Guild Wars 2

Tech isn’t this game’s problem. GW2 is still to this day one of the better action combat MMO’s available. ESO tried action combat, but they are clunky. BDO has action combat, quite good I might add, but its ruined by game’s developers wanting to make the game RNG based with heavy gear grind (Korean style p2w). WoW still isn’t up to date with action combat, they’re still stand & cast with some moving parts but still for the most part, traditional combat with no active dodges. There are other games with decent combat but plagued with other engine issues.

GW2’s action combat and its game engine is one of the things carrying this game right now. Its problems have more to do with game’s balance, and not just profession balance, but balance between resources allocated for PvE, PvP, and WvW. Anet seems to be having difficulties balancing the priorities between these 3 very different game modes. It just feels they’re stretched thin, and they’re already splitting their resources to develop the next expansion. This is while players are still crying for more content, new maps, better class balance, etc..

There’s no doubt Anet likely make more money from PvE players. But keep in mind PvP is where you get the more enthusiastic and vocal crowd, where your virals come from. PvP’s got the more passionate bunch, where competition & esports have a place. Hard part for Anet is to balance both and please everybody.

I ran celestial during HoT beta weekends and it was fun. Of course Anet effed it all up shortly after launch.

Sounds forced and it’s a great way to kill off player population for the duration of this experiment. They’ve tried gimmicks like these before, remember the golem event? Yeah what a mess it was, it literally broke WvW for a whole week and activities died down drastically after people tried it for a day or two.

Forced universal changes that affect player’s enjoyment of a game mode isn’t going to do any good. What they need more of is short term events and tournaments that have to do with goals and achievements. Not gimmicks that just end up ticking off a large portion of the player population.

You play full zerker power reaper in pvp and solo wvw roam?

They were headed in the right direction with Reaper initially, with GS having a pull, chill being our specialty, power having a place due to added sustain via blighter’s boon, etc.. But they never buffed GS enough to be competitive in PvP. And they absolutely butchered chill & blighter’s boon.

This whole movie monster theme, I’d say warriors perform that best atm.

You will unfortunately be kited to death using that build. And condi reapers will make you ponder life and wonder how necros can be so bad at WvW roaming, yet power reaper gets owned by condi reaper that hard.

Are they gonna play capricorn or is it still not in the rotation?

It requires skill to epidemic? Whoa, let’s not get too carried away :p

Reason it’s not used widely is because if you bring resistance & cleanse, the heavy condi comps end up getting screwed. It’s how it works in ZvZ. Problem with WvW roaming is everybody thinks they don’t need to bring resistance & cleanse, and that they could just cheese condi dump. That’s why we see so many min/max cheese builds roaming. So it ends up being whoever condi dumps first wins, which is lame as hell.

People small group roaming tend to either bring full power burst or full condi. If you try to play it more like sPvP, you’ll find yourself doing a lot better against full condi comps. As necros are ever so easy to train down.

Yeah signet of spite is pretty weak in terms of damage. It overloads you with condi’s but doesn’t actually load large stacks of damaging condi’s. Blood is Power gives you long duration bleeds, but it doesn’t tick for that high. You shouldn’t die in “seconds” from it.

Honestly I would look at your team mates or players on your side, culprit is likely someone focus target the necro, load them up with condi’s and the necro transferred it back to you. That’s currently our best burst…by utilizing other classes’ condi and they honestly have faster & larger burst than we do.

Like nothing makes me happier to see a warrior come raging after me, and I transfer all that burn onto a team mate of theirs. Of course I’m not out of heat even after the condi transfer, because warriors can stick on you like crazy.

I have 4 elite specs unlocked, I dread thinking about going into HoT to unlock more. I do want to unlock more elite specs, but I just can’t stand grinding more HoT PvE, and I certainly don’t want to run around in WvW using any inferior baseline og classes.

I would love to have a reward track that allows me to work hero points in PvP. This way I can have fun playing the new elite specs, learn about them, and work towards unlocking them. It won’t hurt anything to have this really, it would only encourage people to play multi-modes.

Since it’s WvW, it could be the runes they’re using also. Perplexity can still stack good amount of confusion. Do you remember if there was confusion in your stacks?

Also if it wasn’t a 1v1, it’s easy for a necro who got large stacks of burn, confusion, and torment to send it all to you. Other classes are able to open up with large condi bursts, and while necros don’t really have that condi burst, we’re good at transferring them. So by chance were you playing with a condi warrior, mesmer, or rev?

Best thing they did was to release Capricorn. I see people really enjoying this map, I am too. I doubt I would be playing GW2 at all right now if it wasn’t for Capricorn. Finally a map with no npc’s & siege bull crap. Just players fighting each other with nice comeback mechanics to keep games rather close and interesting.

