Guild Wars 2

Lynnie.7213:

This is how you win against classes that have better condi application than you:
https://youtu.be/66Uyjnisldg?t=5m26s

And this lol

I feel the whole “electricity” themed engineer potential isn’t being tapped. 1 trait? That’s it? Sad.

Of all the possibilities for axe the idea of the axe being able to reduce the recharge of all of your other skills is my favourite.

Would make for some interesting builds being able to reduce cooldown of skills like wells for PvE or being able to use epidemic more often etc. Something like 2% recharge per auto attack or something.

I’ll just say that I have never played anything so broken as condi signet necro lmao. Also, corrupt boon is a terrible skill to use when you’re doing a signet necro build. Corrupt boon literally only does anything vs boons so if your opponent has none, it’s useless. It also damages yourself.

Signet of the Locust is better because it corrupts 2 boons in AOE, the cooldown is 16 seconds shorter, it gives you movement speed, it gives you sustain and deals damage. It’s basically a heal skill on your utility slot.

I don’t like the patch overall. Skill has gone out the window and there is less build diversity. I especially hate the fact that stats were removed from trait lines. Now you’re forced into pure specs in SPvP. No more “berserker but with some tankiness” or anything like that.

It’s terrible. Can’t really make any hybrid builds on any class now. Celestial works on necromancer though. Celestial is the only option for hybrids now.

Couldve been 135 dunno tho

Shield #4 – Now grants aegis to allies and vulnerability to foes.
Shield #5 – Maintains current effects but also: Creates a symbol of resistance – Allies standing in the symbol gain resistance.
Shield #5 (sequence) – Detonating the bubble also grants protection to allies.

Every weapon has a unique symbol and we shall give one to the guardian shield. This makes it a real protective bubble; immunity to projectiles, conditions and defense against melee attacks by detonating the bubble to inflict CC and grant protection, causing a blast finisher that also gives allies light aura.

Then, change the shield trait to:
Shield Trait: Shield skills recharge 5% faster per ally and foe hit. Shield skills also blind foes. (50% maximum recharge potential if there are 5 allies and 5 foes hit)

There. That’s how you balance.

Not: “well uhh wut if we decris cooldown l0l”
You guys had years to balance, cmon. I made this in roughly 137 seconds.

Btw still waiting for scepter to get a symbol for smite. Symbol should obviously inflict damage and vulnerability since vulnerability now scales with power and condition damage which is exactly what scepter does best.

Cool, had no idea flamethrower previously had that skill lol. Googled it and here it is for anyone wondering:

Demonstration of Backdraft
Example of Backdraft used in battle

Now that burn damage was nerfed, burn now stacks intensity and fraction of a second for damaging conditions inflict partial damage now?

Namely, can we change:
- Flame Jet
- Incendiary Ammo
- Air Blast

Flame Jet
Can we remove the arbitrary burning on the last hit of flame jet? Instead, make every hit of the flamethrower inflict 1 stack of burn for 0.5 seconds. This will spread the damage out evenly and make it a better hybrid brawler weapon. Should an opponent get hit by all 10 hits, this will inflict a maximum overall total of 5s of burn.

Since flame jet does five hits per second, this means that (without any condition duration increase) your target will have only a maximum of 2.5 stacks of burning on them at any given time (quickness excluded).

You might as well remove the 10% damage increase against burning foes as well since this was an attempt to boost the auto attack damage when burn didn’t stack intensity.

(Is my maths wrong?)

Incendiary Ammo
This toolbelt skill was an attempt to make flame jet seem like it inflicts burn. This toolbelt skill is bad and unnecessary when flame jet itself can now be changed.

Incendiary Ammo should be changed to something else entirely. Something with “utility” would be nice.

Example:
Blinding Powder – Throw to inflict blind in 240 radius.

Air Blast
Remove the burn extend duration because it was also an attempt to buff flame jet.

Axe was the only weapon that wasn’t buffed other than axe #3. My proposal is to make axe #1 – Rending Claws – attack 1% faster per vulnerability stack on the opponent and to grant 1s of alacrity on the second strike.

That gives you the ability to recharge all of your skills at varying rates with axe 1 dependant on vulnerability on the opponent.

This kind of keeps with the theme of necromancers “ripping the life” out of the opponent. This will also give the axe its role; that being more of a teamplay bruiser build.

I don’t care if alacrity is supposed to be for mesmers only.

I also don’t feel cleave is really necessary anymore what with the reaper and greatsword coming.

Necromancer is getting a lot of nerfs and the consume conditions recharge increase and vulnerability is the biggest. Yet, all I’m reading is stuff like, “Well, I guess I understand the change” or “It makes sense if…”.

No, just no. The necromancer is getting gutted with these changes. Necromancer will die easier than ever before.

