Guild Wars 2

Epidemic is by far the best skill necromancer have in wvwvw and they only thing they really bring to the table. Using anything else is hard to justify. It’s sad that wvwvw necro is largely a one ability pony but that is reality right now.

Also for a laugh if you ever have two conditionmancers 2x epidemic with about a 1 second delay in between is pretty ridiculous. You can get 25 stacks of everything that can be stacked on a whole zerg really, really fast. Like within 3-5 seconds from engagement.

It’s downright odd that the class which seems to be most based around conditions only has access to one of the three main damaging conditions (poison doesn’t really count, the dps is much too low and it is obviously intended more for the healing debuff than the damage).

In contrast, other condition-heavy classes have access to two or more. Engi gets access to all 3; Mesmers have access to all three; ele have access to burning and bleeding; rangers have bleed and burn.

Conditionmancers ought to also have access to two of the damaging conditions. The access to the second should probably be somewhat limited, to go with the pattern established by other classes. Here are a few options I can think of:

1. Replace Withering Precision (30 point curses: 25% chance for vuln on crit hits) with “Burning Blood: Bleeding an enemy has a 20% chance per second to burn them for 3 seconds.”

2. Merge the two condition/boon wells into one to make room for a new utility skill: “Ignite Blood – 15 second CD – convert up to 3 stacks of bleed on your target into 3 seconds of burning per stack.”

Obviously in group situations where burn is already present these skills become much less valuable due to the way burn works. But that’s ok. Conditionmancers are already strong in group situations (as long as there isn’t another bleed build in the group) thanks to epidemic. The point is to give the conditionmancer the same single target condition dps potential the other condition classes get. It doesn’t make any sense that conditionmancers are limited to bleeding as their only real source of dps.

AFAIK Jarvis no passives stack with eachother at all but they do stack with quickness.

The way to tell whether your damage is a problem is to see if you’re getting exp for killing the mobs. If you’re getting exp it’s an anti farm code problem. If you arn’t getting exp it’s a problem of not doing enough damage. I am not really sure how the formulas work but it seems that just doing 1 pt of damage isn’t enough to get exp and therefore loot. I am not sure in theoretical terms how the break point is determined.

In practical terms I find if you hit a mob for at least 500ish damage that is usually enough to get exp for it.

There’s nothing you can do about it. It’s an intended change by Arenanet. Apparently they think masses of invisible players for everyone is better than low frame rates for people with bad computers.

It’s an awful decision but they’ve never been shy about making awful decisions.

One obvious solution is to limit the rewards night capping can give you not per individual objective but as a whole.

To explain:

If peak time ends with the 3 servers at +250, +150 and +50, and then the +50 server steamrolls the whole map in 30 minutes in off peak time because the others arn’t online, they shouldn’t immediately be able to get the full bonuses from doing that. Capping one keep would still give you immediate rewards, but if you steamroll the whole map in 30 minutes the scoring system is only going to start giving you credit for all the captures after several hours. It would essentially by a dynamic cap that only lets you shift say +50 points per hour no matter how much stuff you cap during off hours. If you then hold that stuff long enough you start getting points for it.

It would essentially be a cap on the amount of points you can shift at offpeak hours. Meaning if you are facing another server in a balance nightcapping situation where not much is changing hands you are going to contribute just as much as during peak hours when there are similar situations.

The problem with nightcapping isn’t nightcapping, it’s that unopposed nightcapping rewards the server vastly more than any other activity. I agree all players should be able to contribute but right now the unopposed night cappers are contributing way more and that’s no more fair than the not being able to contribute at all.

do you get exp? if so you’re getting loot and just hitting the anti-farm code. which happens super fast in orr because they’re all undead and thus catagorized as the same mob type.

Passives don’t stack.

If staying in range is the issue you may want to consider using a focus offhand. The chill on it is pretty good for that.

I think his point was the gaming mouse helps a lot for grenades while moving. Which is totally true. It is very clunky to try to kite with grenades if you don’t have at least the grenade 1 and 2 bound to your thumb buttons.

Aerian.2751:

Not every class has a “+50% damage while downed” trait. The elementalist, for example, does not.

But that just makes sense. Why bother to give elementalist a +50% damage while downed trait when everyone knows ele downed state is completely worthless? No one would ever take it!

Now we just need stability on spectral armor and our spectral skills would be decent.

Skill 2 is total nonsense compared to other classes’ downed skills. It needs to have a daze added.

Score is a meaningless way to evaluate servers. All it tells you is who has more off-prime players.

HoD for example typically loses at prime time but makes it up by taking over the whole map every morning.

