Guild Wars 2

tl;dr

Nothing’s changing soon, we’ve been trying for 2 years and have been unable to balance our own game. Sorry! But please don’t think we don’t care, because we really do, you just can’t tell if you judge us on our work or announced changes!

We’re not mobile and we’re not stable.

In a game where you must be one or the other to survive spikes and trains, this sort of sucks.

Just in case a dev ever stops by.

Rules: 3 changes per player, specific to necro (I.e. no changes to condition logic) and keep it balanced and civil.

Mine:

1. Lichform is reduced to 75% of current height. Stupid piercing bolts keep passing over intermediate targets.

2. Flesh wurm is summoned where you are: range is similar to mes portal and blast finisher is at your location when you cast recall

3. Spectral Walk base duration increased to 14s. LF generation halved.

4 zerker daggermancer with 1 cond speed runs.

All MM speedruns.

Dunno if you can talk about them, but they’d be fun to watch.

mulzi.8273:

you must be new to anet games. By bringing this to their attention, all that will happen is they will make the underwater LB the same as on land version. all under the pretense of balancing of course. No way they’d make the other stronger…

Actually lol’d.

Even if they don’t add the cond transfer (which is awesomely OP) the recast reduction would go a long way to making us more viable.

It’s rad that underwater abilities are different, but…

Is there anyone who knows why our underwater lifeblast is so much insanely better than our land life blast?

It’s just depressing. Underwater combat is dreadful, but… Can we make a case to the devs to give us the same primary attack in DS on dry land?

Hrm.

I’ve played several builds which are very similar – in fact, I’m pretty confident I’ve seen at least the abilities (WoP, SA and SW) combined with x/4/x/0/6 mentioned in a fairly well respected build not os long ago. Can’t find the fecker though.

Anyway, some points to note:

7s on DS is great, but you may prefer to run out of LF each time instead. That way the cooldown is zero and it frees up the trait slot for LF gain on staff mark or piercing LB.

I tend to prefer builds which work in WvW/tPvP, and with piercing LB this actually does OK in WvW.

Lots of people knock Deathly Perception, and in ordinary circumstances I’d be inclined to agree. However. it’s made for this build. With a 75% crit rate, hitting 5 targets 9 times and Vital Persistence, it does pretty well at regenerating LF. I would still probably pick weakening shroud… unless you switch to Plague for point holding, in which case Chilling Darkness is a must.

Holl.3109:

Rym.1469:

Life Blast cast time is 1.5 second, affercast is not listed. Poor choice for Sigil of Might I’d say, it’s better with more frequent hitting skills.

Take new Strenght Runes if you have enough money.

Affercast? Skill description days 1 sec, and when I compare might of first lb hit (15 sec) and of second lb hit, it disappears exactly after 1 second….
And I have 4 frequent hitting skills; life siphon, life transfer, tainted shackles and well of suffering. Life transfer gets you 3 stacks, tainted shackles also, life siphon 2 or 3 and we’ll of suffering can get you around 5 stacks.

Aftercast on LB is indeed 0.5s.

You can prove this very easily, just get the might for 15s on LB, point at a boss and fire it for 15s. You’ll have 10 stacks after 15 seconds, and it’ll never go higher unless the might duration is boosted or you have procs from additional sources.

If ANet don’t want to give our pets hunter-esque commands, then give us just an “attack” button and leave it at that.

I suspect the AI issues with minions run deeper than that, but it would be a great start.

Hi.

So I’ve been experimenting with builds using Cleric gear for the first time. Ideally I’d like to find a config which works reasonably well in WvW and in PvE; i.e. gets bags in WvW and doesn’t hold up the party in PvE.

To this end, I’ve tried wells and minions; I’ve got a few questions.

- Fetid Consumption – does this trait actually work? Freshly summoned Bone Minions should be idea candidates, but in testing they don’t remove conditions after the 10s cooldown. In fact, it’s buggy as heck.

- Minion AI – are ANet even pretending to take this seriously any more?

- What runes do you use? I’ve had great fun with Ogre/MM, but I guess I should be consdiering Water/Monk.

And lastly, if anyone can hook me up with a source for Tribal skins, that’d be amazin. Can’t find the feckers.

This should just be rebadged as a feature now.

