What should a Necromancer bring the group? Boon remove and weaken enemys with vulnerability so the full dps classes deal more dmg. Necros got a high surviavability so the dont need the highest dps. But increase others dps with 25 stacks vulnerability fits to their playstyle and makes them a must have if the other classes get less access to vulnerability.
Necromancers 25 stacks vulnerability like ps are needed for 25 stacks might. Simple change with high impact.
Unfortunately, your “theme” means nothing in pvp. 25 stacks of vulnerability? Gone with 1 skill. And guess what, you’ll die before you can put those stacks back on since you’re on cooldowns.
Necros have high survivability? In what world? 0 stability. 0 invulnerability. 0 damage mitigation. 0 blocks. 0 evades (other than energy). What, since we have a second health bar which we need to build up? Yea, go see how quickly a guard will burn you down with your 2 health bars.
Two health bars is a dumb mechanic since as soon as you start to lose, you’re doomed. All the effective attacks AND the only mobility (in the case of Reaper) depend upon the second health bar being available and since it’s not available, the Necro always dies.
So enemies just kite around and ping down health bar #1 and then move in to wipe out the worthless vanilla Necro.
Nobody at Anet loves WvW like Grouch loved PvP. That’s what we need, a WvW Grouch, but taller.
Are Arenanet unwilling/unable to totally rework abilities or just in number tweaking mode?
Does it take the resources of an expansion budget to totally rework an ability?
Irenio CalmonHuang
Game Designer
We’re able, but it is a question of time tradeoffs.
- Tweaking something requires quite a bit of testing to see that it will not have dangerous consequences.
- Re-working something entirely requires even more testing for those dangerous consequences as well as functionality and potential bugs.
If it is needed and we have the time resource then we’ll do a re-work, but we’ll use tweaks when they’re deemed sufficient.
Personally, I’m super super disappointed in Arenanet after so many years of failing to address huge problems with the combat system and touting it around as the best in the genre. I find it laughable that they even host tournaments of this rubbish!
Nobody at Anet loves WvW like Grouch loved PvP. That’s what we need, a WvW Grouch, but taller.
GS Necro is lying on the floor, taking a kicking from all the other classes. Still.
That’s funny, mine’s a GS/Staff chill/condimancer, and I’m soloing champs all day. Kicking out 3~4k crits in AA, while dishing out 14~16k condi damage to boot.
I, too, wipe the floor with NPCs.
… so does every other class.
Nobody at Anet loves WvW like Grouch loved PvP. That’s what we need, a WvW Grouch, but taller.
Am i the only one? I want to love the class but every time i go into pvp and realize my class is the worst one here i just get frustrated (especially since its basically all guards). No matter how good i play, eventually it wont matter due to the difference in class quality.
You’re not the only one
Anet don’t fix necro because Karl McLain doesn’t main it
Come on AmazonGames, you know you want him!
Nobody at Anet loves WvW like Grouch loved PvP. That’s what we need, a WvW Grouch, but taller.
i’m surprised that anyone doesn’t use combos like second nature.
guess that’s the engineer in me talking.
but honestly use them, they rock.
yes,its mch harder to coordinate finishers without teamspeak in a pug. but in an actual 5 man party it’s really easy. just call the field, then people finish it. your team should already know you have the field in you build & expect this.
using fields, primarily water can increase your teams survival by sooo much.
Several classes only have access to either seemingly weak/non-essential/unreliable finishers. Take a look at Necro finishers, Guardian finishers.
The whole combat system needs reviewing, we’ve had four years of lopsided favouritism in the form of finishers. I think Arenanet are too busy bodging random aspects of classes rather than taking a holistic approach.
Nobody at Anet loves WvW like Grouch loved PvP. That’s what we need, a WvW Grouch, but taller.
I think reapers have always been shunned when it comes to solo roaming in WvW.
Too little mobility, easily kited, out-ranged and out-damaged by a lot of builds.
The coming skill changes can fix this.
Make Reapers great again 2017.
