Guild Wars 2

Reevz.2617:

it’s bad for the game because it removes coordination of immobs

exactly.

one more strategic/skill-based wrinkle ironed out of the game. the dumbing down of GW2 continues…

jmatb.6307:

People are living up to the silliness and completely nonsensical knee jerk QQ I sadly anticipated.

Tip for the angry and self pitying: take a big drink of water, think about something else for a couple hours, then take a look at immobs and warriors objectively and develop strategies.

Examples:

Do I need to bring condition cleansing instead of a second DPS utility slot?

Do I need to bring my own immob(s) to take advantage of this new situation?

Can I 1v1 a mega-sustain warrior? If not, then would it make more sense to just abandon the point he’s on and fight his other teammates?

What are the most likely builds the other team is running? Does my build help my team tilt the balance of the fight in our favor or hurt it?

the ire and anger that has been raised since the patch has more to do with the direction of the game itself than the actual balance changes made.

before you can “play to win”, you have to have a game worth playing

the changes to immob stacking was a dumbing down of the game – reflected by the lead class-balance Dev’s explanation of the change in the patch preview: “… it just kinda felt awkward by not stacking…” as he spammed an immob skill…

ANet’s stance of balancing around acknowledged “bugs” is a disreputable approach to game development.

Add to that the lack of rewards, lack of functioning leader boards, the ability to farm ranks rather than earn them, and it’s pretty clear to any PvPer this game is not moving is a positive direction, made doubly frustrating because at one point it had a lot of positive momentum.

So what you’re chalking up as “Scrub QQ” is in fact warranted concern for a game that has lost almost all it’s potential as well as any worthwhile reason for a player to be concerned about “playing to win”.

tl;dr – wrong argument for the wrong conversation.

HGH Pistols/Nades is pretty slick now with the new fast cast targeting and changes to toss B/S. Still no where near what a condi Necro can do, so I wouldn’t expect the build to compete for that team slot. Was definitely a QoL improvement for the build though.

I had no issue dealing with stun locks while playing it though. Para sigil got fixed, and toss B/S give solid preemptive solutions to CC/Focus fire.

Vena.8436:

hackks.3687:

Pretty sure we just traded stunlocks for Immob locks

not so sure that’s an improvement – unless you regularly spec for immunity to conditions, teleports, or evade spam, I suppose…

You have far, far more access to condition cleanses than you do stun breakers. Guardians were the only class with an AoE stun break, just about every class has an AoE condi cleanse.

keep thinking positive. I’m already reworking my old 100% immob build.

see you kittenes out there

Pretty sure we just traded stunlocks for Immob locks

not so sure that’s an improvement – unless you regularly spec for immunity to conditions, teleports, or evade spam, I suppose…

Master of Timespace.2548:

There’s nothing random about selecting “join ranked match”. And in fact, one could, and probably should, infer that a “ranked match” means you are supposed to “give a jack kitten”

But what if I still just don’t? I mean, I do not. At least not until they add some good reason to win.

I’ll quote it again so you can re-read it and figure it out for yourself

My point is, those who want to only have fun and run silly builds should stick to duel servers or hotjoin, game modes that are basically TDM and so casual that you aren’t screwing other over by running what you want because nobody else is taking things seriously. This applies to any game, not just GW2.

doesn’t sound like PvP is the place for you.

Master of Timespace.2548:

BurrTheKing.8571:

CutePicsHunter.7430:

Yes, i didn’t say anythings about winning, thank you for realising that you were wrong.

Its hard to figure out why you’re even posting on the PvP forum if you don’t play it lol.

I haven’t logged in the game in more than a month.

Did i miss something?

