Guild Wars 2

Certain mesmer traits need to be nerfed. The PU build with tons of stealth/boons/unlimited clones is almost impossible to kill. At the very least, clones shouldnt fill you up with conditions when they die. If mesmers need a buff in other areas, I am okay with it.

Necro needs to have reliable siphoning without minions, and I agree about death traits.

Thief evades are not a problem to me, they would be free kills without evades, so if you want to nerf s/d evades then they would need more hp, armor, regen or something.

Diamond skin/automated response should not exist. I dont think ele damage should be nerfed.

I think the AE radius on a lot of skills for professions should be much smaller. The Warrior longbow fire field is so kitten big its kitten ridiculous. Trying to fight a bomb/grenade engi without giving up a point is absolutely futile, lower the radius on those bombs or add longer cooldowns. Buff engis in some other way.

I much prefer Knight’s. Higher armor, better damage, and Necro has high base Hp already.

Knight’s also allows you to run sigils like Blood or Fire.

Your ideas make sense, but I would still prefer it if they just boosted siphoning to a level that brought it in line with other professions self healing. I think they should revert the nerf to Bloodthirst, and see what that does.

More nerfs, no improvements to the class. No surprise here…

See you next month A-Net!

I wish it was more like the underwater version. Faster attacks, lower damage.

Sometimes in pvp since the attacks are so slow, targets with perma vigor can dodge like 2/3 blasts, and use other means to negate the rest. Its sad.

Durzlla.6295:

Stx.4857:

I am new to ranger so maybe this is a good topic for me to get advice about the build I made today in spvp.

I went 30/20/20 with Longbow/Greatsword, sigils of fire. I got both longbow traits, signet mastery(mainly for signet of stone), and -20% greatsword cooldowns.

I am using zerker amulet, with divinity runes. This gives me nice power, 48% crit before fury, and 2500 armor, 19000 HP, which isnt too shabby.

I mainly use signet of stone, signet of.. (the condition clear one), and protect me.

My goal with the build is to have two high power damage weapons, both with nice defensive skills(stealth, blocking, two cc’s), with lower cds on them, and mix high offense with some decent armor/hp and have protect me/sig of stone to bail me out of situations.

I have only played a handful of matches with it, and so far it seems my main glaring weakness is conditions… Other than my 60 second cd condition clear signet, I only have healing spring to clear condi’s, and it really makes me feel like I have no chance vs good Necro’s/mes/engies.

I was looking through the traits and it seems the only real way to get condition removal is to go 30 into vitality line, which would mess up my build so… yeah.

Every big condi burst skill is like any direct damage burst, you can deny the entire thing with a single dodge/evade, learn what they are, what to look for, and dodge it and you should have little to no issue vs them.

Also, keep in mind that you don’t wanna activate sig of renewal unless you REALLY need it because you lose the passive condi removal/10s when it’s on CD.

Btw, what pets are you using?

After looking at the pet skills I decided to use spider for double roots, and fern hound for regen boon since my build doesnt have any.

Most of the power ranger builds whether it is bow or melee seem to fail vs condition classes. At least that has been my experience.

I have played a Gs/sword/horn build that worked amazing vs anything except condition classes. And the current build I made is longbow/GS, and has great burst and great survival vs power but again fails against condi’s.

I am new to ranger so maybe this is a good topic for me to get advice about the build I made today in spvp.

I went 30/20/20 with Longbow/Greatsword, sigils of fire. I got both longbow traits, signet mastery(mainly for signet of stone), and -20% greatsword cooldowns.

I am using zerker amulet, with divinity runes. This gives me nice power, 48% crit before fury, and 2500 armor, 19000 HP, which isnt too shabby.

I mainly use signet of stone, signet of.. (the condition clear one), and protect me.

My goal with the build is to have two high power damage weapons, both with nice defensive skills(stealth, blocking, two cc’s), with lower cds on them, and mix high offense with some decent armor/hp and have protect me/sig of stone to bail me out of situations.

I have only played a handful of matches with it, and so far it seems my main glaring weakness is conditions… Other than my 60 second cd condition clear signet, I only have healing spring to clear condi’s, and it really makes me feel like I have no chance vs good Necro’s/mes/engies.

I was looking through the traits and it seems the only real way to get condition removal is to go 30 into vitality line, which would mess up my build so… yeah.

Pin Down was so strong, any nerf it receives would be justified.

Please continue to mock that other thread…

But let me just slip in here and point out that Warriors also have superior ‘waterspeed’ due to the range on that whirl attack they have.

It isn’t balanced.