It seems that way because you are getting hit more, as reaper shroud requires you to be closer to your targets. In doing so you stand in more fields and random bombs. Where as death shroud allows you to stay more at range.

A lot of people will play both. GW2 is carried by good action combat gameplay running on a fairly decent engine. It’s a beautiful game with beautiful character models. WoW on the other hand have the content many MMO gamers look for, that carrot on a stick with loot to obtain, upgrades to get, raids to do, dungeons to run, and their newly revamped transmog system is pretty darn awesome. WoW’s arena is also more esports worthy than GW2’s sPvP, and their BG’s are more balanced and faster paced than GW2’s forever unbalanced WvW.

While WoW’s combat isn’t action based, it is more complex on a mathematical scale. They have add-ons that’ll give you more details you could ever hope for. Details on what skills did how much damage during a raid or BG run. Details on how often certain skills proc’ed, how much each skills healed you for, how much you received heals from others, etc.. These details mean a lot to gamers and they get players more thralled into their games as they tweak talents and such. Only if WoW could ever go action combat like GW2’s combat…that’ll be the day.

GW2’s action combat is great, I feel it’s the one thing keeping this game up there at the moment. But I just wish Anet would give us more stats and detailed info on our combat abilities like many other games already do. Number crunching can be fun as you try to progress and improve your characters.

Pros and cons to both games, there will be plenty of people that’ll play both games and hop back & forth.

Necros don’t have that good of condi burst ever since they nerfed chill damage, and even pre-nerf it wasn’t top tier. Compared to other classes we’re quite mild. If you got condi bombed down, are you by chance running a condi build yourself? Because necros are good at transferring all that condi you pump out right back to you, and that’s pretty much our “burst”.

That or you got into a fear lock rotation but it’s not as effective now since nightmare runes got nerfed (it no longer passively fear).

Strength:
-Good damage when left alone
-Good aoe/downstate cleave damage
-Good access to corrupt boons
-Able to manage/transfer condi’s

Weakness:
-Against competent opponents you’ll be target #1
-Bad mobility even with added reaper leap
-No active defense (no invulns, blocks, evades, stealth)
-Prone to get cc’ed to death due to lack of stab & resistance

In small group WvW roaming, necros can be fun with good support from your group mates. However you’ll find that against any decent players, they’ll focus target you first. This can be fun and challenging, but it can also get old fast. It’s something you either get used to or you’re best looking elsewhere and play another class.

One problem with WvW is that it’s not tuned the same way PvP is. There are runes, sigils, and amulets available in WvW that aren’t available in PvP due to balance issues. So you’ll pretty much be facing lots of cheese min/max builds that can burst you down before you can blink in small group situations. Because of this, while I prefer power builds and power gameplay, I recommend playing condi builds in small group situations.

It is what it is, condi builds allow you to tank up without sacrificing your condi damage. You’ll also be better at corrupt boons and managing condi transfers. This is important because you’ll face lots of min/max condi builds while roaming. Although since you won’t be solo and will have group support, power builds can be fun and can be viable. Just that you’ll find it frustrating when you’re cc’ed and focused, forcing you to play more defensively, and that’s not how power build plays.

Funny you mentioned a warrior. Warriors right now are top dogs, they recently got buffed and they’re now a thorn on our sides. But I understand looks & styles matter so give necros a try. Note that you’ll want to unlock Reaper right away. Without the added mobility, personal stab, and access to some shouts, you’ll be at a great disadvantage when you get focused on in small group gameplay.

Only people who are in the group of “have’s” would complain about loot. These are folks that likely play the market and watch the market on a daily basis. It’s like they’re the rich people of real world complaining about others getting good things, or complaining about rent prices dropping because they’re the ones owning apt complexes.

As for the majority of the rest of the playerbase who don’t have, most people don’t have excess materials and items to sell, most people are dirt poor. Sorry but most people are enjoying the loot. Don’t let it stop for the “have’s”.

Part of the problems within the past year is that the dev’s visions of necromancers got changed and do not match reality. For awhile it did, back during HoT beta weekends when Robert Gee showed us how promising Reapers were. We had access to chill to keep enemies close, we had added sustain via blighter’s boon to compensate for our lack of active defense, and we finally got some personal stab so we aren’t tossed around like a ragdoll as much. Remember those Robert Gee appreciation threads on both necro & mesmer forums? I praised our savior Robert Gee for giving us an elite spec that I thought was fun, action filled, engaging, and competitive. And I was running mostly power reaper builds back then.

So what happened when HoT launched…

-First nerf came in on blighter’s boon, while some say it became better for soloers, it effectively made us worse in team fight situations (where reapers really belong).