Always stay near gates and friends! And whatever you do, don’t do PvP.
Nobody at Anet loves WvW like Grouch loved PvP. That’s what we need, a WvW Grouch, but taller.
Well, i really do not understand, so i am here asking and i hope some Anet guy will be so kind to give us an answer, there is any logical behind the current links?
How is possible that SFR got unlinked while FSP and Piken got linked?
I really got the feeling you guys link servers on purpose beacouse that is a nice way to force ppl to transfer rather than try to figure out a way to balance the ladder and bring fun (and bit of competition) back to WvW.
Think about it, really, beacouse gems are nice but ppl are getting bored.
What? Server balance was achieved in Wednesday’s patch, thus;
Being killed while outnumbered no longer grants any war score to the enemy team.
this is a huge thing that went largely unappreciated. i can now suicide charge into enemy siege if i need to.
Jolly good. I think it’s still borked because [SPECULATION AHEAD] only one side can be Outnumbered at a time, and it could be the other low-pop side that gets the buff [/SPECULATION].
Nobody at Anet loves WvW like Grouch loved PvP. That’s what we need, a WvW Grouch, but taller.
I don’t understand why fsp and piken square got a link and seafarer’s rest and deso didn’t?
Both piken and fsp are strong enough as is and were t1 (piken admittedly with link, but fsp without link). I know I don’t have access to wvw data or anything, maybe sfr/deso showed higher activity in the last weeks? but it seems like the links make very little sense.
Our goal with World Linking is good matches. This doesn’t necessarily mean that worlds in tier 4 are intended to be competitive with worlds in tier 1, but ideally every world in tier 4 should be competitive with the other worlds in tier 4 and likewise every world in tier 1 should be competitive with the other worlds in tier 1.
Which basicly means you are stuck in your tier because Anet will artificially keep you and the 2 other servers there.
Its pretty much the complete opposite of the original intent of WvW tiers. Anet are treating us like babies that cant handle defeat.
If you mean, “It is now logical to bandwagon transfer to T1 rather than try to work your server up the ladder, because the tiers are fixed”, then you’re right!
Nobody at Anet loves WvW like Grouch loved PvP. That’s what we need, a WvW Grouch, but taller.
I don’t understand why fsp and piken square got a link and seafarer’s rest and deso didn’t?
Both piken and fsp are strong enough as is and were t1 (piken admittedly with link, but fsp without link). I know I don’t have access to wvw data or anything, maybe sfr/deso showed higher activity in the last weeks? but it seems like the links make very little sense.
Our goal with World Linking is good matches. This doesn’t necessarily mean that worlds in tier 4 are intended to be competitive with worlds in tier 1, but ideally every world in tier 4 should be competitive with the other worlds in tier 4 and likewise every world in tier 1 should be competitive with the other worlds in tier 1.
Nobody at Anet loves WvW like Grouch loved PvP. That’s what we need, a WvW Grouch, but taller.
As an Engineer, I use combos all the time. In fact, I rely on them. And this change is actually a little buff to my Elixir Gun, which happens to have a light field and blast finisher, so I’m happy.
As an expert at combos, I would like to ask you (or another engineer) how easy would you say it is to use a combo while moving, and could a group of 10 people coordinate blasting a field while moving (called on teamspeak)?
Nobody at Anet loves WvW like Grouch loved PvP. That’s what we need, a WvW Grouch, but taller.
Elementalist
In this update, we’ve reduced quite a few recharges for many weapon and utility skills that felt too high in light of previous reductions to cooldown traits. With that said, we’re also looking to reduce the elementalist’s damage in high-level content, as this profession’s damage and utility mix currently crowds out other potential high-damage dealers.
Engineer
The goal for engineers in this update is to improve trait synergy, weapon usefulness, and kit purity of purpose. Both power and condition builds will be affected in this round of changes, with a focus on PvE group viability. Notable to this, the trait Pinpoint Distribution now grants a unique condition-damage bonus to allies around the engineer. The Flamethrower utility kit is now focused on burning and keeping that condition on your enemies.
