Guild Wars 2

DoYourBestBear.6810:

I think the notes are true, to be honest.

Rather than tone down AoE power, they increase it.

Rather than slow balancing, let’s shift the entire game in another direction in terms of power.

Rather than bringing things down, methodically, in terms of power, let’s throw balance darts at the wall and see what happens.

Rather than leaving DPS guard alone, let’s buff it.

Ele was a torturous class to play against at release both in terms of raw power, survivability, and cantrips, let’s bring it back.

Rather than using root cause analysis to problem solve the imbalances, let’s employ jenga balance.

I don’t mean to be overly rude, negative, or derogatory, but this sounds like A.Net.

Actually it looks like anet are trying to kill mesmer aoe ( if you can call clone death by replacement an aoe) by making sure the clones don’t cause death effects when they are replaced. So anet really don’t want mesmers to have much in the way of aoe or have very little control, therefore they want mesmers to be used only for utility in wvw.

The knew weakness is the dependence on “Healing Signet”, as every other war heal is simply too under powered to be on par with it.

Tyler Chapman.1832:

Ele should technically be in a much better spot come the feature build.

Pretty anxious not gunna lie..

You think three small changes are enough to fix ele. Clearly this class has been over nerfed for that to work.

mimec.6719:

Above all… Sheengineer.
Gnarlie Sheen was here…

/shoo

Beastmaster will always be useless when you have a pet dealing less than 2k per crit even with the right traits to buff it’s damage.

Bombsaway.7198:

I am torn. How many of you posters play a melee damage class?
One of the key problems of the game has been that ranged damage can’t whittle anyone down very much before they are in “smashface” mode.
The immobilize buff helped.
But it would be pretty boring to just sit.
On the other hand, it is pretty frustrating to be ranged damage with melee in your face in seconds.

If it is toned down, there needs to be something done to make melee’s ability to close range far less effective.

Then the fault is placed on the condition cripple or chill for not doing it’s job. Immobilise stacking is as most of you people put it too “cheese” for high level game play.

Pointless thread ftw.

Funny how pathetic AI is in gw2.

Bubby.6475:

Backstab stealth builds usually had no drawbacks for missing a backstab. This was a pretty hot topic on /r/guildwars2.

Instead of just flat out revealing if you miss the backstab like /r/ suggested.

How about giving backstab a 3 second cooldown while being stealthed.

before people start complaining about burst/adrenaline having no risk, there is a risk with burst/adrenaline. It goes on CD for 8 second traited (off the top of my head).

Without a major buff to compensate for your major nerf. Go back to the drawing board and try again later.

Thoth Divine.8642:

Title says it all. Stealth is a great mechanic in this game, but the fact that it is absolutely impossible to prevent or counter is ridiculous. Thieves rely on this skill a great lot which is fine, but in my opinion it’s a broken and cheesy mechanic. I think Thieves would be in a much better place if they didn’t rely so much on it and were compensated in other ways to make up for this.

Thoughts?

This is not wow and your always welcome to go back to wow if your not happy with the way stealth works in gw2.

timidobserver.7925:

No, someone at Anet decided that Scarlet is better than any of the previously developed Story.

Don’t forget about the dragons, since they are apparently a non entity in gw2 thanks to scarlets efforts.

Unless we have the plant dragon controlling Scarlet.

Sol.4310:

Nope, tick’s 3x with 0 condition duration.

Sun Spirit is meant to be 2 seconds long. You need 45% duration to get 3 seconds of burning currently you can take 35% duration and get 4 seconds of burning duration.

Funny right.

Game Update Notes – December 10, 2013
Sun Spirit: Reduced the passive burning from 3 seconds to 2 seconds.

Don’t forget about 0 in gw2, it still counts as a second.

sorrow.2364:

Elementalists definitely needs a further nerf to survivability.
It’s not like that Renewing Stamina is the only trait keeping Eles alive.

I don’t use it anymore, sigil of energy works way better.

SupahSpankeh.8452:

Developer callout. Oh dear.

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

You think they would actually read this thread. I don’t even think a HR rep would bother reading this thread.