-While Power enthusiasts were asking for Greatsword buffs, they buffed Scepter instead, pushing the meta further towards condi. Apparently spamming scepter auto is fun to someone on the class balance team.

-Then the nerf to chill came down hard. Chill damage was overtuned, even necros admit to that. But they didn’t just nerf chill damage, they stripped chill damage completely and replaced it with bleed. They also at the same time nerfed chill duration all around, so we can no longer keep enemies close. I can’t remember the last time anybody complained about chill during this past season, and I wonder why.

-In the same patch where chill got gutted, they nerfed our reaper shroud 3 stab uptime. They reduced our stab uptime and increased the cd on it. This hurt more than you can imagine, because I’m once again tossed around like a ragdoll. Pulled, pushed, knocked down, stunned, dazed, feared, all common occurrence now when you’re in a team fight against worthy, competent opponents.

By now all viable power reaper builds went out of the window, Robert Gee’s vision of Reapers disappeared. Nerfing chill for sake of balancing condi meta directly affected power reaper builds as well

-Of course everybody knows about the latest Rise nerf. While I can understand this same type of nerfs to other classes that have active defense, this nerf on us really hurt. We still have to use it because it’s either this or spectral armor. But let’s not sugar coat this, this was a harsh nerf.

They pretty much sold us a vision of a wonderful elite spec that upgraded baseline necros and made us better. We had viable power & condi reaper builds that were both competitive but not overpowering at HoT launch. Then they chopped it all up and we’ve seen a steady string of nerfs since HoT. All this because Anet is incapable of balancing sPvP and giving each classes multiple viable builds.

Bottom line is right now, condi reaper is still viable in competitive play. But we are easily trained down, easily cc’ed, and we are only dangerous when we are left alone which we almost never are against competent players. In WvW power is still viable in large scale zergs but the boonshare meta has made things more difficult for us; there are more boons than we can corrupt and power damage is reduced by all sorts of protection boons and damage mitigation. In PvE…well who cares, PvE is easy in GW2 no matter what class you play.

So yeah, I guess we’ll have to wait until the next expansion to hear from Robert again, and see what he’s gonna sell us next. If it wasn’t for the new Capricorn map being fun, I doubt I would be playing this game right now.

This may very well be a technological limitation more than a hardware issue (meaning it’s not easily solved by simply upgrading server hardware). GW2 is an action combat MMO, this means there’s more for the server to track. Every player movement, every dodge, every condi ticks, every boons, every blocks, reflects, active & passive procs, every stab strips and invulnerabilities, every positional leaps/teleports, etc.. I’m not sure if they will ever be able to fix the 3-way skills lag.

This issue used to be better, but there was also a time when boons, condi’s, and cc’s worked differently. There was less computations, now there’s more. While I do believe they’re always working on the skills lag issue, I feel it’s something they just say because what else are they going to say? No they aren’t working on it? I just don’t believe it’s something they can fix for WvW during those 3-way battles.

They’ve created a monster and they’ve added more onto the monster, and they’ll be adding even more to the monster next expansion. I see the issue getting worse not better. Even a game like WoW that uses much less pixels, a non-action based MMO, gets very laggy when you have 60 people battling in the same area (Ashran for an example). And 60, that’s like the numbers in a blob on just 1 side during a 3-way battle.

Majority of the people won’t be transferring weekly, don’t worry about that. It’s a big deal for guilds to move, it’s quite expensive and they often lose a few players in the process.

Glicko has been proven it can be manipulated and gamed. Especially now that Anet is manually adjusting values for some servers. It’s time for the system to go. The one up, one down method will keep things more interesting. Staleness is what kills the game-mode, not just in WvW, but all game-modes. It can’t be worse than the current glicko system, therefore it should at least be given a chance.

Everybody knows ratings mean nothing these days. Any sort of ranking or ratings system are only valid up until player manipulated the system. That was already done, multiple times I might add. Time for glicko to go, and time for Anet to merge servers.

I dislike how there’s pretty much zero interaction between the “skills team” and us players. And we have to resort to pleading and yelling at the poor PvP & WvW teams for changes. Of course we didn’t know until now that these teams didn’t even have the abilities & authorities on making skills balance changes. No effing wonder.

I miss the HoT beta weekends where skills team actually talked with players on the forums, and they went on GW2’s twitch streams every week to talk about upcoming changes and to answer questions. Imagine what class balance would be like if they still did that, I think things would’ve been much better.

Robert Gee was a rock star who made beautiful elite specs out of necros & mesmers. I remember early HoT launch necros even had viable power reaper builds. Of course things got quickly nerfed down over time and now we’re left with only viable condi reaper builds for any competitive play. Blarggh.