They failed with the entire class balance system in this game. Since there is no trinity and every class can dps, damage output needs to be fairly balanced, and for the most part, this is true. But then they gave certain classes high base survival skills, and others need to gear/trait for it.

In PvP, the classes with lower base survival make up for it with either class mechanics like stealth, or a higher number of defensive weapon skills/heals like ele and engi.

However in PvE, these class skills are not effective for survival, because they either dont work, or cripple your dps.

So in the end, heavies just bring it all, while softies just bring offense. They are also much easier to play, so that makes the issue even worse.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fQAQRBIhdG1IjWxe2m4G9eCY6B3e/dkijVmSB8oD-jUCBYgDimgAmwIQEBgZnFRjtNoIasabYaYCyqYJVIgyjBA-w

That is a pretty nice Vampire build for WvW. It doesn’t just rely on siphons for survival, it also gains a lot of sustain from spectral skills and using DS to soak damage.

This build uses high crit chance to proc as many heals as possible, while keeping decent regen uptime and solid damage.

You can use wells with this build if you want to, I personally choose not to because in my experience, even bad players wont sit in wells. Sometimes you can catch baddies in a root then drop a well on them but meh, I prefer the damage boost/instant pressure from signet of spite.

A single full channel from dagger #2 with this build assuming you have fury up will heal you for a ton, it almost feels like a second heal.

I like it. I would use Clerics Amulet if I were you, and drop one of the longer CD shouts for signet of the wild for more regen.

Poxheart.2845:

This is the set up I’ve been working toward for a power/DS based roaming build:
http://en.gw2skills.net/editor/?fQAQRBHbdG2IjW4e1mvG9eCBSx7VLRKQmlh6x6gOfIA-j0CBYfBCbZZ0kFBiKYZ0JPFRjtMsIasabYqYER1WzJycGzgWoWIABjBA-w

I haven’t had much time to test it out lately, but the few times I have went OK. I may change up the off hand weapon to dagger warhorn (I like the sigil of ice on the dagger I saw somebody has on their build). I’ll also probably switch up the utilities. I’m using spectral walk & wurm for the mobility.

The only thing I would change about this is full Traveler runes(with horn/walk its not necessary, especially with traited horn). Pretty solid build though, I like it.

I consider it more of a PvE trait, in PvP DS cd reduction, spectral cd reduction, or DS skills cd reduction are all superior.

I suppose if you are never being targetted and are just pelting people with Lifeblast from the back lines, this trait could be good, but then your lifeblasts wouldnt hit very hard from that range.

The build in my sig is very powerful for 1v1 or 1v2 situations. However, it can get really boring to play(I have already gone back to my old siphon build).

You basically sit in DS and spam 1, gaining might, and loading up your target with vulnerability. You can take a beating in DS with the high armor.

When not in DS, you focus on healing and regaining life force. Both Axe and Dagger can do this, but I prefer dagger. Staff is nice for AE, perma regen, and other utility.

A couple things to note. You should always active either spectral armor, spectral walk, or locust swarm before entering DS.. this way you can continue gaining lifeforce while you sit in DS and enemy attacks are negated. Another tip is that leaving DS voluntarily will put it on cooldown, but running out of lifeforce will not. So you can sit in DS taking damage, then get knocked out, activate spectral armor, and hop back in without having to wait.

30/25/0/15 better than 20/25/0/25?

As far as which professions need the most player skill to succeed with, thief is already towards the top, probably second to eles, so I see no reason why they should be harder to play.

With that said, it would make sense to me if a thief became revealed after striking a blocking target.

I have read everything you posted, and no matter how you say it, what you are trying to do is nerf stealth, which in turn will nerf thieves. The reason you want to do this, is because you don’t like to fight against stealthers. You then take this opinion of yours(even if it may be an opinion shared by many), and use it as a reason to lobby for nerfing stealth, even though thieves are not overpowered.

As has been pointed out by others, stealth has counters. There is no logical reason why there needs to be hard counters added to the game, not when thieves have such low HP/armor, and rely on stealth for condition cleanses/regen.

If you don’t build around countering a thief, that is your choice. Same as choosing to not build for condition cleanses, or choosing not to build for stability so that Hammer warriors don’t rock you.

The main reason I am against nerfing stealth is simply because thieves aren’t overpowered. You can make all these arguments about changing stealth into something different but the fact is A-Net will not take the time to overhaul something like that, so if you want to nerf stealth, thieves would need to be compensated with other methods of condition cleansing and healing, which wont happen. Then theres the little thing called Shadow Arts, an entire trait line devoted to stealth. What should we do with that? Just forget it exists.