And even if i did, i’m here to show you the way how to become better. We already came to the conclusion that winning isn’t all what players need, and sometimes, they don’t need it at all, but still, they are winning. If you’re playing to win, it does not increase your chances to win against that players. We also concluded, that there is no point of winning in computer games at all. So, whats the point? Fun, of course. And we all agreed, that fun is subjective. For some people fun is just getting text “you win” in the middle of their screen , and some people want to actually play the game the way they want, and it doesn’t connect to their winrate. So, we concluded that this thread is pointless.

If you ask me, if you are joining a competitive game mode you are entering into an unspoken contract that you will play to the best of your abilities and attempt to win. If you choose to play a crappy, ineffective build because you find it “fun” and your team loses as a result, you screwed them over.

One players’ fun doesn’t make it OK to ruin the enjoyment for, in this case, four other players fun. You could even say you could be ruining the fun for up to 9 people because many do not enjoy a steamroll.

When you enter into any sort of team environment you work for the success of that team. This means you give up a bit of individuality, but if you want a team to succeed it’s needed. There’s a lot of enjoyment to be had still working as a team though.

My point is, those who want to only have fun and run silly builds should stick to duel servers or hotjoin, game modes that are basically TDM and so casual that you aren’t screwing other over by running what you want because nobody else is taking things seriously. This applies to any game, not just GW2.

But what if I don’t give a jack kitten about my team and just want to troll with my burst thief? Just because the game random number generator mixed me into same team with you, does not mean that I am your friend.

He already answered that for you.

My point is, those who want to only have fun and run silly builds should stick to duel servers or hotjoin, game modes that are basically TDM and so casual that you aren’t screwing other over by running what you want because nobody else is taking things seriously. This applies to any game, not just GW2.

There’s nothing random about selecting “join ranked match”. And in fact, one could, and probably should, infer that a “ranked match” means you are supposed to “give a jack kitten”

Honor in fighting? In warfare?

Someone’s been watching too many movies…

Just out of curiosity why is that people assume complex builds are supposed to be better than simple ones?

GW2 PvP is fast paced combat where you need to make decisions quickly and without hesitation. By using a more complex build you are giving yourself more questions to decide and execute in fractions of a second. If a complex build is not working for you then you might need to consider how much complexity you are actually capable of utilizing before you end up making things harder for yourself. If it takes “player A” 3 button presses to do the same thing that “player B” is doing in 2 or even 1 button presses, then “player A” is obviously less efficient. Is player A making a trade off though in efficiency for Power or Sustainability? Was the trade off advantageous for the fight he’s engaging in? There’s more going on in each and every fight than merely simple vs complex.

My point is, just because it has a lot of buttons doesn’t always means it’s better for each and every player or in each and every fight.

You can’t assume that complexity of a build directly correlates to tilting risk/reward in your favor.

That was one of the first things I learned playing Engi.

Joystick.4103:

I heard some poeple say that the new death shroud is somehow worse and “a shadow of its former self”? But the +50% critical chance grandmaster seems awesome and i was thinking of a power build build around death shroud and lifeblast… its mostly for pve but could work in pvp too
also why do all power necros run dagger + warhorn? or dagger + dagger? it seems, at least to me, that dagger + focus is better for a power build in every way…

Focus will generate more damage output, yes. Warhorn provides more utility and control of your opponent which is valuable for a class that, relative to other melee builds/classes, is pretty lackluster.

Personally I use Axe/Focus in a 30/10/0/0/30 build for both PvP and WvW and find it vastly superior to Dagger/X but that probably has more to do with the current meta and my play-style than anything else.

And yes, Deathly Perception is the shiz. Specially when used in conjunction with high LF generation and damage wells (suffering/corruption). If you haven’t tried it already, find a group of opponents bunched together (PvP conquest mode really lends itself to this), drop a staff 3 > well of suffering (can combo with staff 4 here as well to throw up a blind) > pop DS > DS5 > DS4 then sit back and watch what happens

Interestingly enough, I thought Sirlin’s opinions regarding what constitutes proper depth of counter-play and any lack there of being the fault of the game makers was rather intriguing. I know he says those bugs and whatnot are not off-limits to players until the game makers or tournament hosts deem it as such, but he also says that too much of it being present is a result of poor/bad game design and that the game is likely just a “bad game”. Which, to me, would seem to put GW2 in a rather condemned state at the moment.