My guess is that Anet locked them away to work on the next expansion. Just a guess. Because wheover’s in charge of this “one size fits all” skills team is doing a terrible job. Players across PvP, WvW, and to some extent PvE are quite unhappy with class balance. Oh yeah and I’m thinking Grouch probably took some heat for speaking the truth, because he kinda pulled a whistleblower heh.

Hesacon.8735:

The only two classes that really give me grief are engineer and condi warrior, and they give everyone grief.

How do you kill a good druid as baseline necro?

-I’m really enjoying the Capricorn map, it makes me realize how much I hated the old maps.

-Salvage all, the best thing since sliced bread.

-Class balance isn’t good, we need separate balance for each game-modes. According to Grouch the PvP team does not have controls over skills balance, they can only modify amulets, runes, and sigils. This is a big issue with this game. You can’t create good class balance with a “one size fits all” skills team. You need separate class balance for PvE, PvP, and WvW.

-PvP UI changes are well done, ability to queue everywhere is awesome. Next up, please let us have presets that’ll work for all 3 game-modes. We need easier time switching builds & gear.

-WvW, still neglected, still an unbalanced mess, you need to do more if you don’t want this game-mode to die. There’s no excuse to not have more WvW changes & upgrades in this large patch. And no, the whole “WvW is on a separate schedule” excuse doesn’t work, because it really just means WvW gets updated less.

I think part of the problem is that power reapers have fallen behind a bit in the power curve. It’s not as competitive as many other elite specs or their condi reaper counterpart. Might explain the reason why some find success with baseline necros, as you do gain the added range advantage. For fighting a class like DH and not having to get trapped, unlike power reapers do, that helps.

Very well, that’s a good reason to play baseline necro, and I agree I myself have done that on occasion just for fun as well. I just wanted to know the reason others play baseline necros and their praises of axe as a weapon (even though it’s still an inferior weapon).

I don’t think anybody’s calling for resistance to be removed completely, just toned down. When you have a spammable boon that completely negates all condi damage and cc effects such as fear, immob, cripple, chill, you take away counter-play and tactics.

Corrupt resistance? Sure, but resistance get put right back up, and all those corrupted boons affect absolutely nothing. Resistance nerfed the point to corrupt boons, because resistance effectively counters whatever boons you corrupt. And believe me, as a necro I know the cd to my well of corruption and corrupt boon, they are nowhere as readily available as a single rev that could pump resistance to a full group of people.

This isn’t a big problem on a small scale, such as solo/small group roaming. But it’s a big problem when it comes to say a solid 25-30 guild group rolling boonshare, they pretty much will have perma boons and resistance. They’ll have 1 rev per group and there’s no shortage of resistance. It’s like we’re given all these skills & utilities, but 1 boon renders them useless.

As for WvW pre-resistance? That’s pre-HoT, and as I remember, there was always enough cleanses to go around. Condi did not rule ZvZ. Condi was always preferred more on a small scale. Of course HoT changed a lot of things. But for devs to just toss in 1 boon that nullifies all condi damage & cc’s, that’s just lazy design in my opinion.

Are you roaming on base necro by choice or because you don’t have HoT? It’s just strange to forgo added mobility, personal stab, more cc options, and more chill by playing base necro. Even if they ever so slightly boosted axe and finally righted lifeblast, I just don’t know how you could compete with even necro’s own elite counterpart.

I actually like this map, it makes playing pvp more enjoyable at the moment.

I would be ok if resistance just got adjusted so it either nullifies condi damage, or cc effects, but not both. Resistance right now is way overpowered since it negates both condi damage and cc effects.

In small scale situation resistance can be controlled and corrupted. In larger scale situation such as 25-30 player guild groups running full boonshare comps, resistance is ridiculous and takes any and all sort of counter-play & tactics out of the window.

Josh Davis.6015:

Hey folks,

Just a quick reminder: the PvP team is not responsible for profession balance. The PvP team, along with all of the other major feature teams, provides feedback to the skills team, but the PvP team itself is not directly involved in making balance changes.

What we do have control over – however – is the build panel (sigils, amulets, runes). It’s one of the knobs we can use to push gameplay in whichever direction we feel it needs to go for that particular season. For this release, we wanted to take support down a notch and increase the pace of combat.

Well now I see what the problem is. How could you possibly create a good balance when you only have access to tweak sigils, amulets, and runes? And that your hands are tied at the mercy of another “skills team”?

Now I can really see why people in WvW and PvP are angry at the class balance. Because neither of these teams could really balance classes according to their proper game-modes. In my opinion, you guys really need to speak to a higher up to separate skills team into their respective game-modes, and balance them properly that way.

How long are you going to avoid server merges? That’s what was needed since a year ago. There are too many servers for the existing WvW population.