The bottom line is, in every single MMO, people complain about stealth. It happens every time. People just hate stealth classes, thats it. Just because something is annoying to fight against is NOT a reason to nerf it. The thief class is meant to be slippery and mobile, thats why they have a tiny HP pool and lower armor. Thats just the way it is.

Stillshade.7634:

For every other class gaining survivability means sacrificing damage.
Relying on stealth for survivability does not hinder damage output and instead helps it.

For thieves to deal such high damage they need to be in zerker gear which means 11k HP and no armor. Even balanced thief builds only have like 15k HP and 2400 armor(these deal significantly less damage). Stealth is great, but when you can die in one or two hits, or just random AE damage, you start to see why it is so necessary to have it.

If you want a class that doesn’t need to make trade-offs, look to the Warrior. Highest baseline HP, armor, crazy HP regen, and can keep up might and fury all the time. Most classes need to give up zerker and go almost full soldier to get what Warriors start with.

Stillshade.7634:

Stx.4857:

Stillshade.7634:

Stx.4857:

MonMalthias.4763:

Thief just isn’t fun to play against; and the first step to make it so is to make Stealth interact more with the other classes.

Okay, but see this is just an opinion. I personally think thieves are fun to play against, because they are so kitten squishy. Yes it sucks when they escape, but that is part of their class… they are shady kittens.

Every class has mechanics that are not fun to fight against. I find it very unfun that Guardians can chain aegis with immunities, blinds, dodges, and negate tons of my attacks. I find it very unfun that Warriors can stun and knock me down every few seconds. I find it very unfun that Engineers can fart out bombs and grenades every few seconds and kill me without even targetting me as long as I try to contest a point.

Except all those mechanics can be countered and played against. Stealth cannot be countered which is the topic of this post and that stands true.

Blatantly false statement. You can counter Shadow Refuge, you can counter cloak and dagger, you can counter black powder>Heartseeker spam.

The only ways a thief can stealth with no way to stop him is with blinding powder(40 sec cd), or with a trait that auto stealths. If you are referring to these methods as having no counters, then I would also argue that many other professions have no counters to their defense mechanisms because you cannot prevent them from casting them.

Sometimes you just cant stop a thief from stealthing, sometimes you just cant stop a Guardian from healing to full, life sucks.

This has been discussed and those are only soft counters. There is nothing that truly works against stealth except mindless aoe which is unreliable.

Oh so now stealth has soft counters instead of no counters? I see…

I am not sure what you people want. I mean I can’t stop a Guardian from going immune to damage and healing, I can’t stop an engie from swapping kits, or an ele from swapping attunements. I can’t stop a Necro from entering Deathshroud, or a Mesmer from popping out clones. Why is it so necessary to hardcounter a thief from going into stealth? Just because its annoying to fight against? Because thieves escape from combat easier? Great reasons.

Stillshade.7634:

Stx.4857:

MonMalthias.4763:

Thief just isn’t fun to play against; and the first step to make it so is to make Stealth interact more with the other classes.

Okay, but see this is just an opinion. I personally think thieves are fun to play against, because they are so kitten squishy. Yes it sucks when they escape, but that is part of their class… they are shady kittens.

Every class has mechanics that are not fun to fight against. I find it very unfun that Guardians can chain aegis with immunities, blinds, dodges, and negate tons of my attacks. I find it very unfun that Warriors can stun and knock me down every few seconds. I find it very unfun that Engineers can fart out bombs and grenades every few seconds and kill me without even targetting me as long as I try to contest a point.

Except all those mechanics can be countered and played against. Stealth cannot be countered which is the topic of this post and that stands true.

Blatantly false statement. You can counter Shadow Refuge, you can counter cloak and dagger, you can counter black powder>Heartseeker spam.

The only ways a thief can stealth with no way to stop him is with blinding powder(40 sec cd), or with a trait that auto stealths. If you are referring to these methods as having no counters, then I would also argue that many other professions have no counters to their defense mechanisms because you cannot prevent them from casting them.

Sometimes you just cant stop a thief from stealthing, sometimes you just cant stop a Guardian from healing to full, life sucks.

MonMalthias.4763:

Thief just isn’t fun to play against; and the first step to make it so is to make Stealth interact more with the other classes.

Okay, but see this is just an opinion. I personally think thieves are fun to play against, because they are so kitten squishy. Yes it sucks when they escape, but that is part of their class… they are shady kittens.

Every class has mechanics that are not fun to fight against. I find it very unfun that Guardians can chain aegis with immunities, blinds, dodges, and negate tons of my attacks. I find it very unfun that Warriors can stun and knock me down every few seconds. I find it very unfun that Engineers can fart out bombs and grenades every few seconds and kill me without even targetting me as long as I try to contest a point.