Arthas the Great.8765:

I leveled up to 80 a month ago and is on the verge of giving up the elementalist.
I used the most common and beginner-friendly spec, DD ele with 0/10/0/30/30 traits. While survivability is ok, damage is just insufficient to 1 vs 1 any other profession.

I had read lot’s guide and video about ele and see that my stats are not that much different from them, but the ele in the youtube video seems to do well in 1 vs 1 in WvW.

This is the spec I used based on a number of DD ele experts in youtube. I can only might stack to about 12 to 16 using ring of fire then arcane wave, earth dodge roll, earthquake and churning earth with sigil of battle

Power 1749
Precision 1320
Toughness 1686
Vitality 1690
condition damage 160
boon duration 60%
Critical damage 12%
Healing power 472.

Is this a viable ele spec for WvW roaming and occasionally 1 vs 1?

Your spec is out dated and virtually is a dinosaur. You should try to experiment starting with the recent trait changes, try weapon set combinations you would never have tried and go off from there. If you can’t do any of that, use a 0/10/0/30/30 staff spec and follow the zerg.

SupahSpankeh.8452:

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.

Either use Lyssa runes + low CD elite or use Ogre runes for extra power/damage. You can even go with divinity for over all stat balance or 5 scholars and one divinity.

amiavamp.9785:

SoV should have been an opportunity to make lifesteal builds into a real thing instead of a faint hope. Instead they have only solidified their lack of effort toward fixing broken mechanics.

Life steal specs dominated gw2 alpha testing, hence the over nerf. If you want to go farther back take life stealing necros in guild wars 1. They virtually destroyed anything that went up against them with armour ignoring damage. Then anet over nerfed it and made the life stealing concept a joke. With that said, you can understand why anet don’t try to popularise the concept since they have no clue how to correctly deal with it.

Don’t necro this thread again.

Xillllix.3485:

Didn’t spend months crafting celestial gear charging crystals just to have the pieces nerfed and double clicked on 1 months later to finally set it to berserker.

Even having the choice to set it back for another set will not change the fact that celestial will no longer be what is was nor give us our time back.

Anet are very good at not returning on investments, example is the gw1 community that joined gw2. If your uncertain what I mean simply google all the rewards that the Hall of Monuments provides and tell me if they are worth it.

Dalanor.5387:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0RwKNkwcEZo

Yeap very informative, devs have it so right……….

Over all this balance patch is a buff to sigils/ runes (maybe a great nerf to over all rune usage) and nerf/minor change to every class but elementalist. Too bad it leaves the game stale but I guess we can play around with various new combinations of sigils and current specs, while we wait for actually pvp/ pve content to come along rather than fillers mostly from pve.

Swagg.9236:

THIEF BASE HP

• Thief base hp at level 80 increased from 10,805 to 15,082.
• The Thief’s hp now scales identically to Engineer, Ranger and Mesmer hp levels.

NEW CONDITION UNIQUE TO THE THIEF – STAGGERED

• Staggered foes cannot gain protection or stability. Staggering a foe removes up to 2 stacks of Defiant.
• Staggered does not stack in duration nor in intensity. If a staggered foe were to be staggered again, the second instance of staggered would simply overwrite the first instance.

You want to give a class that has boon stealing a condition that blocks protection or stability or both if you had your way………/facepalm.

Fortus.6175:

I think we can all agreed that currently thieves are stealing (no pun intended) all the attention when it comes to damage dealer/roamer/squishy.

Their OP superb damage coupled with spammable blinds, teleports, dodges, stealth, backstabs is driving to extinction the few eles and mesmers that remain (today we lost 2 top mesmer players due to this, on top of the countless nameless elementalists which plead for fixes long time ago after getting the boot up their …..feet)

Backstabs, without any kind of interaction on the taker other than bending over and taking it regardless of skillfully blocking it, blinding or evading the attack.

Blinds, which reapply on literally every second and then there is the fact that every ranged skill on thieves (except autoattack) applies a blind through this field.