Guardian
Improvements to underused base skills have been the general focus for the guardian in this patch, but we are also giving the dragonhunter specialization a little bit more counterplay in PvP scenarios. We’ve unsplit a few of the changes introduced this winter, taking either the more powerful option or compensating to a more powerful level than is available in most game modes.
Mesmer
The mesmer is receiving a few different additions and reworks. Time Warp is one of the select skills and traits in this update, which is being changed to affect ten targets. Also in this update, we are implementing initial attacks on several phantasm skills, allowing the mesmer to deliver a primary attack in addition to the summon in order to provide a bit more constant pressure on your targets.
Necromancer
One of the major goals for the necromancer during this update has been to improve the reaper’s greatsword weapon in all game modes, without blowing its power out in the ones where it was already good. In addition, we’ve also been looking to improve a few baseline utility abilities.
Ranger
The ranger will see a variety of changes during this update. Of particular note, we are reducing Grace of the Land’s damage bonus and reworking it so that it’s compatible with all Celestial Avatar abilities and affects ten allies around the druid. We hope this improves the value of a single druid in large-group scenarios. Many pet attacks have had usability and movement enhancements in an effort to improve general damage against moving targets. The greatsword has had a couple of improvements for better damage and pet synergy. Finally, a few underused (and even some meta) utility skills have undergone general quality-of-life improvements.
Revenant
In addition to bug fixes and quality-of-life changes, we’ve been looking to improve the support role for the revenant. Alacrity will now be available through the Salvation specialization line, allowing Ventari’s Tablet to project it at a constant rate. We’re excited to see it in play!
Thief
Quality-of-life improvements and PvP health have been our focus for the thief, mainly for daredevil. As such, we’ll be looking to reduce endurance from a few different areas to target survivability through evasion but also compensate for it a bit with extra utility and condition removals.
Warrior
Warrior’s banners are the final recipient for our target-increase update, with the unique enhancements from each banner increasing to ten. After that, we’ve mostly focused on improving weapon and utility effectiveness, with some significant increases to underutilized areas.
NO! This is not good enough.
The focus of EVERY balance patch should be BALANCE – Not arbitrary alterations to a randomly selected aspect of a class.
Example: I’m sick of my Necro being obliterated when the Berserker I was attacking just went invulnerable twice in a row and I lose the fight simply because my class has no invulnerabilities. It’s bullkitten and needs fixing sharpish.
The fact that Arenanet decided to ignore this sort of glaring and long known imbalance is why people are so very angry.
Nobody at Anet loves WvW like Grouch loved PvP. That’s what we need, a WvW Grouch, but taller.
I’m finding it even more difficult to survive than before the patch (which is not really surprising considering all the buffs for other classes, but there we have it)?
Nobody at Anet loves WvW like Grouch loved PvP. That’s what we need, a WvW Grouch, but taller.
Balance and skills
I think OriOri is right. They seem very thinly spread, and I suspect that this will lead to that disappointing decision we all dread. The one we don’t talk about, you know?
Nobody at Anet loves WvW like Grouch loved PvP. That’s what we need, a WvW Grouch, but taller.
90% of the time I play on EU, and have never seen a dev while playing. I occasionally play on my NA account, and have seen devs there 5-6 times. I’d say they mostly play on NA, or my timing is really extraordinary.
I was on GH in 2013. Some developers got zerged by Underworld in a GH/UW/FSP matchup. Here is a photo of that moment.
Attachments:
Nobody at Anet loves WvW like Grouch loved PvP. That’s what we need, a WvW Grouch, but taller.
Why do you play the class you do? wWhy do you like it?
At the moment, I main Reaper. I don’t like my class, but it’s the best one that’s available for me. Reaper allows me to use a slower, clunkier gameplay style than other classes. I always die to twitchy players, so it doesn’t help, but at least this class allows that type of play.
Nobody at Anet loves WvW like Grouch loved PvP. That’s what we need, a WvW Grouch, but taller.