Lets save ourselves the stress of asking for a fixn

I’m not sure which outcome would surprise me more:

1) Is declared feature

2) Claims will fix “soon”, fixes in 3 months

The one I’m pretty certain we’ll actually get however is:

3) Necros ignored

shrug well, I’ll bump this the way I bumped the reddit thread, but I expect nothing and will almost certainly not be dissapointed.

Developer callout. Oh dear.

It’d be a risky thing if anyone, even the mods, read this forum >.<

Bumping despite great futility.

Spectral Attunement is non-optional IMO, so I’m currently using 20/20/0/0/30.

Chill of Death procs with Lichform and valk are hilarious…

Really can’t decide on runes. If Svanir didn’t glitch out after each death I’d go with them (that 5s freeze, mmmhmmm). I’m currenly using Ogre, but there’s got to be an interesting set which doesn’t bug out after death. I’ve just not found it yet.

Also – I’ve gone with piercing LB instead of 20% CD reduction. I’m not sure how it’s working just yet – the vuln helps the team obvs, but the nice thing is unless someone dodges they can’t just run back into the zerg and hide/hide behind a pet/behind a teammate.

I mainly WvW, so piercing is better than CD (lots of LF from incidental deaths). In sPvP, I think the 20% cooldown is more important.

I like the idea of Deathly Shivers, but the low application rate and the fact you have to go 20 points deep into Death Magic (which has 2 junk minor traits for LB builds) sucks too much.

Fun fact – you’ll do more damage with wells while in lich form than in DS with Deadly Perception.

Interesting – I’ve been experimenting with a few similar builds myseld (0/15/25/0/30 etc).

A few things – I currently think Deathly Shivers to be horribly UP relative to putting those 10 points in SR. +50% crit is huge, especially in sol/valk gear.

I mean, if you hit for 10k, and have 10 stacks of vuln on a target, that’s 1k bonus.

If you hit for 10k, and have 50% crit and 50% base plus 50% valk crit makes a 5k bonus.

Extra uptime in DS without DS isn’t wasted, it’s more time to build might stacks and more time your health isn’t taking damage. I’d actually argue that time in DS where you’re not chucking out +70% (30 SR plus 15 Curses) crit chance damage is the actually wasted time.

How many entrances are there?

I’ve 4 so far, making for a total of 2 tunnels.

This kitten, like leeching, is impossible to balance properly, and frankly I’d rather they spent their energies on the problems we have as a class which actually stand a chance of being resolved.

Each time we see leech/vamp changes in the patch notes I wince.

Wishlist:

- Spectral walk default 10s duration, 15s with trait.

- Remove Dumbfire. Replace with a power-centric trait (AoE bite on dagger 1 attack 3 perhaps). WE DO NOT WANT OR NEED BURNING.

- Change 25pt Spite to proc at 40% health. Max 1 stacks/s, duration 15s.

- 6 stack vuln/3s for Deathly Shivers. Deathly Shivers now has an animation and AoE circle marker.

- Cast time for WoP is now instant. Does not grant 1s stability.

- Cast time for Summon Flesh Wurm is now instant.

- 25pt Curses trait now gives 1% more condition damage for each condition you are suffering.

- Death Shroud no longer locks out abilties after exiting.

- Can see cooldown timers in Death Shroud.

- Axe 3 is blast finisher, WH 4 is blast finisher, Life Blast is 20% projectile finisher.

But hey, I’m no developer.

Mmm.

25 pts in DM gets you 10% T as P, which with a 2k T character is 200 P, or… about 20 points in Spite.

Still trying to work out how to exploit this to the max… I used to run 30/15/25/0/0, thinking about doing it again.

LOL.

Don’t you guys learn?

SWITCH WEAPONS IN DS IT’S PART OF THE CLASS META (an actal dev said this)

SWITCH WEAPONS IS BROKEN WE’LL FIX IT (again…)

NAH SECOND THOUGHTS IT’S A FEATURE NAO (and finally…)

FLESH GOLEM HAS NO SWIM ANIMATION NO WORRIES GUYS IT’LL BE OK

ACTUALLY SWIM ANIMATIONS ARE HARD NO FLESH GOLEM IN WATER KK

WORKIN ON STOPPIN PETS FROM DESUMMON DURIN LICH/PLAGUE DON’T WORRY GUYS

ACTUALLY IT’S A FEATURE

DOWNED STATE IS FINE YOU NOOBS L2P LOL

OH WAIT RIGHT NO I SEE WAT U MENT I FIX NAO

NAO TAKES 3 MONTHS

OH GUISE YOU HAF 2 WAYS TO SURVIVE INFINITE FALLING AND WHAT IS FUNCTIONALLY ANOTHER BLOCK EVERY 10s IN EXCHANGE FOR YOUR LIFE FORCE?