Lol this thread just proves people will defend anything. Even taking advantage of culling to port 50+ invisible people on top of the enemy to slaughter them.

Yeah that’s what I meant. Mark on dodge and enfeebling on DS are both awesome so I transposed the two.

The game speaks otherwise. Presumably if you were right people would have figured it out. Instead we see a game where bunker builds are extremely popular for tPVP. Your number crunching lacks the element of reality necessary. Of course dps comes out higher than damage mitigation. That doesn’t mean support is useless. Being able to survive 20-30 seconds against multiple attackers has immense value in objective based pvp.

I mean sure if your whole team was made up of bunker guardians you would have trouble. But nobody is suggesting that.

2/10. You’re being much too obvious now. No one would seriously think “I saw someone win without a mesmer once so there’s no issue” is a good argument.

Oh wait, are we playing the make up quotations game? Sorry, I didn’t realize.

But 20 seconds in PVP is huge, not “barely faster.” You are either trolling or unable to give up an overpowered “bring the class” ability. The fact your initial analogy actually proved the opposite of what you thought it did probably should have been a clue.

Portal treb repair is a “bring the class” skill. GW2 isn’t supposed to have those skills. Sorry if you don’t like that. You might want to play a “bring the class” game instead if that is what you are looking for.

No. It isn’t as big a deal. You are just wrong. There isn’t much to say.

Many classes have swiftness and/or teleports and neither of those makes anywhere near as big a difference as portal. So portal is not only more powerful it is also only on a single class.

Portal with treb is basically the epitome of the opposite of GW2’s balance philosophy. Things like that simply shouldn’t exist in a game like this that purports to be about “bring the player” not “bring the class.”

So basically this is actually already nerfed.

Aegis will block it. But all you have to do is hit an auto attack first to remove aegis.

The best thing about enfeebling blood is the talent that makes it happen on your dodge, particularly in PVP.

Dagger vs focus depends to some extent on who you’re fighting but assuming you have a few skills that put conditions on you dagger is usually the better bet even if you’re not fighting an opponent who uses conditions heavily themselves.

Uh in practical terms yes rabid gear is more likely to be attractive to necros than any other class. Who else is going to want it? Necros are on the high hp table meaning they have less need for vitality and more value for toughness than other classes with good condition damage options. Ele arn’t going to want to run around with 12k hp to get +toughness. Engi is on the middle hp table, so I guess they might want some rabid gear, but I can’t imagine they’d want a full set.

Warrior maybe? But there are very few sword spec warriors and even sword spec warriors do enough direct damage that they’re unlikely to want to give up power completely.

Bleed rangers? Maybe, dunno enough about them and their direct damage options to know if anyone would want a set without power or would want tough over vit.

If you’re looking at passive or reactive stuff then sure this game doesn’t have strong support.

The problem is your way of thinking though. In this game support has to be active – it has to come before it’s needed. Guardian bunker builds don’t rely on healing damage after it’s occured so much as they rely on stopping the damage from happening in the first place.

R E F L H E X.8413:

If this gets nerfed there will be a new kind of kittening :

Their treb repairer has swiftness (and/or shadowsteps) and ours don’t, remove swiftness!

The teleport saves him 20 seconds maybe, at the most (the portal can only last 60 seconds without being specced to last longer).

Uh swiftness is available on every single class and isn’t remotely as large a bonus either.

Basically your analogy is so astoundingly bad it proves the absolute opposite of what you thought it did. Congratulations.

quickness is a bad mechanic that stacks too well with other burst damage strategies. No type of skill should give you a 100% burst damage boost, much less one that stacks with everything else too. It’s totally crazy and really makes you question teh wisdom of the balance people at ArenaNet.

Need rabid jewels + cloth recipes.

It isn’t just an issue with jewels and it clearly effects necros in particular.

I don’t see why you are getting so worked up. You seem to be the one stamping your feet.

Uh the point isn’t that it’s hard it’s that it’s much harder than most other classes have it for absolutely no reason except the totally arbitrary choice not to offer Rabid as a craftable armor or to offer decent accessories with rabid itemization.

There is just no reason at all to offer ideal crafted armors for some classes and specs but not for others.

Wolfe.3097:

the entire concept of initiative is that we can forgo CD’s on our weapon sets, and use the same spell back to back in exchange for a sort of future tax and risk that if we do this too much we wont be able to use any weapon skills for a little bit.

Yeah but to continue the metaphor the problem is with the right spec you have so many tax deductions that the tax ends up being miniscule.

Thief needs tax reform to close some of those loopholes.