Conditions are a viable source of damage, Orpheal. The sooner you and everyone else accept this truth, the happier you’ll be.
The problem is that condi damage is separate from power damage. Which of the two you use could be a valid part of class design. If done properly instead of randomly thrown at the game like we have it right now.
In fact, conditions as a whole are by far the weirdest of any MMO I’ve played, and I started with early EQ1. There’s nothing done well about them. Sorry to be that harsh devs.
I agree.
I’ve heard it said often that GW2 has the best combat system of any MMO. While I believe that this is probably true (because it’s not really saying much), my myriad complaints about the combat can be summarised as; The GW2 combat system is mediocre at best – it’s only redeeming feature being so good that it alone makes GW2 combat the best. That feature is Dodge.
Nobody at Anet loves WvW like Grouch loved PvP. That’s what we need, a WvW Grouch, but taller.
when game mechanics further incentivize stacking servers/time zones, and/or make it impossible for a smaller defending force to do anything meaningful in game, that is a serious problem.
29 points 1 day ago
The WvW team is currently working on Scoring Improvements Phase 2, which was determined in the last priority poll. This involves adding rewards to Skirmishes and improving the Skirmish UI. A goal for these scoring improvements is to give WvW players a reason to play and win WvW Skirmishes.
Population and bandwagoning issues are something the WvW team is constantly discussing and working on. Currently there are plans to help discourage bandwagoning coming with Phase 2, but we aren’t ready to announce details for everything in that system yet.
Nobody at Anet loves WvW like Grouch loved PvP. That’s what we need, a WvW Grouch, but taller.
How did you get “gave up implementing it after a few small patches” from “so we’re going to focus on ship-able pieces, even if that means we do some rework later”?
The quoted post is from 11 months ago. That’s how I have come to my conclusion.
They need a real longterm solution to fix how sparse/empty WvW has become due to people simply just leaving for T1/T2 every time.
Not to seem flippant, but T1/T2 aren’t empty. I guess that’s why solutions to lower tier problems are not being sought – simply because they never have. Do you remember why EotM was created? It was because people in T1/T2 whined about queues. The players on lower servers don’t matter to the creators – regarded as even lower than regular WvW players, they are seen as the red headed stepchildren of second class citizens.
I wasn’t saying T1/T2 are empty. However the constant funneling of people into those worlds is the problem. Anet needs to do something more than bandaids to fix it. World linking is the bandaid solution to a much bigger problem for the RvR game type.
I concur with you that it is a problem, but my point above is this;
because the players of T1/T2 don’t experience as much emptiness,
they don’t say it’s a problem,
and if T1/T2 aren’t complaining,
nothing will be done about it.
Nobody at Anet loves WvW like Grouch loved PvP. That’s what we need, a WvW Grouch, but taller.
I’m very happy that Anet is prepared to change the scoring. To be honest, I quite like 2-1-1, because of the potential for upsets, but it does seem to engender a, “we’ve no chance at first, so why try at all” resigned attitude rather than the more desirable, “go for first place!”.
This is, as ever, the result of terrible dominating stacked servers which nobody can/will do anything about. (Posted Feb 2017).
At this stage scoring changes do seem a lot like a deckchair rearrangement exercise.
Nobody at Anet loves WvW like Grouch loved PvP. That’s what we need, a WvW Grouch, but taller.
I dream of a patch with a long play-it-once story and a beautiful but pointless new zone. I dream of an outfit that doesn’t look right on any race. I dream of a glider with a theme of a raid.
When oh when will my dream come true?!
Nobody at Anet loves WvW like Grouch loved PvP. That’s what we need, a WvW Grouch, but taller.
Every aspect of GW2 is in the control of Anet. They have to think out the repercussions of their creations. Sometimes they get it wrong. It is testament to the strength of the core game at release that Anet were able to make so many errors since then and still have a reasonable (albeit now dwindling) playerbase.
Nobody at Anet loves WvW like Grouch loved PvP. That’s what we need, a WvW Grouch, but taller.