LOL JK NOW U HAF 1 WAY TO SURVIVE INFINITE FALLING AND BTW DUNT COUNT ON DS TO SAV U FROM OVERKILL LOL

WAT GUISE U FEEL BALANCED? NPS GUISE HAF DUMBFIRE

OH WAIT NOW U HAF DUMBFIRE UR OTHER TRAITS ARE OP SO WE NERF K LOL

WAT U MEAN VAMP TRAITS ARE IRRELEVANT EVEN WHEN TRAITED AND MAXED KK LOL WE FIX

SEE IT FIXED U DO 15 MOAR LEECH NAO YOU HAPPY WE HAPPY LOL JK

VAMP TO POWERFUL LOL DUN WURRY WE FIX LOL KK

Honestly, you’d have to be learning-impaired to regard the balance and development of this class as anything but hilarious. It’s like watching a toddler using a ball peen hammer to fix a spilt yoghurt.

They did? Holy smokes. Jimminy cricket!

Sweet jesus. If anyone from ANet reads this, PLEASE fix these kitten able rune bugs before your big “rune balance patch”. It’s killing me – the interesting builds I want to experiment with don’t bloody work.

Sigh.

So, after death the following runes cease to function correctly:

Vampirism
Scavenging
Svanir

Anyone know if/when ANet will fix this, and if they’re aware of it? Confimred in WvW and PvE.

OK, so I’m messing around with a new necro (Mad Skullz, feel free to say hi). I’m using soldier gear (cos like, it’s teh pimpingest) and I’m doing some work to try and understand which runes/build to use.

Toughness and power

Power and tough/vit

RotV are my favourite runeset, despite the requirement to strip and re-gear after each death to reset the 2, 4 and 6 rune bonus. That 3s mistform can often bridge the gap into another DS. Svanir serves a similar function, but is much, much stronger (5s is a lot better than 3s).

So – +240 power (for the power build), or +400 toughness for the toughness build? Though the power build also has Close to Death, 400 toughness does insane things in WvW. Also the Svanir runes… phew. A last ditch DS is amazing.

I was going to go with 100p/70t food but it’s like 75s a go

Levelling an asura necro – nope. Happens at all levels.

Levelling an asura necro – nope. Happens at all levels.

I use Dire armour so this is a welcome change.

Fixes are something that happens to other classes.

Can swap in dagger if you don’t like horn; or get banshee wail to support horn instead of spectral attunement.

Dire armour/gear with geomancy sigils, corruption sigil and malice when at max stacks. Scavenging runes.

30khp fully buffed, 2100 condition damage, kittenloads of toughness. Spectral attunement with horn and walk for mobility/escape, corrupt boon or epidemic (solo or group) and wall for all occasions (violates thieves).

Plague with chilling darkness is great fun.

Hi.

Anyone else noticed the leech on proc effect no longer kicks in once you’ve died? It requires a strip n re-gear to fix.

Is there an easier way to bypass this, and has anyone from ANet suggested it’s likely to get fixed one day?

Bloody annoying

Hi.

Anyone else noticed the leech on proc effect no longer kicks in once you’ve died? It requires a strip n re-gear to fix.

Is there an easier way to bypass this, and has anyone from ANet suggested it’s likely to get fixed one day?

Specifically my two favourite runesets, which require me to strip after death to reclaim the 2/4/6 set bonus.

I know Scavenger and Vampiric are affected…

Hey.

First up, Knight’s gear is actually about the same DPS as soldier gear. The only time you should consider Knight’s to be better than Soldier is if you have on crit procs or a very high crit damage and power from elsewhere.

Given that the DPS is likely to be the same or similar, you’re better off with Soldiers as the eHP is quite, quite insane – plus MM builds don’t generally have the on-crit procs or gear which would make Knight’s worth it.