Which is why I added the question in the edit of my earlier post. Given the state of PvP, it’s leader boards and matchmaking system, and lack of a community/following could anyone still consider GW2 to actually be a “competitive” game?

What I mean is, in order to care about winning the results need to be credible, right? Could anyone say that losing a match 4v5 lends credibility to either side’s result? And if credibility of results can so easily be thrown into question then obviously so can the leaderboards and matchmaking system be put to the same scrutiny. So at the end of the day if the entire competitive PvP structure of ranking/rating and the accuracy of win/loss ratios can be so easily thrown into question, then why even care about winning? And if you’re not sure whether winning/losing really matters, then is the game still competitive?

It doesn’t really feel like it at the moment… at least not to me.

jmatb.6307:

Trolling is different then engaging emotions. I’m not bringing unconstructive, distracting, or irrelevant crap to the forum that doesn’t serve a purpose.

You two are mad again but trust me you won’t forget that book any time soon.

who’s mad? I was simply attempting some damage control on your well intended but poorly executed lesson.

none of the content in that “book” was new to me, and I was already familiar with the author as I had read the article that preceded the book well before GW2 was even released.

I don’t (and would never) fault you for trying to teach or share what you’ve learned. I’m just pointing out that your methods leave plenty to be desired.

for all your post’s faults, you’re still right. there are a lot of GW2 players/posters who could learn quite a bit from that short read and benefit significantly.

jmatb.6307:

I want to make people mad reading my post. If I just recommend the book and make a boring interpretation of it nobody would care and my goal, which I will let people try to figure out for themselves, will not have been accomplished.

The post is working well

this was my suspicion but I’m fairly certain it’s having the opposite effect you’d want it to have. Rather than disillusion you’re merely turning people off to your new found enlightenment and discrediting the whole notion in the process.

I just read the whole thing and in my opinion OP you didn’t understand it all….

He does not define a scrub as someone who is unwilling to resort to fotm builds, exploiting bugs/broken skills as your posting here would lead people to believe. They are merely players who have not yet made the leap from “hitting buttons to have fun” to “hitting buttons with strategic intent”.

He does not promote using broken skills/mechanics/etc. but explains that a competitive player “playing to win” in a competitive game will consider all tools available to him and use what gives him the best chance to win – that is not equivalent to using the easy mode build as he explains a good player will know how to counter or adapt in the coarse of the fight to counter. He later states that commonly the best players are the ones using unorthodox or even the commonly perceived “weakest” classes because they see potential and value where others merely adopt whatever is considered to be the strongest and that those players largely do not reside in the top tier of that game.

At no point did I take his meaning of “Playing to Win” as the “only way to have fun in a competitive game” but rather when playing a competitive game (and actually playing it competitively) winning is the goal – by which the purpose of the book is to explain rudimentary strategy and thought processes to better enable players to that end.

It’s not nearly as divisive or inflammatory or ill-spirited as you make it out to be. Quite the opposite in fact.

If anyone is interested in learning more about, or getting a refresher in, strategy and the mental processes important to devising winning strategies/play-styles, I’d say it’s worth a read. Not very long either.

edit: now that I think about it though, my question to the community at large would be “is GW2 in fact competitive and is it even worth worrying about winning?”

bumping. this needs to stay on the first page for the foreseeable future.

also, re: passive v active classification I would categorize as such:

passive = effects or augmentations to a character’s functionality outside of player control and irrespective of any particular skill, group of skills, or class mechanic – largely involving RNG, such as: on-hit procs, on-crit procs, at % HP procs, when CC’d procs, etc.

active = additional effects or augmentations to skills, groups of skills, or class mechanics requiring player input/initiation, such as: CD reductions, area of effect increases, rewarding successful skill combinations (not enough of these IMO), on dodge, on use of skill mechanic, etc.

