I’m watching it.
All Pets are getting more toughness/vitality.
spirits are getting buffed, though I can’t help but laugh when they said “We’re going to buff their Proc % from 50% to 75% so they proc more often” completely ignoring again…The bloody spirits have an ICD..
AI on pets getting improved
F2 on pets are getting changed to be faster, This might make Drakes more usable.
i think that Rangers have the least access to retaliation and confusion…
Correct, we only getting it from PI
Which is why that ability is so powerful.
I killed two thieves yesterday who jumped me on my Ranger..
They were two Glass Cannon Thieves who were both spamming the crap out heartseeker on me….I mean that’s all they were doing, and I dodged and PI’d them, and they kept spamming till they were both dead.
If they weren’t morons, they could of stopped and been fine..But Anet tends to reward the least skillfull of play (Zerging for example, Down system, ect ect) so I’m not super surprised about a Confusion Nerf. Though Retal does need a pop up like Confusion, I agree with that 100%
Mesmer’s and Engineer’s killing noobs who don’t know when to stop attacking.
i’d still run PI, just cause its better then everything else.
But this is the second time Mesmer’s have gotten me nerfed
First Guard, now this ;o)
confusion getting gutted by 50%
retal getting nerfed also
probably has more to do with engineers and mesmers but pretty funny
equally frustrating bug/oversight, the minor trait reanimator actually weakens you in wvw giving your opponents an incredibly easy rally target. seriously needs fixing or at least the option to disable.
Is that true?
Please tell me that’s not true..
Res Sickness…..This has been in a lot of other games to limit the effectiveness of chain ressing.
And no..the “downed” res sickness you get its good enough, If you res in this game you’re basically 100% where you were before getting downed.
Hell sometimes you’re better off because it instantly removed all your conditions when you got downed.
My suggestion would be, if you get downed and ressed, -20% to all stats for the next minute.
Have it happen against, -40% for the next minute.
Yeap, the only time I’ve come across an AI as awful as the one i’ve seen from the Minion Mancer in World vs World is when I played a Ranger in beta in this game.
I’ve never seen anything remotely as bad as the AI in this game when it comes to pets from any other game….
I’ve played a lot of them…
UO/DAOC/EQ/Rift/Shadowbane/SWTOR/Warhammer Online ect ect…and none have anything remotely as bad as what i’ve seen in this game.
Think about that…That’s 16 years of playing MMO’s, and the worst AI i’ve seen for a pet has been in a game released last year that claims to be a Triple A quality MMO.
Here is how bad the AI is, It’s actually worse then the Necromancer AI in DAOC when crossing a bridge.
If anyone played a Necromancer in DAOC, they’ll insantly know what i’m talking about.
Simply put, the Pet AI in this game should of been a Priority in beta….and it should of been fixed before release.
A lot of us Rangers pretty much expected the game to go live with pet problems, Cause Rangers were experiencing it in beta, and over the past few months Anet has tried to “fix” our pets…..But Necromancers are in FAR FAR worse shape then my Ranger is when it comes to this.
My pet will attack things i’m fighting…It’s never just stood there with its thumb up its butt….My Necro Pets do it consistently…every bloody fight.
When i played my thief, Last Refuge ended up killing me more times then saving me.
This makes it a worthless talent
You shouldn’t dog on that Ele. That is a staff ele built for zergging, of course he is going to run away from you when you are built for minion brawling. He would be crazy not to run away. I would be amazed if even a superb ele could beat you in that build with a staff build. His only mistake was coming back.
Nice video, but I hate so much that the effectiveness of that build drops off drastically around incedental AOE, and I think the flesh golem attacked maybe 10 times in the entire 10 minute video.
The meta-game (if you don’t mind the overused word) in roaming in WvW now is PVT, and this build is very strong against low numbers in PVT gear. High regen and life steal from the minions is really only going to have problems with lots of burst, where you don’t have the opportunity to regenerate. I would venture a burst character that knew what he was doing (like a shatter mesmer or thief) would have a field day with you in this build.
Not a dig at the build or the player, as it was a good video, just a personal gripe about minions in WvW and the concept of attrition as defined by face-tanking.
1v1’s I didn’t have that much trouble with, Some Bunker builds were incredibly tough to fight though (Guardian for example) but this also was related to the fact the pets simply stop attacking..
Having Minions in a Minion Master build not doing anything is bloody stupid.
You forgot to mention how often you used the Immobilize on your Bone Fiend. Rather how often you tried to use the Immobilize on your Bone Fiend, it went on Cooldown, and nothing happened.
