap a castle (if he is strong enough to kill the lord) alone by himself in a place where solo things shouldnt exist, wvw isnt mean for you to solo around

There is no logic behind for have solo stuff in wvw at all, that some stuff let you be able doesnt mean that it was designed for go that way

And I’m amazed that some people don’t understand there are many different ways to play WvW besides zerging.

Although I can understand how some might be frustrated at the thought of losing a structure to a single player, the fault lies entirely on poor scouting and defence. With all the latest changes to WvW since HoT dropped, soloing anything besides supply camps has become substantially more difficult. If a player manages to do that, good for them.

And this is not including your own towers that are unupgraded and unprotected. I’m talking about soloing an enemy tower that has at least a few guild buffs or siege.

Roaming is but a shadow of it’s former self and anyone who used to roam in the glory days knows that. Now, most players are in packs of 3 – 10 or with a zerg. While that’s all fine and good, it makes excitement for players like myself, and others who enjoy contributing on a single player level, much more difficult. There’s nothing more discouraging than having a great 1vX, narrowly winning and getting blind-sided by a guild or taking 20 minutes to open a tower and kill defenders only to be zerged when you reach the champion.

You can absolutely still solo roam but it’s far more punishing than it used to be. Many players have quit doing so, have turned to “cheesy” (builds that are able to reset easily) builds or stick tight to their guilds cliques. I don’t think we need to make solo roaming any harder than it already is by making camps harder to capture.

I think camps need to upgrade more quickly, not take longer to capture.

Dragonbrand, Jade Quarry, Desolation (EU), Seafarer’s Rest (EU), Isle Of Janthir, Yak’s Bend, Ferguson’s Crossing, Kaineng, Crystal Desert, Gate Of Madness, Darkhaven, Ehmry Bay, Stormbluff Isle, Sea Of Sorrows, Sorrow’s Furnace, Borlis Pass, Fort Aspenwood, Maguuma

In that order.

I was born on DB, wasn’t there too long, moved to JQ, was there for a good stretch, moved to EU for a couple months where I developed a passion for solo roaming. Moved back to NA, didn’t stay on YB long, moved to FC, stuck around there for quite some time and developed a passion for scouting. Moved to Kain, went back to roaming, moved to CD and GoM, didn’t stay on either for long, settled down on Darkhaven for the longest time. It was my home for a good stretch until a lot of people left. Went on a transfer spree, moving every week or two after that, then settled on Maguuma, which I’ve been on for a few months now.

I move because I’m guildless, I like to experience different communities, to meet new people, to keep WvW exciting for me (since WvW is all I do) and just because I can. I’ve never intentionally bandwagoned, although I did move to SFR during it’s top of T1 days and moved to Maguuma a couple weeks before it’s huge influx of transfers. Most times, I actually moved to losing servers because I find the disadvantages often bring players closer together.

I’ve met a lot of great people in my travels and my followers list is exceeding 300 people. I’ve spent a lot of money and bounced around a bunch but it has been worth it to be a part of the communities that I have been.

Waffle.3748:

-snip-

It’s nice that you’re keeping tabs on me in game and all, but that wasn’t the fight I was talking about.

You don’t “use them well” outside of zergs. That is exactly why I went out of my way to point it out.

I’ve stated how I feel and am familiar enough with your reasoning to know that the conversation won’t go any where constructive. Thanks for trying to validate yourself, though.

Waffle.3748:

-snip-

No, Guardians and Eles are going to be worse targets, specifically with your group, because your Eles especially, are full bunker. Necros die to focus fire, I know, I killed one of yours repeatedly last night with a friend.

Your guild was getting farmed by pugs of even numbers last night out front of SMC so again no, throwing bodies at you isn’t the way to do it unless the group is co-ordinated. But also yes to a point because eventually there will be just too many for you to handle and that’s by no fault of your own.

It’s not that I don’t like you. It’s that your composition is unfun to play against and thus I actively avoid doing so as often as I can. I feel that it’s necessary people understand your group isn’t gifted with unholy talent because it will spawn copy cats and the less guilds like yours, the better. I don’t make personal attacks over a video game, I’m not that immature and I’ve got nothing against you as a person. As a player, however, it may be a different story.

So is no one upset about this but me?

A couple patches ago, they nerfed Pink Moa so that instead of three 1 second dazes, it now only applies one 2 second daze.

I don’t recall seeing any threads about this and as someone who, before the change, almost exclusively used Pink Moa in WvW and PvE, this kinda kittened me off.

Straegen.2938:

Necros in skirmish are focused because they are flat out dangerous at scale. They are one of the few classes that can drop a terrifying amount of condi and basically annihilate five plus targets at a time. Ask tRex how souped up a skirmish team can be with one or more as an anchor.

Necros in 1v1 are too easily kited to death. Guardians used to have the same problem then HoT and DH fixed that problem. If Necros had the Guardian teleport and leap they would be fearsome.

The only reason it works for tRex is because most people don’t know how to deal with it.

Epidemic has a radius of 600 and Necromancers have a 7 – 10 second cooldown on Shroud entry. Spreading out so that Epi doesn’t hit everyone and ranged focusing the Necro’s when they drop Shroud is an easy way to beat them in smaller scale. Unfortunately, they have the upper hand when they’re against a larger group because most zergs will have too many players to spread out effectively, making Epi an easy strategy to exploit. So they’re actually at more of an advantage when they’re against greater numbers. Which again, is why I insist that this guild is not as skilled as some like to believe. I also play a condition Necro and there’s nothing complicated about Epi bouncing.

And before Waffle comes in breaking down my post, I have no qualms with the guild. I’m simply trying to debunk the fact that the fame is undeserved.

The idea I had that I had posted here in my rework ideas thread is that you “gain 2% Life Force for every condition applied to you.”

I feel this would work nicely during times you’re being trained down by large groups and getting a heap of conditions stacked on you. It would also work nicely in tandem with Corruption skills, allowing you to feed your Shroud.

I’m going to assume this is directed at Maguuma because I’ve seen our groups do this a lot on the tactivators in SMC.

While I agree it’s a little cheap, I also agree with the others here, kitten tactivators.