Teleports that cure conditions and break stuns, rendering any form of CC, soft or hard, useless. On top of not only having one, or 2, or 3, or 4 , or 5……. just as many as initiative permit, on top of 2 freebies on low CD.

---

You cant give one class all the best tools for survival regardless of stats, give it the best single target damage and then allow it to take anybody else’s role and call it a day.

Suggestions; blind fields, same treatment the earth storm ele got; once every 4 seconds.
Teleports, increase initiative cost, give it 1/2 or 3/4 seconds precast, 1/2 activation.
Damage and boon stealing; needs an ICD and the damage needs some shaving down, specially spamable skills, something not along the lines of 8%, but rather 15-25%.

Thoughts?

When one must stick with age old meta with ele or mesmer, one must die in the end.

Osicat.4139:

The single gamemode in spvp getting old.

Sens release we have a single gamem mode, stand in cirkle and survive. But for the hotjoin and simply fun pvp I dont see a reason why we not got new game modes yet.

Last man standing, team deathmatch, capture the flag, hostage or whatever.

One of the reasons some classses feel stronger in the sPvP atm is not always that the mineral class balance is shaking, its that there simply only exist one way to play the spvp and for that role some classes acctive and passive defenses is better than others.

Classes who survive due to mobility, immunitys and stealth stad back to area controll, defensive classes as they can be just as effective over a area and still hold a point.

Also, al ppl dont find the cirkle controll gameplay wery inspirating or fun.

So when are we going to see some new game modes?

/Osicat

This could have been stated since the games release or a year back. If the pressure was applied from the get go who knows…sky’s the limit.

With the end of 2013, anet’s deadline is nearing with the production of new MMO’s with better pvp systems and better pve content nearing completion. So if I was the next couple of readers, I’d state “when will we get new mind blowing pvp or pve content/concepts (that actually worth it to accomplish or get involved in)” instead of “The single gamemode in spvp getting old”.

We virtually are passing the point of anet not delivering on client expectations and nearing the point how will anet keep the client base or compete with other online games.

“Arcane V – Elemental Attunement. Moved to Master tier.” = Bad idea leave at current tier

“Arcane VIII – Blasting Staff. Moved to Adept tier.” = Good idea and could be swapped with “Renewing Stamina”

Mendax.9506:

Some elementalist changes feedback:
The reduced CD on Attunement swap is good, but moving Elemental Attunement to Master tier will make the Arcana the most desirable line again, because EA is one of the best elementalist traits and 90% of eles want to have this trait in any build. Why so? Becacuse it’s the most reliable source of boons for elementalist. Moreover this trait also buffs surrounding allies – it’s really strong and as I said earlier no ele will let it go. This trait got similarities with Mesmer’s trait Deceptive Evasion – they both enchance core mechanics of their classes, making them very strong in EVERY build.
I would suggest reworking this trait completely, and changing #5 or #10 traits in Fire/Air/Earth/Water lines to give respective boons on Attunement swap.

I’m okay with other changes.

If anet don’t change their idea for switching Elemental Attunement to Master tier. I’d tell them to expect more ele player base lose. They want to try and promote ele builds to not need to go that far into arcana, but that little change sets back their idea to even do so. Virtually dead locking every build to have 20 into arcana.

Ironic for the thief change, only see three builds being viable for pvp and wvw roaming (since the thief can never zvz in wvw). First one is Sleight of Hand spec while the second is simply the standard 25/30/x/x/x spec. Infusion of shadow trait will never be used and virtually the almost perma dodge spec will slowly be snuffed out from tpvp picture. Final is the p/d condi spec which seems to endure no matter what changes anet try to throw or take away from the thief. One could argue about what will happen with the 0/30/30/x/x or 0/20/30/20/0 specs but another could answer sorry not viable anymore or not as affective.