My personal favorite part is me trying to use my Bone Fiends Explosion, and it not landing most of the time because they’re not actually near the target.
Thing is I want to use it as much as possible cause they almost instantly die anyway.
Did you get an answer? As a ranger with a mix of cleric+soldier playing 0/0/30/10/30 with 3 passive regen and lots of regen up-time I like the idea of heavy power builds that have huge HPS.
Not sure it’s been really tested a lot.
Clerics is the next set i’m working on besides the Rabid Gear set i’m going to get.
You forgot to mention how often you used the Immobilize on your Bone Fiend. Rather how often you tried to use the Immobilize on your Bone Fiend, it went on Cooldown, and nothing happened.
My personal favorite part is me trying to use my Bone Fiends Explosion, and it not landing most of the time because they’re not actually near the target.
Thing is I want to use it as much as possible cause they almost instantly die anyway.
I didn’t notice this most of the time until I traited Death Nova. The fact that there’s 2 minions up makes it even harder because of how often one minion would be in melee, I’d hit the button, and it’d blow up the other minion that was hiding behind me for some reason.
I haven’t watched the video, but will take a look at it later. What I do in tournaments and wvwvw when playing with Minions is kite people into my Bone Minions before explosion.
Because of all the crappy pathing in WvWvW you see all sorts of funky things happening to the bone minions. I had one that blew up 10 feet behind me and the guy I was fighting was 200 feet in front of me.
It’s one of the reasons I dont’ ever use Minions in WvWvW. As for his use of immobilize the ability is easily avoided, blocked, or out of range.
Its quite possible in SPvP they work better, in World vs World though the way they work is just ug…
blows me away how bad it is.
Oh yea, Let me also comment on the Flesh Golem and the water issue…
That’s either a Major Design Issue or a Major Bug…. That should of been fixed in beta as well and never made it live…It certainly shouldn’t be an issue over 6 month’s later.
Minion Master Necro movie I did in World vs World
You forgot to mention how often you used the Immobilize on your Bone Fiend. Rather how often you tried to use the Immobilize on your Bone Fiend, it went on Cooldown, and nothing happened.
My personal favorite part is me trying to use my Bone Fiends Explosion, and it not landing most of the time because they’re not actually near the target.
Thing is I want to use it as much as possible cause they almost instantly die anyway.
How are you keeping regeneration up so much?
Staff gives regen, 5 points in blood magic gives it, and Focus gives it.
You’re actually able to keep regen up a lot on a Necro, which is why I was asking about Cleric Armor the other day.
How did you get confusion on your target? Granted, I haven’t been playing my necro in … months, but I don’t recall necros being able to put confusion on targets.
Transferred it, Whenever I was playing with staff and was fighting mesmer’s I’d try and transfer the confusion over to them.
Most Mesmer’s though would just run away with stealth though once I got them low.
to be honest, when I ran glass cannon, I stopped using QZ after they nerfed shortbow with it..
Just wasn’t worth it as longbow got squat for a benefit.
@Xsorus: ah, ok. I wasn’t sure if there was some other bigger point you wanted to make besides, “Here’s me with my longbow”. Darn textual communication.
Really the longbow only suffers from a lack of versatility. I imagine that is going to be fixed soon and then we’ll see it used more often.
Another interesting tidbit. In the latest interview with Jonathan and Jon, they mentioned that they are now focusing on trying to make balancing changes via traits. Seeing as how some of our traits are lackluster, this would greatly benefit us as well. I’m sure most are aware of longbow range, piercing arrows, and cooldowns being 3 traits and requiring 50 trait points.
They need to clean up most of the talent tree’s for most classes, A lot is just fillers cause they wanted to have a certain number of talents
Rofl yea… Sword/Dagger is such an amazing combo..I honestly believe our Sword/Dagger is the best weapon set in the game.
I was wondering why my Necro seemed so bloody squishy in down state compared to my Ranger and Thief…
Every day Anet reminds me why I don’t look fondly at them.
It’s not just staff. Pets can bug like that using any weapon. I think it has to do with pathing and not the attack used. That’s why the melee pets like flesh golem and shadowfiend have more problems than the ranged minions. When I open with a ranged weapon like staff or scepter (auto attacking, am I doing it right?) they bug out much more often than if I run up and attack with dagger 1, but I think it’s simply because the minion is right next to the mob. When they’re bugged out like that, if I drag the mob over to them they usually start attacking.