Lopez.7369:

The matchmaking has problems, but the main issue is typically who it pairs you up against, not with.

If you’re below 70 or 60 percentile, you shouldn’t be surprised that you’re getting new players. You probably deserve them.

when que pops take 5-10 minutes, you can be sure that ranking has nothing to do with it and it’s simply taking whoever is available at that time.

Oidmetala.8426:

hackks.3687:

seriously? how are people defending this? the player was disabled for 90% of the fight (i.e. he wasn’t actually playing!!!), but some how it’s OK that he won that fight? In a Player versus Player match???

I don’t care what classes were being played. kitten like that has no business being in PvP

How can so many people be this self-centered or outright stupid?

I blame public education…

play spirit ranger and fight a warrior, necro, mesmer, thief, engi or guardian, even a good ele is not so easy to fight.
if you play a class with much passive mechanic, you have at the other side less self controll and the “good” enemy players can handle such things, because ranger passive and pet attacks happen always in same rotation.

most ranger qq is a learn to play problem, because ppls dont create a ranger to learn his skills. i know also much ppls in my friendlist played all professions, but not the ranger.

for example…
when i play my bunker guardian i can survive a spirit ranger like forever.
but when i play a spirit ranger i can kill much guardians.
and why, just because this ppls dont know the ranger class well.

HO LEE FUKKK!!!!!!!

Seriously? Can you Rangers just drop the class-protectionist attitude for one second and just look at the video from an objective PvP standpoint?

Please tell me why you think it’s OK for:

- A player who’s not even participating in a fight due to being disabled for the majority of it to win said fight in PvP?
- A player being capable of dealing enough damage to another class to down them without having to hit a single button?

How is this even regarded as acceptable PvP game development?

Every PvP player should be up in arms about this. Including the Rangers. Rangers above all should be demanding more and better from ANet.

Lopez.7369:

You wouldn’t be queued with them if they weren’t at your level.

Just some food for thought before you go around insulting people.

you know that’s not true. I’m not agreeing with OP, but you know matchmaking is far from perfect, let alone accurate…

seriously? how are people defending this? the player was disabled for 90% of the fight (i.e. he wasn’t actually playing!!!), but some how it’s OK that he won that fight? In a Player versus Player match???

I don’t care what classes were being played. kitten like that has no business being in PvP

How can so many people be this self-centered or outright stupid?

I blame public education…

Am I the only person who doesn’t see this video as being a commentary on class balance? The way I see it it’s more about the mechanics of the game and what is perceived to be (un)acceptable/(in)appropriate for a Player versus Player game.

From what I can tell the video is showing everyone that there are some substantially unhealthy and inappropriate mechanics at work in PvP – and not just what’s being pointed to in regards to the ranger, as you’ll notice that the Ele was also unloading a fair bit of instant cast Air burst that no one but a computer could defend against anyways.

In a game where the only means available for players to separate themselves from other players is their own wherewithal and skills, mechanics like these should be classified in only one way: grossly inappropriate.

ELEorAFK.7935:

LOL, DID U EVER PLAY PACMAN???? IF THE GHOSTS HIT U, THEY KILL U, AI TOO STRONG.

My apologies, I was under the impression that PvP meant “Player versus Player” and not “Player vs Player-spectating-his-computer”

thank you for today’s lesson

ELEorAFK.7935:

not the game did dmg for him, the stupid ele crushing 3 spirits while standing in all of them did dmg for him, do u finally realize it?

it’s completely irrelevant whether Ostrich did something right or wrong. He entered into a fight with another player, but he ended up losing to the computer… do u realize it???