Also I think it’s about time to get rid of glicko completely. It has been proven that this can be manipulated by players, just look at the T1/T2 mess within the past year for an example. Time to stop the glicko mess and have some active devs that watch, and participate in these WvW activities to know what servers should go up & what servers should go down.

Functionally I can see well of power working, but the question is what utilities are you sacrificing for it? It may very well come down to personal preference and if you play with a team, how your team plays. I’ll give you that.

But what utilities do you take with it? Are you taking well of power instead of plague signet or suffer for condi transfer/removal? The norm for us in pvp is a reaper would take either plague signet or suffer for condi transfer, then take either rise or spec armor for soaking, and a 3rd optional slot for what you need/like better depending on who you’re facing.

So just out of curiosity, what utilities are you taking?

flow.6043:

What?
Ok, here’s how it really is:

Funny, you didn’t disagree with anybody other than stating you like well of power… So yes, tell us how you really feel, lol.

Please do show us how a 40s cd well of power is clutch for us in pvp.

Vydahr.4285:

Tell me, because I haven’t PvP’d in a while, is an offensive, group-fight power shout reaper still at least semi viable?

Define viable? Sure, you can play a power shout reaper in pvp. But would you contribute as much as a condi reaper? Likely not. You see a power reaper every now and then, but they are fairly easy trained down. They also rage pretty hard when they get owned by fellow condi reapers 1v1.

Thing about power reapers is that the nature of the build requires you to be in middle of the fights, that’s also how shouts function. You have to be in people’s faces. Well you know how people already focus target necros, to jump head first into the fight is like asking to have a perm big red arrow on your head going “Kill me first”. You’ll be running through fields and traps while chasing people, and kind of kill yourself in doing so. Other classes with active defense can do this, we can’t. A warrior for an example, fairly meta these days, have plenty of blocks, resistance, and endure pain when they’re under heat. Not to mention Adrenal Health. We don’t have any of that.

Condi reapers at least can contribute from the perimeter and kite/juke while stacking condi’s. A power reaper kiting means a power reaper not doing anything for their team.

Is it viable? Yes. Is it optimal? No. Would you get kited to death by other classes? Yes, especially on the new Capricorn map where it’s wide open. It may seem like I’m advocating for condi but I’m not, I prefer power gameplay. But Anet has made pvp the way it is, and condi builds are our best optimal option right now. This is also why I hated the Rise nerf, it nerfed both power and condi builds while we received no additional defense in return.

Well of Corruption + Well of Suffering are bread & butter for necros in WvW. Rune of Chronomancer works well with power reaper builds that drop double wells then leap in for cleaves. Unfortunately this does not translate well in sPvP.

Part of the reasons is that power reapers don’t do well in pvp, other part of the reasons is that wells can be avoided or invulned through. And if you take double wells, once they’re dropped you’re sitting ducks. You either kill someone with them or you’ll die soon after. Plus necros don’t bunker on point, there are better classes to do that with. You are best joining team fights and pushing offense because that’s our niche right now.

I also agree with above that Darkness, Power, and Blood aren’t good enough to take. So you only have 2 wells you would really use.

As for designing a well, I think we’re due for an elite well option.

Rise is definitely not as good now. Played 20+ pvp games last night and saw how quickly minions died. But the thing is, even with the nerfed version, we still have to take it. That’s the sad state we’re in, because when we get focused on by more than 1 player, we have to use it.

The amount of condi dump and chain cc’s are pretty ridiculous these days. Some games against more organized teams, I was pretty much getting tossed around like a ragdoll. Pushed back, knocked down, stunned, then rooted for days. Some games I just felt like a liability, like any other class would’ve done better in my place.

So yeah, Rise feels like kitten now for sure. But we still have to use it because we have no choice. We still don’t have active defense to invuln, block, evade, or stealth. You could use spec armor, but there’s also a downside to that, protection can be corrupted.

SpellOfIniquity.1780:

Why do people keep complaining about their 50% damage reduction skills being “over nerfed”? Can no one read?

All professions that had a skill that reduced damage by 50% got adjusted to 33%. This isn’t something specific to Necromancer. Rangers were crying about Guard being adjusted too. I would understand if it were only a few professions but it was all of them that had a skill with this kind of effect.

Um, maybe because necros don’t have active defense? Where as other classes that may have also gotten adjusted do have active defense skills & options. So we of all classes really relied on something like Rise to stay alive when getting focused and trained on.

I get that people probably are desensitized because we’ve been the focus target #1 in all team fights since the dawn of time. So maybe some have gotten used to prison shower scenes and gave up on asking for active defense. But I just can’t stand it when fellow necros cheer on as the dev team continues to gut this class.