I’ve tried making Bone Minions (not bone fiend- the immobilizing one that is useful in mm builds- the crappy slowcast “shatter” minions. The ones that you can’t control which of the two pops when commanded, and will blow up instantly where they are and not run to target like a mesmer shatter. Those) useful in any kind of sense for about an hour and a half of build shuffling and they are simply garbage compared to any other minion.
I tried using them as blast finishers. That lasted 10 minutes.
Don’t expect any existing content to get fixed tho. Anet prefer to make new stuff, it’s cheaper in development terms.
How can this possibly be true?
[Bumping to answer question I didn’t spot at the time]
I believe it’s something to do with new code being written fresh, without having to review all the old code, understand the brain-workings of the person who wrote it and make correct modifications that don’t affect other code thereby generating bugs and hence more coding work.
Nobody at Anet loves WvW like Grouch loved PvP. That’s what we need, a WvW Grouch, but taller.
There is not a new fractal coming so soon I am afraid! We are working on the new fractal but still have a lot of work to do. It will ship when it is ready
OMG, Fracdull players got a content progress update. Such bias!
#OnlyHalfJoking
Nobody at Anet loves WvW like Grouch loved PvP. That’s what we need, a WvW Grouch, but taller.
How did you get “gave up implementing it after a few small patches” from “so we’re going to focus on ship-able pieces, even if that means we do some rework later”?
The quoted post is from 11 months ago. That’s how I have come to my conclusion.
They need a real longterm solution to fix how sparse/empty WvW has become due to people simply just leaving for T1/T2 every time.
Not to seem flippant, but T1/T2 aren’t empty. I guess that’s why solutions to lower tier problems are not being sought – simply because they never have. Do you remember why EotM was created? It was because people in T1/T2 whined about queues. The players on lower servers don’t matter to the creators – regarded as even lower than regular WvW players, they are seen as the red headed stepchildren of second class citizens.
Nobody at Anet loves WvW like Grouch loved PvP. That’s what we need, a WvW Grouch, but taller.
The reason I ask is because last night on tc we had one squad with 30 people.. And very few pugs… And only a few roamers. No other tags on map and a really small squad… yet we had a map que.
Fa had 2 60 man zergs and sos had one huge blob. The amount of names in each engagement actually lagged people out and offline and was causing skill lag.
By my thinking… We should have been Outmanned[..]
I heard that only one side can be Outmanned per map.
Nobody at Anet loves WvW like Grouch loved PvP. That’s what we need, a WvW Grouch, but taller.
WvW has been and will be dead for a looooooooong time until the devs decide to actually take some initiative and redesign how worlds work and what they actually want it to be useful for.
If I read the post from Stephen Clarke-Willson (11 mothns ago, it’s now 1st Feb 2017) correctly, they’ve redesigned the whole of WvW, but gave up implementing it after a few small patches:
SCWPhD
We got into a pattern where we wanted the WvW update to be super awesome, a “2.0” version, and it kept growing in size and complexity, which took longer, and fans were waiting, and so we wanted it to be more awesome, and rinse, repeat… As Mo said, we need to clear out the log jam, so we’re going to focus on ship-able pieces, even if that means we do some rework later. And we’ll get each piece onto the Live servers as soon as possible.
Desert Borderland : the whole ruckus last summer about removing it plainly from WvW speaks for itself.
The original version of the DB map were horrible in terms of travel and the periodic capture the flag mega cannon event which one shot all loser keep gates simply wasn’t enjoyable. ANet introduced the current DB map just before they were swapped out, for a while, which significantly improved the ease of travel across the map. I think the current 1 DB, 2AB maps is helping to ease WvW players into the newer DB map since the original is often pointed at as a primary cause of the drop off of WvW game play.