Whether it’s an exploit or not doesn’t really matter. It is clearly a bad design decision and needs to be removed.

Mesmer and Thief are clearly classes designed for 1v1. It’s no surprise they do much better than other classes in small engagements.

It’s basically just a fundamental design flaw. GW2 clearly has some classes that are just better suited to diong what you do in sPvP than others.

But it is ruining the sPVP game. Even without looking at balance itself it ruins the fun of the game when 75% of sPVP participants are one of just three classes.

Ele finisher uses pretty much his only survivability cooldown and puts it on a 90 sec cooldown. This on the squishiest class in the game (light armor + lowest hp table).

But yes the problem is not so much stealth stomp as the fact that it’s so unequally distributed, like almost everything else in this game.

Mesmers and Thiefs not only get ridiculously overpowered downed states, they also have the abilities that make stomping easiest. GG Arenanet. >< And then they also have the best ability to down people in the first place. It is really mindboggling.

Mesmer DPS isn’t that awesome or bursty, but it can feel that way on the receiving end because of a quirk with how illusions deal damage. The problem is that it’s too spiky because illusions only attack every 4-5 seconds.

EQ1 chanter did stuff no other class could begin to do.

Ele isn’t anywhere near that level. The closest we come is staff support, which has significantly more combo fields than other classes…but it’s still pretty minor. Which is how GW2 is designed. Unlike EQ1 everyone is supposed to be able to do everything in GW2, more or less.

Obviously Mesmer. Because they are the best at pretty much everything.

If you want something besides a Mesmer (why would you?), defensive spec engi is the most obvious, but necro or ele specced right can also hold nodes well.

DoctorWhy.3847:

And I have a feeling that it will take a year of complaining before they change their thinking, if they ever do.

I do agree that something needs to change if they ever hope to balance the necro well (without underpowering it in order to make up for the 1 strength). However, none of the classes are really structured all the same, so I don’t think they should make DS too similar to adrenaline. Here is what I mean (I could be wrong with some of these, considering I only really know the thief and necro):

1. Necro – Death shroud
2. Thief – Initiative instead of cooldowns
3. Warriors – adrenaline
4. Guardian – Virtues
5. Engineer – Turret thingys
6. Mesmer – Illusions
7. Ranger – Pets (I guess)
8. Elementalists – Attunements

If they have the ability to balance all of these different skills, why do they not have the ability to make death shroud work as well? Why are they thinking “Well DS is strong, so we will make necros weak?” I don’t know why they think like this. Your proposed change doesn’t really work, but I see what you are getting at and agree that something needs to change.

Well I tried to keep my version of DS a bit distinct. It would have 5 levels, not 3, and it would deplete over time, not immediately. When you add in the defensive rather than offensive focus it becomes quite different from adrenaline.

But like I said the solution isn’t the important thing. It’s just one possible solution of many. The point is that DS as it currently stands is always going to make necro balance bad. We’re always going to be kittens who can live a few seconds longer as long as DS remains the type of ability it is.

Uh the point isn’t that I don’t like the mechanic. The point is the mechanic is going to continually cripple the class because it is too powerful.

There are lots of other ways to fix it besides the one I suggested but the basic point is DS as it currently stands is like paladin bubble: it is an inherently unbalancable ability. If you give necros something as powerful as DS you are going to have to keep them kitten otherwise. The Dev got that part of his response right.

And it is extremely powerful. It is certainly not always extremely powerful but having a form that as even the whiner in this thread notes is going to give you 5-8 more seconds of life and a new set of skills is always going to be situationally extremely powerful.

There are some issues with mesmer stacking. It is pretty clear mesmers were designed with the thought that there’s only be one fighting you at a time. When you get 2-3 the chaos gets multiplied in a way that makes it mostly unmanageable. Especially when you have cheese like 3+ portals. Going through a portal needs to put your own portal on cooldown if you have it.

what do bugs have to do with conditionmancers vs shortbow rangers?

Which is funny because it shows they recognize the issue but perversely don’t see it as a problem. It isn’t a question of ignorance on their part – they’re actually totally wrong on their balance philosophy. Which is actually worse.

That’s the statement. I agree it was a while ago but there’s no indication they’ve changed their position at all.

The statement is quite clear: necros won’t be getting any buffs for now because we think DS is so powerful.

It’s awful reasoning, but it’s THEIR reasoning.