We’ve already been gutted from the vision that Robert Gee sold us when HoT launched. Chill damage & duration gutted, personal shroud stab nerfed, now Rise gutted harshly. Our Reaper elite spec went from having viable Power choices, to now stuck on spamming scepter 1’s as the meta continues to roll towards condi. And for what? All because the PvP dev team is incompetent and incapable of allowing each classes to have multiple viable builds. The nerf to Rise hurt both power & condi builds.

Nobody in PvE was saying Reapers had too much sustain, nobody in WvW said Reapers had too much sustain. We’re being gutted slowly but surely for the sake of PvP (im)balance. And here’s the funny part, majority of the pro tourney teams didn’t even use a reaper. And the teams that did, didn’t do very well.

Rise nerf was uncalled for, not when they didn’t give us something else in return that would increase our survivability. The nerf to Rise isn’t just 50% to 33%, but it’s also the nerfs to shambling horrors. We were already target #1, teams had no issues training necros down before. They’ll have even easier time focusing necros down now.

Elitists won’t like this game that much. Anet likes to cater to the casual masses. They take away any and all things and any possibilities for people to shine on an individual basis. Everything is pretty much an aoe button smashing fest, be it PvE meta/boss events, PvP, or WvW zerg fest.

Yes yes, good players are still better than the average masses. But OP is right in that it’s hard for you to stand out, and it’s hard to tell how you’re doing compared to others. GW2 is pretty much carried by its awesome game engine and fluid, action combat gameplay. It has the core makings of a great game that should by all means attract all sorts of gamers to its 3 game-modes. But it’s missing some things.

General consensus is that the game is rather unrewarding, you hear this often after people have tried WvW. The sideways character progression can get dull & stale. Also competition drive players & guilds in these games. But there’s a real lack of competition in GW2. There are no stats to read, no player rankings pages to look at, no numbers to crunch, no damage/heal meters outside of sPvP games, no guild firsts or guild bragging rights, etc..

Zenith.7301:

Resistance doesn’t wreck balance nearly as much as being pinballed around to your death by the rows of lines of warding and warding circles on top of the 193692615392165349826534823 centuries long immobilize duration from epidemic bombs. Kinda hard to cast resistance in a frontline when you’re getting tossed around unless you have 3 guardians in your party feeding you stability.

Revs are mediocre in raids, being replaced already by commander chronos, and in spvp berzerkers completely overshadow revenants after the nerfs.

Hell, my mouth as a necro waters when I see a rev (who’s weak to condi), compared to a godkitten warrior with 1936293629367 thousand years worth of immunities, stuns, and the massive burst and healing.

Not gonna turn this into Guardians vs Revs thread. I’m also not sure where you’re going with your ramblings. Guardians won’t get touched because WvW is the only place they have right now, and they are always going to be the most important class in WvW due to stab and stab alone. They have zero representation in PvP so I expect to see buffs rather than nerfs for them.

Revs are wanted in all 3 game modes, any competent WvW guilds would have a rev in every group, frontline & backline, for the sweet boons, resistance, and ranged dps pressure. And no matter how much warriors got over-buffed, revs still have a meta spot in all pro tournament teams in PvP. All I was saying is that Anet would rather ruin other classes first rather than adjust the new class they introduced.

Zenith.7301:

Guardians are far more dominant in WvW large scale fights than revs are….

They are used for different things. Guardians have been the absolute meta class in WvW since beginning of time, yes that’s true. But revs, ever since they were introduced with HoT expansion, have added resistance (which wrecks balance), high prot/fury/might uptime, and they’re great at ranged dps with their hammer 1, 2, and 5’s.

Not to mention in sPvP revs have held a solid meta spot in pro tournaments ever since they came into the game, effectively pushing other classes/builds out. If it wasn’t for the 1 class per team limit, teams would still be rolling 2 revs most likely. So yeah, Anet’s precious baby class. But they won’t touch them because they were sold with HoT expansion.

For blobbing there are two types of reapers. 1) Mid-line well bomber and 2) Frontline. Condi’s not a good option ever since they introduced resistance and nerfed chill damage & duration. Condi is however preferred if you solo/small group roam, and they’re viable in some organized GvG.

For mid-line well bomber you can go full zerker to maximize your damage output. But if you play with a guild and have dedicated rev in your group to give you high fury uptime, you could swap in some Valkyries to increase your health & lifeforce pool. Just make sure you trait Decimate Defenses & Deathly Perception, and you’ll have no issues critting. Higher health & lifeforce pool will directly affect your sustain. But I myself run full zerker most of the time and it’s fine as long as you watch your positioning, and know when to leap in to cleave, when to drop well bombs, when to leap out of heat. You are expected to drop wells when called, goes something like Well of Corruption > Well of Suffering > Death’s Charge in > Spin to win > Gravedigger cleave on downies > Leap out. Perfect this without dying and you’re set.