Oh well at least the ele change is on the right track. They do need to be less dependant on arcana. Putting 20 points into fire to get a ICD of 40 second cleansing flame trait does not seem worth it for say have 30 into water to virtually gain more healing power + condi removal with regen (Cleansing Water) every 5. Various ele players have also been asking for CD reduction to Armor of Earth as many of them only use that stun breaker because signet and Glyph stun breakers are lackluster. Unfortunately that seems ignored yet again within another balance update, so gl to who ever those people are to get that change.

messiah.1908:

yes i know the weakness of the build is conditions. thus against condition enemy i switch to Mantra of Resolve or/and use food to shorter the duration of conditions

i played the 20,20,30,0,0 build but against condi engi which does huge amount of burst conditions it doesnt give you any true defense against them with Cleansing Conflagration solely
against s/s warrior which does a lot of bleeding ticks it can handle even without condition removal if played right.
and also the torch part is offensive and not defensive .

as more players went to high condition defense builds i try to came up with build to counter them with huge condition dmg and also this is why with this build you mainly put your enemy at the start of the fight in defense mode so you must be aggressive

thanks for your comments !

Weaknesses of the spec are easily patched to the point of easily dealing with one condi engi. Two to three condi engi is just way to much to deal with for almost any class.

FrownyClown.8402:

Go full dire scepter focus. Get earth shield. Tank my friend. Dont dodge roll. Just take it.

Then find yourself dead moments later in various situations.

katniss.6735:

Superior Rune of Antitoxin

I’m surprised no one posted about this yet. To me this feels better than melandru runes for defense. Torment is annoying as hell to have on you. With the 6th trait combined with the reduction of the debuff, you can continue to burst a necro from D/D spec. My trinkets are usually celestial, which gives me more condition damage. And I’ve recently taken off energy for battle on one of my daggers for bigger burst. Lets just say a 0/10/10/20/30 (fury(i)/shield(v)/cleanse (v), cantrip heals(iii)/v, vi, xi) build would make great use of this with knights/celestial/battle sigil. You’re looking at around 800 (this is a total guess lolcats) condi. damage on average build-up.

Combine this with antitoxin spray for a faster heal than ether renewal (longer cd, but greater chance not to be interrupted), that aoes heals (heal your greater elemental if solo). There are still going to be times when ether renewal is better, as with the other heals. Verses fear/ corrupt boon, you’re going to want to be in air/water to get your shield up (as you can cast these auras while cc’d), have a cantrip like AoE/Mistform/CF up to be able kill off the incoming burst.

The armorsmith version of the recipe is probably easiest to make as you can get orichalcum ore pretty easily from salvaging and node farming.

Melandru’s, divinities or boon duration runes are still a better options currently for the elementalist. Trying it for a condition spec simply isn’t beneficial in the long run as ele condition specs are for casual play.

Swagg.9236 your Obsidian Flesh, Freezing Gust and Cleansing Fire proposed changes aren’t great ideas. Obsidian Flesh already has a wonderful affect that works very well and synergizes with both sceptre and dagger.

Freezing Gust idea for say a d/f would hurt the fluidity of the synergy with the dagger as you need to stand in one place. It would also not really benefit the sceptre as well for how long it would take to reach the immobilize as someone would have dodged it or mitigate it in some way.

Cleansing Fire change would not be a significant benefit for one skill already in place with a better overall affect “Ether Renewal”. You would virtually only see usage for it in skyhammer, unfortunately tornado would actually be a better option for that map along with your idea for Arcane Shield.

You also failed to even touch on swirling winds, you could have said something like “make it an air field to proc swiftness off from it” or introduce an idea for a secondary mechanic in play once cast.

Azunai.5974:

Reduce cooldown on air 5, earth 5, change the skills on fire, and modify the water skills to function better.

Modify the water skills to actually provide healing?

Since condition removal is currently within earth.

BaconCatTheGreasy.9542:

At the moment warriors can just equip their passive regen signet and be unable to be killed. When a warrior is 4v1 and not dropping below 50% health and able to kill the other 4 players, it simply makes PVP unfun. Just had two games where it was impossible to kill any of the opposing team because it was all passive regen warriors.

Have you ever heard of poison?

Very nice condition supposed to reduce healing amount by 33%.

sorrow.2364:

But it really is impossible.

I have only tried the elementalist for a couple of matches, but now I’m really liking the combat style and its versatility.