JonPeters.5630:

jsduke.6537:

JonPeters.5630:

The point is this thing is unbounded. You can be hit a bunch of times and it keeps stacking up the might. Maybe the duration is a bit low, but with no cooldown this is a good interesting trait.

You can be hit a bunch of times… while <25% HP.

I can’t speak for other Necros, but if I get hit “a bunch of times” while <25%, it doesn’t matter how many stacks of Might I get because I just died.

Like I said, it works while in DS.

No.

I mean, yes, it does work while in DS, but no, this is not a fun or interesting trait. I have understood this functionality to be the case since launch, but it’s never once proven useful. Please, please, please… change this trait. Anything would be better. I’d even take one of the tediously unimaginative +100 power if x traits that we have in our other lines.

Just change it. Anything. Please?

Kitedyou.1720:

Regarding Terror…All I have to say is this is a LAWL that people think it is OP, I have tried it and don’t care for it. 2, maybe 3 ticks of 400ish dmg per tick…waste of a trait imo, even when there are other conditions running.

You may wish to try a condimancer and revisit that statement – I get ticks in the order of 1200. Short range DS fear is 3×1200, SW is 2×1200, Mark is 2×1200 etc.

Dear Jon,

Another thought – while you’re sorting out these balance things, could you give some time to to our underwater abilities?

Signet of Undeath, Enfeebling Blood and pet summon skills work underwater and use the above water animation. Animations are expensive and I totally understand sometimes designers need to compromise and use placeholders or prioritise things.

Wells do not work underwater. Presumably because the animation would look goofy, or because the ranged cast trait would be weird to use. However, I wouldn’t mind either if I could use wells underwater.

Please make a quick pass over these and re-enable PBAoE well casts in the water. Wells not working underwater makes a large part of the blood spec non-viable, as the moment your butt hits H2O your traits stop working. I don’t mind if the ranged cast function stops working, I’m just wanting to get my wells back.

Thanks!

Jon -

Terror probably needs to be grandmaster, and share a slot with Dumbfire. Pick between terror damage and burning.

In return, move Attunement to Adept, move Enfeebling blood to Master and then go from there.

Also, I’m not sure why you say “blood is fine”. It’s not fine. It’s still awful.

I’d like to see a different minor trait for every level of Death Magic. It’s a terrible tree unless you go all out in pets, and pets are laughable against anyone with half a braincell.

Hilariously inept balancing.

Another 2% power converted to healing? Most amusing.

Here’s a list of what would’ve made me care:

25 pt Spite trait set to 50%
Siphons changed to ~200hp heal, max 1 tick per second
Reanimator moved to a selectable trait replaced with anything at all
Protection of the Horde moved to a selectable trait, replaced with anything at all
25pt Curses trait changed to 10 cond damage per stack of bleed on target

etc.

As it is, our tree is a royal mess.

With full soldier gear and appropriate runes, fight for a while until you see them cleanse a bit, then root with dagger and drop WoC and spam dagger 1.

With other gear sets, you’re probably at least a little bit boned.

As Dire/Rabid, just stack up the AoE until they run or die.

RoA looks pathetic. 5 stacks of might? No thanks. -24% condition duration? Naaah. I’m a necro.

Sigil of Torment – can anyone confirm how many stacks?

I like the crystals… but…. probably far more expensive. Not sure really. Anyone else tried them? It’s oil, not a food, so it’ll stack with pizza…

OK, it’s patchy, but it happens everywhere. Interested in other people’s experiences – somtimes I can exit DS and have 6 or 7s before I can go back in. Untraited.

I honestly can’t replicate this.

And now it’s not doing it in WvW.

Anyone?

And WvW. But not open-world.

Siiiigh and lol

LOL Arenanet.

This is sPvP-only. Good work chaps! Usual standards of QA.

Hi.

So, found something interesting.

Previously, if you were in DS and left due to lack of LF after >10s, you could go back into DS immediately. Now, the timer doesn’t reset when you de-activate the ability.

This may mean that DS dancing builds just got a MASSIVE buff – with a lower CD, it should be easier to leave and re-enter.

(never ceases to amuse me that the least-trumpeted changes by ANet for this class seem to have the biggest impacts)