Mid-line reapers usually take either Spite-Soul Reaping-Reaper or Blood Magic-Soul Reaping-Reaper. Spite will give you better might/vuln stacking, higher pop, and higher damage potentials. Blood Magic taken if your commander/guild leader wants you to have reduced cd wells so more wells can be dropped for organized guild raids. I roll Spite when I’m not in guild raids, and swap to Blood Magic when reduced cd wells are called for.

For frontline reapers, you usually try to stack armor to around 2.7-3k, then balance the rest out with power, ferocity, and vitality. You can mix Zerker, Cav, Valkyrie, and Marauder gear to find a comfort zone. In guild groups it’s more forgivable so you can be less tanky and slot in more power/fecority. Solo/pub blobs, you may need to go more tanky because you don’t have guildies to watch out for you, and you likely won’t be in organized comps with proper stab, boon sharing, and cleansing. Frontline reapers are usually full shout builds.

Note that while frontline reapers are fun, most guilds don’t run them. This is because frontline groups are already filled by 2 guardians, 1 warrior, 1 rev, and x. The x is usually a frontline ele, scrapper, or most likely just another guardian. Lack of cleanses, stab (our personal stab nerfed harshly), and group utilities pretty much make us a selfish frontline class that most guilds don’t need to run. They’d rather you be the B52 bomber that you are and run mid-line zerker wells.

Power needs a boost, but we won’t get it. We won’t get it as long as condi continues to rule PvP meta. This is because Anet doesn’t know how to make multi-builds viable.

I expect to see nerfs in our condi builds, despite condi reapers not having a meta spot.

The boon sharing meta has wreck balanced in WvW & PvP. Would Anet touch their precious revs? Doubt it. We should get better access to aoe boon corrupt to counter the boon sharing meta, but we likely won’t get it.

Sorry I’m all pessimistic this time around, I don’t see devs giving us good, balanced changes. Only nerfs.

Mysteriax.6049:

The forefront and selling point of your MMO.

This is because, quite simply, WvW provides a unique experience that other games simply haven’t matched yet.

Black Desert Online, Archage and even World of Warcraft are examples of games whose PvE environments compete with Guild Wars 2.

League of Legends, DOTA 2 and Overwatch are Esports games that compete with GW2 in the competitive PvP market.

Yet none of these games provide the kind of RvR experience that WvW has offered us. For now at least, ArenaNet, you have sole control over this very lucrative market.

ESO competes well against GW2 when it comes to WvW btw. Reading some comments here about ESO shows these individuals never played ESO past the first 2 months. ESO’s RvR is actually closer to DAOC’s RvR than GW2 WvW could ever hope to be. Its siege gameplay is built properly, as siege is set mainly to attack keeps & other siege, rather than utilized against players like we have it here. Heck ESO even got relic raids! If you want more DAOC nostalgia, I suggest giving ESO a look.

What doesn’t work for me about ESO is the clunky combat, GW2 has me spoiled. I just don’t prefer reticle targeting. Plus GW2 is more casual friendly, and that was always Anet’s strength (and its weakness).

GW2 being casual friendly is the main draw for a lot of players, both in PvE & WvW. Unfortunately the casual friendly nature of Anet’s development philosophy is why GW2 will never rise up to DAOC’s level when it comes to RvR. DAOC made RvR its endgame. You PvE grind and collected gear to ultimately RvR in order to progress your characters further. Here in GW2, you merely join in WvW as a side-game. There’s nothing special for you in WvW, nothing to progress your characters further in WvW. And there really is no goal in WvW, no relic raids, no player/guild stats to see, no reason to really siege a keep other than you just want to do it. A player could skip playing WvW and no one would notice a difference.

Anet doesn’t treat WvW as its endgame, that’s the problem. And they want to cater to casual players too much to make the changes necessary to take WvW to the next level. They want PvE players to step into WvW and feel comfortable & safe, hence why all the PvE gimmicks we have in WvW. The fact that in order for WvW team to make any class balance changes, they had to get the pass from the PvP team, shows you how wrong things are balanced. A dev slipped awhile back stating that in order to make some balance changes players were asking for, they had to get the OK from the PvP team. As if balancing 5v5 in a small instanced zone is anywhere the same as balancing 20v20 or 50v50 in large open world zones with siege gameplay.

I agree GW2 has the makings of a great WvW/RvR type of gamemode. I just don’t think Anet is the right company to make it happen. Just look at how GW2 had an organic GvG culture, and how Anet just closed a blind eye and did nothing to make skilled guilds to want to stay in GW2. Other games would kill to have that organic GvG scene. If you would remember, DAOC RvR was all about guild pride, all about skilled roaming squads, and its gameplay allowed skilled players to shine and mass kill blobby casuals. That just can’t happen here, not with 5 target limits on aoe’s, not with the class balance we have here, not with the siege infested culture we have here. We have to wait longer for that DAOC successor, and sadly I don’t think CU is it either, they are running into too much development issues and their team is too small.