The nerfs are bad enough but our trait lines are becoming utter garbage in the process. A minor trait that gives you and minions protection when exiting death shroud? “But Zefrost, even if you don’t have minions you still get protection!” I don’t care, this is horrible design/synergy. How does this even synergize with traits in the same tier like armored shroud or soul comprehension?

Answer: it doesn’t.

Then we have the blood magic changes. What on earth kind of balance is this? No one in the existence of ever has ever suggested these types of changes. Life transfer now teleports downed allies to your location and heals them?

WHY?!

That is a very strange (kittened) change. How about a trait that makes life transfer draw conditions from your allies to yourself? Yep – that seems necromancery (and we can already do it underwater) This is also something that has been suggested before by myself and others.

Anyone trying to defend the necromancer now is in a serious denial problem. I am ashamed to even have a necromancer now, let alone that the majority of my time was spent (wasted) on it. The necromancer is forever garbage tier.

Axe skill #2 now converts a boon into a condition – that’s a good change. Good job.

The entire thought process of every balance change that is happening is horrible balance and I feel like Johnathan Sharp was the glue that held this type of “balance” from happening. I would rather have no balance than this. You don’t just make everything baseline, combine traits together whilst buffing traits and then give players new and better traits to choose from.

You have butchered the game. Please bring back Johnathan Sharp.

PS. I will make it my mission in yolo que to use the trait that stops allies from bleeding out whilst /sitting beside my ally while the opponent holds a point.

Cool trait. I will use it.

I never use Signet of Spite anymore unless I fear them first or the opponent is in panic or I know they have nothing left to negate the skill. Too many times I whiffed Signet of Spite without setting it up properly.

The same goes for other abilities. I don’t know why condition necromancers never use scepter 3. The best time to use it, IMO, is after you overload them with condis and the immobilize from tainted shackles hits them

There were times when you were desperate for life force but if you just used scepter 3 you would have been fine.

If AOE superspeed is the reason for this then they should simply not introduce AOE superspeed.

Can’t see how it can be an issue anyway. An engineer probably has the furthest leap possible and has it destroyed the game? I don’t think so.

This isn’t referring to the other bajillion power creep updates incoming.

Chill and cripple will no longer affect movement speed skills? What is the point of these conditions, then? NO ONE in the entire game is ever going to kill a greatsword/hammer warrior ever again. There are other problems as well.

This is a really stupid change.

Laraley.7695:

Zefrost.3425:

Being able to spam backstab until it hits through a block, a dodge and a blind is no different than if a warrior could spam eviscerate until it successfully hits you.

Why is it ok for thieves to spam backstab? Why don’t we let warriors spam eviscerate then. That would be balanced.

Yes, comparing a skill that’s only available when you’re in stealth and a skill that’s avialable at all times seems like a strong argument.

Stealth is more readily available than a full bar of adrenaline.

Being able to spam backstab until it hits through a block, a dodge and a blind is no different than if a warrior could spam eviscerate until it successfully hits you.

Why is it ok for thieves to spam backstab? Why don’t we let warriors spam eviscerate then. That would be balanced.

Yep it should. Mace auto heal should have larger radius too. Also, mace auto #2 should inflict cripple.

Axe really does need an identity – it’s identity seems like it was supposed to be team based. Scepter is condition, dagger is power and/or life siphon (which never took off). Axe #3 is clearly “team based” because you get retaliation that scales up with more opponents (which you shouldn’t be fighting multiple opponents unless you’re in a team fight). Axe #2 is whatever but axe #1 is vulnerability which scales for allies.

I think just giving axe #1 cleave and increased damage would fix it, honestly. This has been my favourite weapon to fight with since ever but axe #1 sucks so bad. Maybe give protection or weakness on axe #3 as well as retaliation and cripple? Or give it a stun or a blast finisher, I don’t care.

Do anything to axe, at all.

Just don’t force me into greatsword >.> I like using off-hand dagger for condition removal.

(WvW) Starting to think about making mine a hydrid power/condi with might stacking going with some sort of mix of rabid and berserker. Should work with the upcoming stat changes.

Could use adventurer runes and energy sigils.

Going reaper, spite and soul reaping. The signet trait might not be bad either, though I’m not sure I want to use signets over a mix of utilities/spectrals.

That would give me power and condition damage as main stats (plus high might stacks), precision as second highest stat and toughness/ferocity as third highest stats. Don’t really need healing power or vitality.

Amazing idea. Any way to incorporate this into other aspects of WvW?

You gotta be kittentin me right? Who actually animation canceled with this skill? Why would you even do it anyway? So that you could deal insanely weak damage a little bit faster? Or inflict vulnerability faster to a single target whereas other classes can do it without animation canceling?

I must be missing something, surely.