WvW has had a huge fallout for many reasons. DBL killed a ton of interest from mid-size (~15-20) groups due to the map traversal and difficult-to-siege keeps, and small-scale havoc died out mostly from locking +5 supply behind a several-thousand-gold paywall and making structure flips more difficult (particularly in the DBL) while providing silly bonuses which made going after structures with said small groups overly-difficult like what-once-was spammable banners, watchtower, etc., and all of these types of groups were negatively impacted by the relative lack of diversity and power creep which made most fights simply uninteresting while promoting massive-blob play.
If we’re identifying the problems of WvW over the years, here goes;
Let’s be clear that everything seems relatively insignificant in comparison to the giant looming shadow of server transfers/server stacking,
Having said that, multiple “fixes” have made WvW less fun;
Fixing the Banner-rez of completely dead keep lords made the game favour dominant sides even more than it already did,
Fixing waypoints so that there was no waypoint moment between ticks also made it less dramatic and favoured already dominant sides (again),
Initially, DBL was perceived as horrible by many players when they first appeared, with unforgiving cliffs, long walks back and horrible garrison that’s easier to attack than to defend – while these problems persist, it’s more fun to defend the side keeps than alpine and with further modification (e.g. simply flattening of the middle area for zerg-v-zergers) could be even better,
The guild upgrade system is great (really great!) but needs tweaks (flax fibres are v. expensive) to make it more viable – too often camps are not upgraded because of the cost,
Orange dots are an interesting addition that gets big group-vs-big group combat to happen more often, but it’s not fun to see where enemy mesmers are hiding when we capture a keep because it makes the game too easy – when you take away all the tasks, the computer may as well be playing against itself,
Crap metas have spoiled WvW. This began with the change to Stability and the Pirate Ship meta and continues today with condition spamming and the ubiquity of Crowd Control.
Nobody at Anet loves WvW like Grouch loved PvP. That’s what we need, a WvW Grouch, but taller.
“… modern times games are rarely finished when they ship, because they can be continuously improved online …
… so it’s good to pace yourself, "
Which is all well and good, except that the pace of this continuous improvement seems glacial, and soon there will be other games competing for WvW players.
“we’re clearing the log-jam by making sure we can roll-out incremental updates to the Live servers. It will be nice to be back in a mode of shipping frequently.”
Which is great news! The big WvW update was then supposed to have been rolled out bit-by-bit, but I think we’ve seen it. That was it, guys. Wait, wha?! Yep, it got rolled out, what more do you want? Open field cannons?
SCWPhD
We got into a pattern where we wanted the WvW update to be super awesome, a “2.0” version, and it kept growing in size and complexity, which took longer, and fans were waiting, and so we wanted it to be more awesome, and rinse, repeat… As Mo said, we need to clear out the log jam, so we’re going to focus on ship-able pieces, even if that means we do some rework later. And we’ll get each piece onto the Live servers as soon as possible.
Nobody at Anet loves WvW like Grouch loved PvP. That’s what we need, a WvW Grouch, but taller.
Full clerics gear and trinkets. Not sure how this guy is hitting like this much.
in addition- Just to note, I am not sure what the logic is to put evades on a skill that lands THIS MUCH DAMAGE. This skill shouldn’t be uninterruptible.
They’ve already got three evades, and that 1 more than everyone else has.
Please fix. Thanks.
/end rant/
Even thieves are complaining about it. No feedback from HQ tho, as ever.
Nobody at Anet loves WvW like Grouch loved PvP. That’s what we need, a WvW Grouch, but taller.
I have a question to Arena Net devs and ofc to anybody else know what I’m talking.
I play on Seafarer’s Rest (EU) which this week due to the famous glicko system was put in the same tier with Piken Square, (probably the next nr.1 server in EU).
Piken got an influx of people when they got paired up (there has been mention of people transferring also). Prior to this, Piken lost a lot of matches in a row and still often lack the number of commanders necessary to compete with top servers.
Like much of the game, the transfer system hasn’t been modernised to keep up with trends (namely mass transfers).
It’s always sad when there’s a dominant server (yeye, old news: almost every matchup ever). Please accept these Pots of Creamy Portabello Soup with my heartfelt sympathy.