I’ve played several hotjoin matches to get used to skills, rotations and combos, then when I’ve realized that hotjoin had nothing else to teach me, I’ve jumped on SoloQ when horrible things started.

I have to say that I’ve played Necromancer for an huge chunk of time (before the june patch), power-based non-spirit ranger and jumped for some time on the warrior bandwagon.

Here’s some of my impressions:

• 30 mandatory points into Arcana is disgusting: they are a must go for pretty much any build because of the attunement recharge and the on-dodge effects. It feels awful when you need to heal and you have your water attunement recharging and you want to burst and the air attunement is unavailable. Any build not running 30 into Arcana is a sub-par build as far as I’ve tested. It really saddens me that a whole profession is forced to play with 30 less traitpoints.
• 30 points into water are a must go to have enough sustain: another things I’ve found out playing in SoloQ. The amount of conditions coupled with the really small HP pool of elementalists force them to bring a lot of condition removals in order to have enough sustain to survive condition professions, which are still very popular. This is seriously a major problem which also affects many other professions which are forced to bring a lot of condition cleansing traits/skills to survive the condition spam. So any build I’ve tried to theorycraft and try, ended up with 30 in water and 3 cantrips, otherwise, I just melt to conditions.

So, after you’ve spent 60 points on defensive traitlines, there is really nothing left to spend on increasing the damage output and I’ve ended up to build a sub-par bunker when I wanted to build balanced.

• 30 in Air with Fresh Air is borderline viable, but the lack of 30 in water makes you die horribly to conditions and have no sustain at all.
• 30 in Fire is unviable, because it might have some potential, but it is even less viable compared to Air because its damage is more sustain rather than bursty, which means that you are more exposed to damage. The lack of sustain coming from 30 in Water clearly says that you can’t afford to be exposed for a long time.
• 30 in Earth are not an option at all. The condition damage of Elementalist is quite high, but it relies on low amount of conditions with high duration rather than constant application, which means that the amount of condition removals in this meta, built to counter Spirit Rangers, Necromancers and Engineers, completely destroy its viability.

At the end of the day, I came up to the conclusion that Elementalist is not worth playing in this meta at all and all the reasons of this are clear, under the eyes of everyone.

Why hasn’t the balancing team done nothing yet? Why I feel forced to play Necromancer or Warriors to be competitive? Why people ask me to reroll once they see I’m playing Elementalist?
Is this what the balancing team wants their game to be?

Well, this seriously isn’t the game I want to play.

Thirty points in Arcane is only mandatory for a s/d dps spec, the non viable D/D sustain , bunker s/d (which also may not be viable) or a dps d/d spec. Although, s/d spec can have 20 into arcana and a few non viable sustain s/d specs. I would state Staff ele requires thirty points but at this point the meta for that is some what not stable.

Traits like fresh air allow you to not need to have thirty into arcane only ten. Makes you wonder when anet will actually reduce attunement recharge to further not need 30 into arcana. You could state why not have refresh attunement trait for fire, earth and water but would that actually be worth while or (in waters case) too over powered.

Does this post apply to players that play all classes equally?

Bhawb.7408:

So, I want to open a discussion on the trait trees. But of Corpse will be doing a podcast where we go over the traits soon, so I want your opinion.

Please keep it civil, and format your stuff like this:

What traits do you really like?
This can be any traits that you feel really do their job nicely, say why you like them, and why you feel they do their job well.

For example, I love Death Nova because it punishes people for killing off my minions. It spawns poison fields, creates a lot of internal synergy with minions themselves, and is such a useful trait I find it hard to leave it out of any minion build.

What traits do you like conceptually, but feel fall short of what they could be?
This is a trait where you like where it seems to be going, but you feel it isn’t as good as it could be. Say why you like the idea, what about it you think falls short, and how you’d like to see it changed to bring it up to par.

For example, I think Reanimator is a cool idea. It summons you minions when you kill things (like an automated minion summon), and would give you the feel of a true undead master, summoning servants from the things you kill. However, it summons one mediocre minion (individually), that often dies before it takes any effect (since it summons after something dies), and rarely has any kind of “snowballing” effect like old GW1 MMs had, due to its long ICD.