Or better yet, change it in all avenues of the game so that precision is not the main stat, either power or condition damage should be.

They just need to change the values on the amulet. I am at work so I cant remember exactly what it is, but I know that precision is waaaay too high and condition damage and power are way too low. If they just adjusted it to be more in line with pve rampagers gear, it would go a long way.

If they add a new Necro weapon, I would want it to have a cleave auto attack, and fit the theme of attrition/anti mobility. I want a Scythe, but since they probably wont add that, a Greatsword would suffice.

1) Auto Chain, last strike has a longer cast with a lifesteal.
2) Whirl attack, grants lifeforce.
3) Ground targetted frontal attack, rips boons and applies poison.
4) Pull attack, single target, cripples.
5) Channeled AE attack, roots the Necro, damages and applies blind and weakness with every pulse.

Gallrvaghn.4921:

Stx.4857:

I will never understand the crying over stealth. Thieves are so squishy. Without stealth they would be free kills.

With stealth they roam around picking targets and racking up free kills. There’s a reason almost all roamers are thieves and use zerker gear. Stealth is the ultimate defense mechanism.

I disagree. When I roam in small groups of five or less, thieves are probably the easiest profession to kill. They usually only have one or maybe two stunbreakers, and then one good CC and they are down. Sometimes you dont even need to CC them to kill them if they are zerkers, just high damage AE attacks and the only way for them to escape is to blow shadowstep(50 sec cd).

Yes zerker thief burst is high, but a lot of the time it is avoidable, and your counterattack will hurt them even more. If you are just dying from one or two hits then I don’t know what to tell you… it has never really been an issue for me.

Usually if a thief kills me, I know that I messed up and he outplayed me. Most thieves I eat for breakfast and still have enough cooldowns up for lunch and dinner.

Let me also say that I totally agree that stealth in this game is horribly designed. I just don’t agree with all the crying over it, because stealth is a thiefs only life support in large battles. Evade builds are more suited to 1v1 or smaller fights.

rogerwilko.6895:

Bhawb.7408:

snip
is very selfish
snip

This is my main gripe with the necro prof.

The thing is, if we were capable of dealing higher damage than other professions, being a selfish class would be okay, but since we deal average damage, its just unacceptable. I think its fine to be brought just for damage, if that is what your class is good at. I really wish they would buff power necro damage, its not like were tearing it up in competative pvp.

I believe it is 20/25/0/0/25. I thought 30/25/0/0/15 would still be the best, but I think its very close and the first one is easier to get the most out of.

Personally, I am wondering how much of a dps loss it is to go 20/25/0/25/0 for a little group support. Transfusion/AE regen is kind of nice, but its probably not worth the damage loss.

Condition specs need to be a viable option for PvE, but it wouldnt be fair if they matched power damage while also keeping their higher toughness.

My solution would be to 1) Remove Bleed cap on bosses and world bosses, and also allow poison and burning to stack on bosses. 2) Remove the 100% duration cap on conditions. 3) Add armor to the game with Condition Damage, Cond. Duration, Precision.

In pvp, conditions dont need a damage buff, so if someone was wearing this full condition damage gear, they would be squishy as a trade-off.

I wish they actually had a story like that planned out.

Its painfully obvious that they are making up this crappy character’s plotline as it goes.

Yeah and Power Necromancers are countered by a number of Power Specs 1v1.

Condition control is like the only unique thing Necro’s have going for them, lets not mess that up.

I will never understand the crying over stealth. Thieves are so squishy. Without stealth they would be free kills.

Whenever a thief attacks me on my Necro I just pop DS, which weakens him, bleeds him, hits him with damage… I can then insta fear him, or root him, or if he stealths again I can spam an AE damage attack.

Seriously, just having locust swarm up and auto attacking with dagger is enough to drop most thieves.

I am not saying thieves arent powerful, they can put out some great burst. But the thing is, they are so squishy. It takes a lot of skill to own people with a thief, it is a high risk high reward profession… not like a warrior, necro, or guardian.

How many MM Necro’s are there in the high level PvP scene?

How many Warriors are there?

Warrior is a very passive profession as well so… yeah. Not sure how this complaint is legitimate.

Necro can deal good damage, but the popular dungeon classes can match that damage while also bringing useful utility like reflects, group boons, stability, water fields, fire fields, etc.

Even rangers, who are also considered one of the ‘bad’ dungeon professions, can bring unique buffs to their party via spotter and frost spirit.

We have nothing to bring whatsoever. Basically all we have is conditions, but other professions bring those too, so yeah.

Just because you can run all the PvE in this game with a Necro doesn’t mean the class is on equal footing with the others.