ELEorAFK.7935:

Ostricheggs.3742:

And in the video it’s not hard to understand what happened from my perspective. I was using a valks amulet, found an opportuntiy to chain CC a ranger into a fire burst (hopefully without a forge rune proc), took it and died.

Our resident 2 gud ele says that I blew an air burst into a protection, but he seems to ignore that it was a sun spirit proc from the THREE hits he got before he got CC’d. He also points out I used ether renewal at 90%. I did, because I was crippled and about to head to sky-hammer because we were losing because of it and had no intention of fighting a ranger. It’s on such a short CD that I don’t see how that’s even considered a mistake by you, it’s rather nit-picky. I “wasted” two dodges while crippled (hoping to wear down the duration of it without looking at it) on a class that uses energy sigils and has perma vigor. Furthermore I was using a kittening valks ammy and didn’t expect to have a lynx and dead storm spirit proc kill me in an instant.’ The ONE proc of storm spirit on death would not have killed me. What killed me was his lynx and the burning applied by his THREE hits in addition to the storm spirit.

Almost all of valor’s criticism has absolutely nothing to do with the video and is just pointing out what he thinks are mistakes without taking them into context. Also, almost all of the mistakes you pointed out are not mistakes. You need to seriously need to chill and quit coming into threads rubbing your kitten without even considering the implications of the video or reasoning behind every simple action in what happens to be a 25 second clip of actual gameplay…

wow.

1. u dont try to “chain CC” full hp spirit rangers with 3 spirits up, when u burst alone.
– because u know about the protection, because u cant oneshot him anyways, because its too risky to jump into 3 spirits in a that small area, because when eles do huges bursts, they usually waste alot of defensive cooldowns too.

2. u cast ur heal, u are on 0 energy, u are running straight into a ranger with 3 spirits up and u dont even blind him or anything, i mean if 1 build is kitten strong already, i dont try to faceroll it with a kitten not so strong build, especially in the matchup itself.

3. the thing with the perma vigor and energy sigil made me laugh hard.
– u waste ur 2 dodges in the beginning, and after it, ur energy goes from 0 – 100 without u even thinking about dodging anything the ranger does.
especially when u are playing with energy sigils + the vigor trait + evasive arcane, u HAVE to dodge, otherwise u are also just wasting ur resources (air dodge for example is pretty good against spirits, justsayin)

4. dont really care which skills killed u in the end, that u didnt expect it to happen says alot about how much knowledge u achieved on both those classes. and since u die instant, u ate alot more spirits, but its not shown in the death breakdown since u were invul.

5. the mistakes are no mistakes part is funny too

6. im surely not the one who needs to chill down, i guess ppl respect players like u on na atleast, and they listen to ur opinion, when u are posting a video in which u fail hardcore and blame the game for it, i feel like someone gotta tell u that u talk kitten.

7. context? what? u are crying about spirit ranger and how easy it is to play effectively, but u dont even try in the slightest to play right against them. this game is full of things that instantly kill u on a walk ele and on any other glassy build too and u have learned to play against it (bs thief, phantasms, shatter mes, power nec, even staff ele……………and so much more) so can u already stop crying and l2p? its pathetic that u find no solution to handle AI even as a 12k hp ele (can give u a hint, just run away and call ur friends eq+tp him and hes oneshot).

8. can give u elementalist lessons, 10g/hour.

valar ~~

all this typing just to glance over the fact that the player’s character was face down for the majority of the fight and only managed to win because the game kept doing damage for him…

for that matter, you could go so far as to say the Ranger was just spectating a match between Ostrich and the computer

Who wants to come in late to an already started match in which one side started with a clear advantage? No thanks.

Simple solution: if a match is 5vLess beyond the first 120s of the match then the match is aborted with the full team rewarded with the win, while the losing players still present for the entirety of the match’s abbreviated duration simply vacate the result. The absent player(s) however are punished with the loss, and their MMR will reflect all 5 losses from their entire team for who’s time they so carelessly wasted.