I think there are a number of ways it could be changed, but I think the core problem is two fold. It feels very weak when it does proc, and it’s use is often wasted because it procs after you’ve already won. In PvE its kind of a slap in the face to barely win a boss fight, then have a Jagged Horror spawn from his deathbed, only to sit around and die while you collect loot (same thing in PvP).

The trait should be increased in how it can proc, for example proc off minions and allies as well, although maybe with less chance, and a slightly reduced ICD, and if needed have them die faster (I’d rather have three minions up in a small snowball effect that die off before the next fight, than one that spawns after the fight and dies in the first AoE of the next one).

What traits do you just plain dislike?
This should only be for traits that you feel aren’t just bad in execution, but even the idea seems flawed at best.

For example, Toxic Landing, creates a poison cloud when you take falling damage. When is this trait ever useful? It isn’t just niche, it has maybe a 1% chance of taking any kind of effect (getting chased by something that follows you off the cliff and into the poison cloud), and even then its almost never meaningful (big deal, they are poisoned now, something we can do readily anyway).

So again: talk about what traits you like, what traits you almost like but think need improvement, and traits you don’t like. Make sure to expand upon what you say. If you need to compare to other professions, please do so constructively.

Please keep it civil, and open. This isn’t the place to lament how bad we are, this isn’t a place to flame ANet, or any such thing, but have a good discussion, and one that ANet can look at for ideas.

Thank you for your time and input.

Death nova in gw1 used to be a powerful explosion that had a cascade of wonderful dps when people decided to kill your minions off or you simply killed them off yourself. In gw2 it’s been turned into a poison field that is ok but not up to par with it’s gw1 counter part. Makes me even wonder why it’s a grandmaster trait.

Shrouded removal is pathetic for only removing 1 condition, spiteful spirit’s retaliation only lasts for 2-3 seconds depending on boon duration (too short a duration for any benefit).

Reaper’s Precision should have a 100% proc rate instead of a 33% but with a 2 second ICD. Obviously the LF gain should be increased to 2% instead or maybe more instead of being just 1% for this change.

Death Shiver makes no logical sense to be utilized as we already have a weapon set that can easily stack vulnerability better than this trait. It’s ICD of 3 seconds also further hurts any usefulness it may currently have (if any).

Speed of Shadows will never be used for the simple reason of other options being far better than this trait. No incentive to incorporate the trait into any spec at all, unless you find yourself needing a +25% speed boost. Oh wait runes of speed has been fixed, no wait access to swiftness with other classes or if really needed the necro has war horn skill five. Before I forget we also have utilities that provide swiftness and +25% movement speed. I guess no real incentive to use that trait still stands.

JonathanSharp.7094:

Just to confirm, we are working on new maps. I can’t give too many details, but a few things:

1) We’re trying maps with no cap points.
2) We’re trying mechanics that focus on high risk/reward mechanics that can win to sudden wins/sudden losses.
3) We’re trying maps that focus on “big play” moments that permanently impact the map flow/map status.
4) I can’t give an ETA on when you’d see one live, because we’re trying different maps, and each of them takes time to prototype, etc.

I think that conquest is easy for new players to get into, and it’s allowed for some amazing high-level games so far! But we’d like to try some new things that get away from conquest.

Also, as many of us have said, we want to give players enough variety such that they can change what they play from time to time, while also being sure that we don’t fracture the player-base by spreading players out to too many different game types.

I know this isn’t a super exhaustive answer, but just wanted to give you guys a quick update.

Majority of this reply was already said last month, can we at least have something not almost entirely copy/pasted.

The Primary.6371:

yski.7642:

tom.7468:

I like it the way it is i actually think it would be a little bit OP if you got healed when you entered DS. and remember its not a guardian its a necro their not meant to be able to heal like a guardian.

Well, we are supposed to be an attrition profession, which we aren’t really at the moment.