I use Ogre, Melandru, or Lyssa.

Yes we all know Warriors have it all. But please don’t ask for Guardians to be buffed up to that level, they are fine how they are.

Guardians are probably the most needed profession for every aspect of the game. Why complain?

They should have never made the HP disparities so huge. It shouldnt be 11k, 16k, 18k… it should be more like 14k, 16k, 18k. Or hell, even 16k, 17k, 18k.

The balance in this game is worse than WoW. There is only one game mode for pvp. Thief is a high risk high reward class in pvp, you might like it.

Arvid.3829:

Bhawb.7408:

This skill is objectively worse than every other skill we have in every situation in an optimized build.

I call kittens, I found at least one super niche scenario in which the skill is more useful than other heals : when you’re doing the molten buckets in dredge fractal, it adds some damage and some healing for your party when you shouldn’t be needing much healing yourself anyway. (Wish I knew if the damage part benefits from his vulnerability, I’m going to guess ‘no’ though…)

In the time it takes to cast this heal, you could have dealt higher damage with a normal rotation. This heal is literally useless.

Zanshin.5379:

The problem with HS is that it gives the warrior the ability to tank AND deal heavy damage at the same time. When you want to tank with a guardian, you have to sacrifice your damage. It should be the same for the warrior.

But as Paulie said, we know that for some reason the devs just love the warrior (and couldn’t care less about the guardian). Even if they nerf HS, I don’t think it’s gonna be a big nerf.

Wait wait wait. You think that A-Net doesn’t care about Guardians?

Guardians are probably the single most wanted profession, for all parts of the game. In PvE, they bring irreplaceable group support(while also being a strong dps). They single handedly keep groups alive with stability, aegis, protection, regen, all of it. Same in WvW.

Warriors have no issues with conditions…

Honestly the only classes that can make a legit complaint about conditions are Mesmer, and Engi/Ranger(I am not too familiar with these classes, so maybe I am wrong).

Even so, there are plenty of group wide condition cleanses in the game, use them.

A-Net should focus on buffing conditions in PvE to be more viable. Removing the caps on bosses and removing the 100% duration cap would be a good place to start.

rohnis.2715:

hey,
his build is amazing, in my opinion because it supports necros “passive” advantages. The Barb amulet increases the total amount of vitality and because necro has the highest health pool u get a lot of HP and life force. Because LF acts like HP u have a total amount of hp of around 40k HP. U also deal alot of damage and u have nice sustain because u have alot of hp.

Your sustain is actually fairly low, because Barbarian Amulet has low power and no crit damage. 1200-2000 Lifeblast crits are not great at all.

I don’t want to start another argument.. but if you use soldiers amulet with zerker jewel, you gain more effective health, and more damage as well.

I would rather they get rid of stability stomping, immunity stomping, stealth stomping, etc. Why even have a downed state if you have no options at all to stop a stomp?

If that happened, I could see cutting stomp time down by 30% or so.

Muchacho.2390:

Actually removing the icd of the passive could make bunker necros impossble to kill, if you keep those numbers ofc. And Anet fears an unkillable Necro so i doubt they will do it.

No more unkillable than full regen Warriors…

I mean I know that Warriors are the golden children, but I mean if they can do it why shouldn’t we be able to?

As for Signet of Craparism, if they simply removed the ICD it would be useful. High risk high reward heal, great for promoting skillful play from the necro and the opponent.

Compare grandmaster minor traits from other professions… 10% damage boost when endurance is not full, 10% damage bonus when target has a bleed(lol), 1% damage bonus for every initiative(15% damage boost!), 5% damage while having a boon, 10% damage while target is burning.

I mean even if you don’t want to give power Necro’s more damage(I don’t see why not, they could use a boost in pvp and pve), there are lots of other GM minors that are at least useful.

Siphoned Power may as well be a blank slot. Literally, it does nothing for you. The ONLY use this trait has, is if you are taken below 25% health and you have full lifeforce, pop into DS and are still taking hits… THEN you can make use of all that might you gain… for 5 seconds… wait what?

Such a terrible trait.

Siphoned Power is a contender for worst minor trait in the game. And its a grandmaster trait… pitiful A-Net, just pitiful.

Proper use of Aegis is one of the only ways to tell a good Guardian from mediocre ones.

No to this idea.

Is berserker amulet not ‘super strong’ in certain setups? What about soldiers? Isn’t being good for specific trait setups better than being useless in general?

Warriors have a weakness? Hah, good one.

Warriors aren’t weak to ranged unless they are some funky build that only uses hammer/mace/shield or something. Sword/GS can close gaps clearing roots/snares, and longbow/rifle deal great ranged damage.