• Change Jagged Horrors themselves since they suck in all abilities that use them; Mark of Horror, Runes of the Lich, Death Nova and Rise.

Every sigil should strive to be like Sigil of Impact – 10% more damage to disabled foes.
This is one of the most balanced sigils in the game since it requires you to actually do something to get a reward. Funny thing is that it’s not a bad sigil even now being overshadowed by the broken ones.

So therefore, balancing the broken sigils will improve this game a hell of a lot. Would prefer to see changes like this:

Sigil of Doom – Poison further decreases heal potency by 7%.
Sigil of Air – Activates when a single strike does 25% of an opponents max health. (5scd)

Just some examples…

I think it’s missing the role of requiring skill to win.

A few times in the reaper showcase Robert used whirl finishers. It looks like whirling bolts now home to the nearest target.

https://youtu.be/DjOrs5krQRw?t=1816

An interesting build concept would be Reaper, Spite and Death Magic. Using at least the greatsword and the new shout that makes attacks unblockable and corrupting boons/inflicting vulnerability – as well as choosing many other vulnerability traits.

http://dulfy.net/gw2traits#build=AgQGvAHoA7w~

With full cavaliers you should be able to reach 3600-3900 armor while in death shroud (not sure how stats are being affected by being removed from traits) and be able to achieve 2300+ power, 200%+ critical damage and sit around 30%-%40 critical hit chance with all of the vulnerability you can constantly dish out.

Gaining protection exiting death shroud and chilled foes dealing 15% less damage to you on top of that.. the damage of berserker with the survivability of a beast? All you need is condition removal which we have plenty of. I would probably run that vulnerability shout, consume conditions, well of power and whatever else for the last utility.

Sounds fun. Sounds more viable than running full berserker in PvP which you’ll have to do now that stats are gone from traits. No more having berserker with some toughness etc.

I’m theorycrafting more for WvW though.

You’d think that by playing necro since GW1 you would have lrnt 2 play by now.

And I agree with Bhawb.

I want to see it be stability and 90s cooldown.

Can someone put roberts face on the reaper image instead of colins face?

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/images/4/47/Reaper_concept_art.jpg

Edit: Nevermind. I did it in MS Paint!

It’s safe to say he was using a terrible spec for some reason. He had 25k-30k hp in the clips.

Hopefully the adept necro trait that causes adjacent ice explosions causes the explosion to work from the mesmer master trait that creates a clone after shatter causing mesmer to kill itself.

Ether Renewal… it’s called covering your heal. Something skilled players do.

The vampiric and garbage regen shouldn’t even be the minors in blood magic IMO. The minors should be support traits like elementalist water magic trait line. Would like to see minors being transfusion, deathly invigoration etc. or something like that.

That regen trait, at least, has got to go… for the love of grenth. -.-

Heal will basically be for (solo) PvE and WvW only. In front line you will have a very good heal on a 13s cooldown with that one trait. That’s pretty kitten good. We just need our shout elite to grant us stability.

Perhaps the heal shout should grant us resistance instead of the elite.

Then that becomes superior to Strength of the Fallen where you lose 1 condition every 10s.

1 of them needs to go. Preferably for retributive armor where you gain precision based on toughness.

These 2 traits directly compete with each other and if smiters boon only works with heal skill then strength of the fallen is better.

You might as well remove one of these traits in the upcoming changes and keep retributive armor instead.

I agree than tainted shackles should inflict taunt and that life blast should be a projectile finisher. Dark Path should revert to how it was way back in beta where it was a ground targeted teleport that caused AOE blind.

Lily.1935:

Zefrost.3425:

Lily.1935:

Also, the grandmaster you’ve replaced LC with Your Withering Precision would be insanely broken with the reaper.

Not really. In the example I gave you would have to spec into Reaper, Blood Magic and Curses. Decimate Defenses (vulnerability = more precision) doesn’t really do much for this build and the fury from Furious Demise only lasts 5s. You won’t be achieving 100% critical hit chance unless you become a glass cannon.

If you skip the blood magic part then you could go into soul reaping and achieve 100%.

But you also have to be around multiple enemies for it to really make a difference.

And let’s be realistic… Anet is completely throwing balance out the window with all of these changes they’re making anyway. Everything is going to be broken when it ships.

I don’t need to spec into precision. I can take Soul reaping along with reaper and get 100% crit chance with 0 investment in precision. Or I can get minor precision gear and still get 100% crit chance without soul reaping. Its insanely broken. I’d be transferring minimum of 2.5 conditions a second. Max would be 12.5 a second. That is absolutely busted.

It would be with an auto attack that requires you to be in melee range at all times. I still doubt it would be overpowered because underwater plague blast baseline transfers 1 condition but that’s a ranged attack that is safer to use whereas this would require you to be in melee range and have high critical hit chance.