Chrysalis.5983:

There are really only two problems with the Engineer down state

1: The 1 is a random condition that only grants a damaging condition 1/3rd of the time. Cripple is USELESS the vast majority of the time when you’re down and so is chilled. More annoyingly it doesn’t have access to poison or burn. If it’s going to be random, it should have a chance of inflicting anything that isn’t an interrupt or stun. Otherwise make it semi-reliable. (It really should have access to burn because just about any other class’s 1s outdamage in a conditions build.)

2. The 3 ability has a self damage component.

PS: Dude above me, Moa can be cast from stealth and most 1v1 mesmers are going to have Decoy in their build. For every counter, there is a way around it. Practically the only balance Moa has is its incredible cooldown of 3 minutes.

I thought stealth dropped when you started casting it? If not that should obviously be fixed.

See statement in this thread, page 2:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/pvp/pvp/I-play-a-necro-but-I-traid-a-warrior-for-one-play-session/page/2

the tl;dr version is they arn’t gonna buff necros any time soon because they think DS is so powerful the class has to remain bad otherwise.

Balancing a class around one very powerful ability always leads to the same result: an underpowered class with one gimmick.

Arenanet has shown with necros they haven’t learned from wow’s experience with paladins at all. Wow had tremendous trouble with the paladin class for years because of the paladin’s bubble. The class had to be undertuned in general to make up for the 8 second of complete invulnerability, which left the class very powerful in certain circumstances and very underpowered in others.

DS is basically the same thing. It’s just a bad way to balance a class.

DS needs to be removed or changed to something easier to balance or necros will continue to be underpowered otherwise.

One option would be to change DS to something more like adrenaline for warriors. Instead of granting a new skill bar, just make it an F1 skill. Give it five bars that charge the same way life force charges now. When you active DS, it depletes at the rate of 1 bar per second and grants block during that time. With a full DS bar that means you have 5 seconds of block to use either all are once or split up. Keep the cooldown on use and about the same speed of life force generation.

There’s lots of other options too but the point is DS needs to become more like a normal F1 ability and not like a whole new game state. If it doesn’t Necros will stay lame.

This thread really shows why balancing around an ability like DS is a bad idea.

It’s very much like paladin bubble in early wow: because of one ridiculously powerful ability, everything else about paladins had to be subpar. Leading to a situation where the class is subpar in every way except for one particular, extremely powerful ability.

That’s just bad game design.

They ought to get rid of DS entirely or make it a much simpler mechanism that works similar to how warrior adrenaline works: no new skill bar, just an F1 skill with 5ish levels, with greater effects at each level. Have it give 1 second of block per bar, with the bar depleting at the rate of 1 per second.

This means at full DS you have 5 seconds of block saved up that can be either used all at once or distributed across several uses or whatever combination of the two you want. Meanwhile you can still use your normal skills and arn’t pigeonholed into using a bunch of skills that are mostly ineffective for the builds most necros use.

Asmodean.5820:

Kalar Meadia.8439:

Keep in mind that these pets you also look down upon compared to Mesmer Illusions also stick onto the real mesmer like glue.

Seriously, you have no clue what you talk about. Necro pets do NOT stay on the mesmer. Thieves’ vanish abilities make them bogus and unresponsive, too.
It gets even worse (if that is possible) when a Mesmer drops his clones and phantasms and then vanishes. Then you can be 100% certain that the pets lose their target (the mesmer) and attack the clones.

But hey, why bother? You have an I-Win button versus necros with pets anyway. Yes, just 1 button press is enough: transform him into a Moa and all pets are gone and the CDs are 30sec-2min

Brilliant balancing!

Regardless of that the necro pets have even trouble to attack anything at all /chuckle

Moa is a 2 second cast time ability with a very distinctive animation. Dodge it or rupt it. It’s not that hard. Moa is lame but very counterable unless you’re in a zerg or something.

edit: More on topic, the problem isn’t so much the damage it’s the spikyness because the attack time is so high. IIRC phantasms hit once every 4-5 seconds. They should hit once every second instead for 20% of the damage.

The current system both overly frontloads the damage and misleads people into thinking they’re taking much higher DPS than they actually are.

Dumbfire pets need to stop doing anything when their master is downed. Making them despawn is too punitive I think. If you get revived they should become active again.

It also makes some sense from a lore point of view. If theirmaster’s down the pets don’t know what to do so they just sit there until he gets back up and can start ordering them around again.

P.S. Learn to rupt or dodge Moa. It is lame but it has a very distinctive 2 second cast time. If you get hit by it in anything but a big battle (where the mesmer is kittening himself by not taking time warp instead) it’s your own fault.

The lowest tier of HP classes could use a boost but it can’t happen right now because guardian and theif are borderline OP already. I guess they could move just ele to the middle tier of HP.