And ya, 7 months into the game for necro minions to still be in this state is laughable. It stops me from playing necro. Guardian spirit weapons are pretty much exactly the same as necro minions; you know how many times I have had one of those bug out and not attack? Zero. Not rarely, zero.
Honestly it reminds me of the Ranger pets in beta, where they just couldn’t hit a thing (they still have trouble) but in Beta the Ranger pets worked exactly like the Necro Pet does now…and it was horribly broken.
Anet really should be chastised for this…really no excuse for them to release an MMO with a Necromancer pet being this horribly bugged. I mean its downright Embarrassing.
Necro pets are clearly worse then Ranger pets, i can make my Ranger pet attack the target.
I have some video now that shows my pets not attacking… at all….They’re just standing there, and it probably has to do with Staff Somewhat, but honestly..Saying AI for your Pets is bad cause staff is wonky is just silly..The game has been out for over 6 month’s, This is honestly something that should not have left beta in its current form.
You should absolutely be berating the hell out of Anet for letting it stand this long..I know when they come to our forums and give us silly lip service for bugged and broken mechanics that should of been fixed i don’t kiss up and make them feel better.
Fury on Cleric’s is “meh” for me. 24% crit chance with fury and no increased crit damage. I’d take the evade and poison so that you are tankier and can reduce the healing of your enemies (making you more viable against other bunkers).
This is probably true.
You could probably make a cast for dropping Signet of the Hunt if you had Horn, but Sword/Dagger would probably still be better with Greatsword or Shortbow as your secondary.
Dagger or Horn is fine, depends on if you want Fury vs an Evade
Did some WvW on him and a few things I noticed.
1. Catching people was even suckier then it is on a Ranger, with basically zero ability to escape a bad situation. I could pound on people all day long, and if they turn and ran chances are they could get away, or they could possibly win since number 2.
2. I didn’t think it was possible to get a dumber pet then a Rangers…I was wrong…Now I don’t so much mind my pets having a hard time getting to a target, which they do..What i do mind in any MMO is when i’m fighting someone to look 3 feet to the left and see my Pet standing there….with his thumb up his kitten If it was a Bone Minion probably wouldn’t care so much, But my Flesh Golem? It honestly was just random as well, The pets would just magically stop attacking and stand there….I suppose this shouldn’t be surprising considering I’ve played a Ranger and know exactly how bad Anet is at coding pets…But honestly having played the Necro now..all i can say is Amateur Hour on whoever did the pet AI.
3. Survivability was So So, I thought i did fairly well in 1v1’s however anything past that was kind of hit or miss….I blame this on that lack of the builds ability to get Protection which is key for fights like that. I found thieves to be just as annoying as they are on my Ranger, They’ll just C/D one of my moronic pets over and over again till full health. If they get in trouble they just teleport away (though without back up the thieves i fought were rather a joke)
4. Weapon Side i’m running Staff with Axe/Focus, I would like to try dagger/horn but Staff is so incredibly good I can’t see replacing it.
I’ll try filming some movies after I have more practice with it… Most of tonight was me getting zerged by badies who’d run from the 1v1’s then show up with 5 or more.
Believe it or not, Boon Removal will not help you against a Ranger with a healing build.
We have some Regens sure, but most of it comes from abilities you cannot remove.
The way you counter regen builds in general is conditions and applying them constantly, or an obscene amount of burst.
I actually don’t have to much trouble with Confusion Mesmer’s, mainly because Mesmer’s in general seem to lack Condition Removal
when I played my Mini I did Heavy Melee/Heavy Instrument Low Stealth spec.
Mainly cause I duoed a lot with an Infil Friend (yipee) and I was bait, people would see me, PA me (and do kitten damage cause I had like 800AF) then yipee would PA them.
I pimped my Minis Shouts (10 SD / 10 Pierce / 101 Acuity and RAs to supplement)
Was not unusual to double Crit for a clean 1K Damage on a round of shouts
Yeap, I ran something similar with Odins Will on the Valkyrie, 10 Piece/10 SD/high Acuity ect ect because I could unload huge bursts of Spell Damage.
when I played my Mini I did Heavy Melee/Heavy Instrument Low Stealth spec.
Mainly cause I duoed a lot with an Infil Friend (yipee) and I was bait, people would see me, PA me (and do kitten damage cause I had like 800AF) then yipee would PA them.