Unfortunately what you’re feeling is how most necros felt pre-Reaper. It’ll get much better once you have Reaper fully unlocked.

For now, if you are too tanky, you could go more power route by taking Spite – Soul Reaping – Blood Magic. Spite gives you more power damage, might stacking, and vuln application. Blood Magic gives you faster wells refresh, protection on wells, siphons, and dagger enhancement + movement speed.

Drop double wells on a pack of mobs, then pop warhorn 5, then dagger auto until swarm fades, then go into shroud and do shroud 5>4. You can burn most pack of mobs with that combo almost every time. Rinse & repeat, and now you’ve mastered power necroing.

Happy hunting.

Warhorn helps you secure a down when the daze is properly utilized, it’s irreplaceable, necros don’t have a lot of interrupts. Offhand dagger doesn’t do that. Not to mention the on demand swiftness + lifeforce is nice.

OGDeadHead.8326:

As long as thieves exist, bunkers will be a thing.

+1, thieves were the reason why zerkers don’t exist. It’s a shame really. Ask people who have mained necros for years, most of them would prefer playing power rather than this new condi bunker mess that Anet forced us to play these days.

I tend to shoot for 2500 power base before any bloodlust stacks or might.

If you take decimate defenses, you won’t have to worry about your crit chance as much. Also if in WvW for an example and you know you’ll have perma fury being in a group with a rev, you also don’t need to worry about crit chance as much. This is one stat you could sacrifice a bit such as using more valkyrie gear instead of zerker to give yourself more lifeforce/hp.

Crit damage you want to aim as high as possible, I try to go 210% at the very least.

Armor, vitality, etc.. come down to personal preference, what you’re comfortable with, and what you’ll be doing. For WvW backliner you don’t want to stack armor/vitality as much. But if you’re in a WvW guild that expect you to push with the train, and you know you’ll be in heat often, then higher vitality means more lifeforce, which directly means you can take more heat. But note that there’s a big difference between WvW ZvZ/GvG as opposed to WvW solo roaming…

Lahmia.2193:

gavyne.6847:

At the moment I wish they would buff staff more than anything else, because it’s still a go to ranged weapon for us that’s lacking in every way possible when compared to any other class’ ranged weapons.

Clearly you don’t play WvW much. Don’t tread on my staff.

I don’t? lol… If you think staff is powerful then I have a bridge to sell you. It’s an OK utility ranged option at best, something we’re still for the most part forced to use because it’s our only ranged option. By no means it’s powerful.

What’s the point of talking about this? Anet’s not going to do anything about the crappy axe. They were happy to leave GS in its crappy state for PvP enthusiasts, and they in turn buffed the one weapon (scepter) that didn’t need buffed.

At the moment I wish they would buff staff more than anything else, because it’s still a go to ranged weapon for us that’s lacking in every way possible when compared to any other class’ ranged weapons.

Sorry but only changes I see them making would be when the next expansion comes out, then they’ll hype something else up. That’s when we’ll finally get some dev<→player interaction again…at least until after the next expansion launch then they’ll nerf things to crap, change fundamental mechanics that sold us the xpansion (chill damage), and disappear so they don’t have to talk to us about balance & changes.

1. No WvW is not competitive, it’s about coverage wars and numbers. Even with server linking and all, match-ups are still very unbalanced.

2. Yes I wish WvW was competitive, competition drives players to play more in games.

3. No, in order for WvW to be competitive, they’d need to change the current WvW design into instanced battlegrounds where Anet could regulate the rules and even the numbers. For one, what’s left of the WvW playerbase won’t like instanced BG’s. Two, Anet does not have the resources to make major changes, they’re doing bare minimum to drag players along until LS3, all the while they are busy working on the next expansion already.

If Anet supported GvG rather than let it die, WvW could still be competitive. The core of the issue here is Anet, they are against competition. They want to cater to the casuals and the less competitive minded folks so they made sure GvG couldn’t grow. They want to make sure everybody could jump in from PvE, into WvW, and have a great time. Hence why all the PvE-centric additions that came out with HoT in WvW. Anet is the sole reason why WvW isn’t competitive.

Competition drive players & guilds in MMO’s. They could’ve at the very least implement things like DAOC’s relic raids to give people a reason to attack/defend. They could’ve added more player/guild stats online. Sometimes all people need are bragging rights to keep going.

4. Nobody I know cares whether the server wins or loses the week, not one. People seem to care about who we’re going to be matched up against more than anything. So the only incentive to fight or not fight is really to avoid certain match-ups that are not fun.