Still, I don’t think making DS heal us is the right way to go – wouldn’t it be easier to just remove the “you can’t be healed while in DS” part anyway? Even if DS itself didn’t heal us, it would be nice if it didn’t block other sources of healing like regeneration. That, or maybe they could make the life steals from Blood Magic be like.. actually noticeable? All it would take is a slight buff to the amount they steal and suddenly life steal builds would be perfectly fine.

How much do those things heal these days anyway, like 30 health/attack? That’s around 1/1000 of our health, which isn’t exactly helpful when an average attack deals something like 2-3k damage and a good burst can be close to 20k. It needs to be several times what it currently is to make any difference.

I agree but it will be very difficult to separate and allow regeneration along with life transfer to work. It will mean a rework of the boon and the life steal mechanic, that in turn will breed various bugs and require multiple fixes.

What makes attrition work though is sustainability, constant pressure and reduction of effectiveness.

We don’t have sustainability worked out yet. Necromancers can’t effectively maintain themselves at a certain level as not every single skill provides life force. This means a necromancer must also win his first fight and accumulate life force as we have no life force to use our class mechanic “death shroud”. Life steal is also simply too flawed to work as death shroud stops its affect or it is easily out dpsed as it does not provide enough healing to be a benefit in the first place. Life steal is also limited to one trait line, one weapon, one utility, one heal skill and two sigils. We also do not have passive countering to conditions or control affects. We have burst counters but no passive counters or they aren’t feasible.

We have the constant pressure but some view it as fine while others view it as over powered. We do need to have good viable ways to provide constant pressure to kill our enemies or force them to make hard choices. If it is heavily nerfed then we cannot be an attrition based class.

We do have multiple ways to reduce the effectiveness of our enemies. Some are not applied as often as others which then makes people think a centralised way to actively weaken enemies is required. But what it seems like the necromancer needs is simply to improve or further ingrain “reduction of effectiveness” into the offensive capabilities that the necromancer has or have better trait options implemented to provide it.

In conclusion a necromancer requires these three points to be a attrition based class which are: sustainability for themselves, constant pressure against the enemy and to reduce the effectiveness of the enemy.

This was posted 3 months back but still reigns true in the fact that we still need better sustainability and improved or wide spread “reduction to enemy effectiveness”. You also hit the nail right on the head Nemesis, on how DS does not scale vs 1vX. Here are a few questions that just spring to mind:

How to make the necromancer a true attrition based class?

What would allow them to maintain themselves in a fight therefore allowing them to slowly melt the enemy away?

How to effectively counter control affects with hardly any access to stability or quick rechargeable stun breakers when plague form is down?

Should they only be able to just melt the enemy away?

What should be the limit before they can no longer sustain themselves and simple die if “sustainability/reduction to enemy effectiveness” was somehow fixed?

Justin ODell.9517:

This should be fixed in the next PvP drop, which may be next month, not sure.

We’ve got even more substantial matchmaking improvements on the radar, but those won’t make it in until sometime next year.

And what about the supposed new pvp modes such as “death match” or “king of the hill”?

Guess my quote “gg making gw2 an esport” still stands until maybe next month or next year or maybe even 1-5 years after next year.

Pollution.8703:

I find mesmers incredibly frustrating to fight against at the moment. I don’t think they are overpowered, they are pretty squishy and die if I can catch them in a net. But I do know that after fighting a team with three mesmers on it I just want to stop playing pvp for the night. Being unable to use my skills, taking damage for using my skills, and constantly losing my target and having to try and retarget among a myriad of clones is just not fun. It feels like I am fighting the mechanics of the game and the class instead of the person behind the keyboard. If anet would tone down the number of clones/phantasms and reduce the skill lockouts/confusion and buff mesmers in other ways I would enjoy the game a lot more.

L2 distinguish the player from the clones. Bring condition removal. Understand the class mechanic rather than being pathetic. You can go a step further and try to understand the builds you are facing.

Dirame.8521:

Divinity.8041:

Tell me again why it takes forever to fix simple things in this game?

If throwing money at things fixed them instantly, we’d be living in a different world.