Dude, thats what bothered me about daoc, each class only had like 1-2 builds that were actually decent, and if you didn’t run them, you were dead in the water. There was no real variation
Depended on the Class really
Valkyrie had 3 off the top of my head
Spear, Sword/Shield with Shield Slam ,and Sword/Shield with Odins Will
@Xsorus I remember Brutalix and Taintd as well as Metaxa but not you for some reason…
Its possible you might remember the Savage more then the Valkyrie as I soloed more on her.
Valkyn h2h savage.
What was your Valks name Xsorus? Do you remember my Reaver/Merc/Mini as I was pretty known in the solo community.
Valkyries name was Terravos
My Savage was Xsorus
and Runemaster was Xsorusii
I was in the guild with Brutalix/Lolizerg/Belga/Yipee/Taintd/Cripplernra/Dipzi/Metaxa
Called Desolate.
I was one of the few Valkyries I think that ran the 50 Sword/50 odins will setup, Most of the Sword Valkyries went Slam spec, which I always thought was silly cause 50 Odins was incredibly powerful
I have a little over 1600 solo kills on my Valk when I quit.
They ended up nerfing our Levi Chain when they did yours…You got more benefit out of that nerf cause of the lifetap side chain, Ours didn’t do that.
Anyone know how well this works?
Ok, then you fought me on my Valkyrie then.
Frostalf Valkyrie.
1handed sword/shield
Would shear people and such
Hiya Blackbird, curious what your DAoC toons you soloed on were as I soloed a ton for many years in DAoC.
I was Alb mainly…had a 12L1 Reaver, Kalorian…an 11L1 Minstrel , Dalorian (petless Tankstrel!) and a 10L1 Saracen Thrust Mercenary, Kilorian….
just wondering if we had ever fought
As for your post…you can do a decent DPS build with high toughness but the second you want to get Regen in there then the DPS focus moves from you to your Pet
hehe I remember you Kalorian, Which Cluster were you on? It was the one with Lancelot right?
I was the opposite of you,, I have an RR11L3 Valkyrie named Terravos, I was actually the number 1 valkyrie on the US servers for quite a well, well after i quit the game.
killibury cluster by the way for me, I had some albs on Devon Cluster though.
It could be powerful in dungeons, but if i’m going to run a Power build, I have far better weapons to work with then Main Hand Axe.
Sword/Axe would be great though if offhand axe allowed moving on channel..You could stack Vul very quickly and have some good defensive bonus with it.
Correct, just trying to show you can do Longbow Berserker but it is a huge pain in the kitten
I think I actually did better with Longbow/Shortbow then Greatsword/Shortbow, mainly because you could usually open with shortbow and when the person was half life switch to longbow for the knockback and rapid fire for the kill.
Offhand axe, if you could move with the Channeled Attack, would be be ok..
It’d be a good Power Weapon
Main Hand Axe though is a condition weapon, and the Chill+Weakness is incredibly powerful.
Axe Mainhand is good for condition build, i’ve tried it with power/crit build and its pretty awful.
Offhand is just awful.
Apothecary in Dungeons, I’ve ran this build in dungeons, and it does alright…..I mean it is quite a few conditions you can throw out very quickly. You won’t compete with Berserker Warriors in CoF though…No one does…So building a Berserker build for that is waste in my opinion.
Now if you intend on going very high in Fotm’s, yea you can build a berserker build…I’ve only done like level 10 in those and I never bothered afterward.
This is mainly a WvW/SPvP build.
Thanks for posting this. I had planned to start a Ranger and this definitely helps as I quite fancy playing at a closer range.
Would this style of play also work quite well for general levelling/PVE? I’d like to spend time learning this in both PVE/WvW. I would probably lean more towards the clerics version as my gold funds are not great, so would struggle with the Apothecary gear.
Yes it’d work fine..
I lvled up pretty much running a setup similar to this (back then I ran skirmishing instead of wilderness but that’d work fine)
General Pveing is easy, I generally don’t change my spec (I only switch to magic find gear) while i’m out PVEing.
For trap build?
Rabid
You can get it mostly from Karma in Cursed Shores
Carrion Jewels on the Jewelry
Necro or Mesmer or Guardian would be better bet
Even Thief (shortbows poison field)
Yea, Apothecary gear you use Geomancy, as its on weapon swap (no crit required) and is absolutely a lot of damage.
Usually when i’m fightin an elementalist he will keep curing my conditions, but he’s swapping a lot to Water Attunement to do it.
It usually goes fire then water, then fire.. and they don’t get to do Air and Earth that often because the amount of conditions I can put out very quickly.
Eventually they die from t.
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