Though I suppose Withering Precision could cause life blast to inflict weakness on critical hits instead of transfer a condition. I’d be cool with that too.

What if instead of gradually losing health:
Jagged Horrors absorb damage that you would have received instead?

Possibly give them an effect that when they die they also “siphon health” from nearby foes and grant it to you, like how you gain life force when a minion dies?

If they absorbed damage that you would have received then that would give you something that other minions don’t and the “Rise” shout would be a sort of pseudo aegis or invuln.

This would also make Lich Form’s Mark of Horror skill an actually really good skill for once (currently sucks), giving you some (needed) survivability in Lich Form against focus fire.

According to the wiki Jagged Horrors currently have 8700 health. Some fine tuning is all that this would need. Or perhaps keep the health degeneration but lower their pace of health degeneration?

I think that Your Soul is Mine! (heal) should become a stunbreaker. That will give it something that the other heals don’t.

If (core) necromancer doesn’t change much from the way Anet is currently changing it, then all I can say is…

Can’t wait to become a revenant!

Lily.1935:

Also, the grandmaster you’ve replaced LC with Your Withering Precision would be insanely broken with the reaper.

Not really. In the example I gave you would have to spec into Reaper, Blood Magic and Curses. Decimate Defenses (vulnerability = more precision) doesn’t really do much for this build and the fury from Furious Demise only lasts 5s. You won’t be achieving 100% critical hit chance unless you become a glass cannon.

If you skip the blood magic part then you could go into soul reaping and achieve 100%.

But you also have to be around multiple enemies for it to really make a difference.

And let’s be realistic… Anet is completely throwing balance out the window with all of these changes they’re making anyway. Everything is going to be broken when it ships.

Pretty sure none of us like how curses is going to turn out when it goes live, so let’s fix it before it’s too late. It’s a total mess in Anet’s current upcoming iteration.

These are my ideas:

Baseline necromancer changes
- Wail of Doom no longer inflicts daze; now inflicts 2s of fear in a conal arc.

Minors
Barbed Precision – Critical hits have 66% chance to inflict bleed.
Furious Demise – Gain fury when entering death shroud.
Reaper’s Precision – Critical hits have 33% chance to grant 1% life force.

Adept
Chilling Darkness – Blinding foes inflicts chill.
Toxic Landing – Fall damage stuff; corruption skills recharge 20% faster.
Weakening Shroud – Cast enfeebling blood when entering death shroud. (No CD)

Master
Lingering Curse – Condition dmg +150 and condition duration +10% on nearby allies.
Path of Corruption – Dark Path converts 2 boons into conditions.
Banshee’s Wail – Warhorn skills recharge 20% faster and are 50% more effective.

Grandmaster
Withering Precision – Life blast transfers 1 condition to foes on critical hits or life blast inflicts weakness on critical hits.
Parasitic Contagion – Outgoing condition damage heals you.
Terror – Fear deals damage.

A layout like this will actually synergize with other trait lines. The maximum fear duration that Wail of Doom could achieve is 4s if you trait for Banshee’s Wail and Master of Terror in Soul Reaping; fear makes more sense and synergy than daze.

We get rid of the terrible Target the Weak trait and move Reaper’s Precision in its place which, in turn, stops that trait from sucking as well. It makes sense as the grandmaster minor because it’s based on critical hits like the rest of the minors are. Grants some survivability.

Don’t worry. Our next specialization will focus on becoming one with the shadows and involve tactical gameplay and being able to stealth/teleport. Source?: Me.

Perhaps jagged horrors should be changed, baseline, to siphon health from foes to their master?

Greatsword #4 pulses AOE damage as a dark field and after like 3 seconds it AOE blinds anyone in the area.

Seems like the ultimate PvE spec.

Vuln, burn, high dmg AOE auto attacks. Good in PvE but we are still ragdoll in PvP.

Agreed. It should reflect projectiles in a front arc.

I’ll try to be direct:

• Death’s Charge (death shroud #2) s should not inflict poison, it should inflict AOE blind. The poison doesn’t make any sense. If you are charging into a group of enemies, you want to AOE blind them.

• Spin2win death shroud skill #4.
This skill is the only death shroud skill that is useless for condition builds. This should, at the very least , evade for the duration.

• Greatsword skill #4 should pulse AOE blind for the duration of the skill.

Some of the traits are bad too but I forget what they are until the stream is over…

I’m 99% sure our new elite will be the defiance bar. This elite better be like the revenant one where it is toggle-able.

(Edit as I’m typing)
I guess if it’s a shout it won’t be toggle-able. >.>

But yeah…

If the other garbage that isn’t part of the elite spec doesn’t change as well, it will still wipe out 50% of the remaining necro population IMO.

At least the necros that actually know how to necro and don’t still think it has a 2nd life bar.