Too bad stupidity gets in the way of a perfect world. Then again, humans are faulted creatures.

katniss.6735:

So now we get op thieves that play without pieces of armor on to show how they can win with 1 button.

When are they going to nerf that stupid class already? I left the match immediately when I saw that trash.

I have no problem killing these said players, if they want to disadvantage themselves and be a free kill. That’s just an added bonus against them in the end.

So this just concludes that it’s not just one class, but possibly 2-3 classes. Unless we have “proof” that can down play this or vice versa.

Indrea.7803:

I love the sound from the original presentation of Mesmer skills.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Ylkt1UV_TU

Funny how the presentation of each class within the sample vids turned to complete trash once the game was released. If you never noticed it you either are missing part of your brain or you never payed attention to them. One could argue they were pressed for time and wanted to make people set in awe, but in the end it simply showcased stupidity.

Indrea.7803:

I love the sound from the original presentation of Mesmer skills.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Ylkt1UV_TU

Funny how the presentation of each class within the sample vids turned to complete trash once the game was released. If you never noticed it you either are missing part of your brain or you never payed attention to them. One could argue they were pressed for time and wanted to make people set in awe, but in the end it simply showcased stupidity.

Indrea.7803:

I love the sound from the original presentation of Mesmer skills.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Ylkt1UV_TU

Funny how the presentation of each class within the sample vids turned to complete trash once the game was released. If you never noticed it you either are missing part of your brain or you never payed attention to them. One could argue they were pressed for time and wanted to make people set in awe, but in the end it simply showcased stupidity.

Not to mention how many of the ele utilities are not on par with every other class. Oh and how the eles disengage was nerf hammered while the wars disengage was buffed to the point of being able to totally run from a zerg. Point being, the many aspects of what is wrong with the ele comes mostly from area nets nerfs to the class or major buffs to particular aspects of other classes that the ele is weak against.

Nemesis.8593:

AHAHAHAA !!!… I have predicted this change for months now… ever since i made the first necro healing build… i’ve seen new gear addition, and i predicted this change… i’ve made a new support build in advance… but i never published it…

I was waiting… hoping…
/BAWS

If they nerf our dps options for wvw mass murder and leave us with a support option (like mesmer). I will know who to blame.

Allie Murdock.8152:

xD

That’s a great mentality. You do realize that if there’s data that people like GW2 PvP, and it gets more popular, that it could = more resources? It’s cool though. If you don’t want to watch, you don’t have to.

Oh if only the matches weren’t so boring (bunker wars ftw) and if only the only pvp mode was not conquest. Oh the humanity, but as it stands it pretty much isn’t worth it to watch commentators trying to “beat a dead horse”. If the other pvp modes are screwed up or not implemented the correct way, good luck anet for trying to make gw2 a full fledge successful e-sport.

Lifewaster.5912:

Dragons tooth and death shroud (4) are the main offenders I guess, ignoring LoS and obstacle.

So both death shroud and dragons tooth can hit the AC in the screenshot above.

If this game wasn’t just centred around Arrow Cart wars in terms of defending, then you may have a valid point. In the end, counters are counters.

LeifChappelle.4069:

Hey guys I was getting ready to post some info for you, but saw this thread and thought it would be the most fitting place. I’ve been reading through the threads so far and wanted to write on a few points brought up.

Our team’s put a great deal of effort into getting this new dungeon path right, so that it is both challenging and fun. We’re comprised of folks that worked on the Aetherblade Retreat, as well as myself from Molten Facility, so we’ve been putting everything we’ve learned from the past months’ development into what we think is a pretty exciting experience.

There’s a whole lot to do in this dungeon, even after the final boss is downed. Expect some nods to the existing TA paths, as well as a few to previous Living World dungeons. You’ve probably already seen some in the screenshots & trailer released so far.

Our hope is that once you get in there, you’ll see why this is the primary thing we’ve been working on. That said, Halloween is just around the corner, and you won’t be waiting too long after Twilight Assault to see what we’ve got in store for you with this year’s Mad King shindig.

We shall see, considering how there are many “primary” aspects of this game that need attention.