People won’t leave ranked matches so freely when the result is your MMR and leaderboard ranking fall off a cliff.

Leaderboards need 2 things IMO:

1. Seasons – it seems to me that one of the biggest reasons people stop playing ranked matches or change accounts once they’ve achieved a desirable rank is because losing that rank likely means losing it forever or having to devote a ton more time to salvaging it. If losing didn’t feel like such a permanent detriment to your rank people would likely feel far less stress/rage/frustration towards the game/teammates/fellow players as well as feel more comfortable sticking to one account/guild/team. The lack of significant decay also provides little to no punishment for abstaining from playing more ranked matches. My advice is to simply reset the boards quarterly or whatever and call it a season. This would also create a great opportunity to reward players for playing ranked PvP matches: titles, loot, gems, etc.

2. Brackets – based on a player’s number of games played or some other means of quantifying a players experience level (read: not skill level as that is accounted for by ranks, but simply how familiar someone is with the game, it’s maps, strategies, and various nuances). Something, anything to keep new players playing with other new players, and experienced players playing with other experienced players. It’s been said before but bears repeating IMO: experienced players are virtually playing a different game compared to newer players. I’d imagine most of the more experienced players can identify a new player on their team within seconds of the match starting just based on how they move around the map. Again, another way to avert a good deal of hard feelings and frustration towards teammates and the matchmaking system. It could be as simply as dividing players by rank, 1-20, 20-40, 40 and up. I’m not game developer, so I’ll leave that to the people with experience to decide.

The biggest reason we need these things IMO is to make the leaderboards relevant to the game. Right now they’re only good for fluffing egos and not even accurate at that. Anyone who plays enough will eventually hit a losing streak and the leaderboard will punish them severely. Frustration ensues, and the appeal of gaming the system by playing different accounts becomes tangible. And when there’s no actual rewards, and no actual punishment for not playing (i.e. significant decay) ultimately people just stop caring. I know I personally couldn’t care less at this point. It would be nice to, though.

that’s my 2c anyways

tell me you put J Sharp and Grouch in a double headlock and took a picture!

Puh-LEASE!!!!!!

it would go a long ways towards getting me to follow yer stream

Outplayed by a condi bunker? How many buttons did he have to hit to keep those healing pulses going?

exactly oZii, and thank you for understanding what I wrote. I was beginning to think I was posting in Sanskrit or something.

edit: also, you guys seem to be hitting for a lot less than what my Doom snipe hits for. I get 2k worth just out of the LB critting right after the Dark Path and Doom. Total damage for my combo is closer to 7k than 3.5k.

edit: please delete

Panhauramix.2784:

@Haccks: About the loser who can’t dodge a hammer strike: The point is, you will get hit by one sooner or later with only 1 dodge every 10 sec, and when you do get hit, it will hit more than a full 5 sec of Terror, except the damage is instant and knocks you down. I don’t know about you, but I don’t become invulnerable when I’m knock down for 2-3 second, so every hit still register, exactly like Fear/Terror.

So I really don’t see why Terror needs another damage nerf. Being CC for 2-3 sec can be lethal to anyone regardless of the skill used to CC if you’re caught without a stunbreak.

The key difference being that Doom (the major burst component) is instant cast and the hammer has a long kitten cast time. Another significant difference would be that Terror is doing in one skill, what that Hammer is doing in 3 or 4 skills by dealing continuous damage and allowing the Necro to continue to pile on more damage. And another difference is that Terror can be extended by condition duration and it’s damage heightened by condition damage, where as there is no corresponding stat increase for “hard CC” other than those traits/runes/sigils that directly and only effect those CC skills. While there are some stupid long CC effects in this game, by and large they require some dedication in their build to achieve that effectiveness. The Necro on the other hand is simply building for damage output via condition damage and duration stats, and being rewarded with extended CC effects as well. There simply needs to be more build decisions made when it comes to condi Necros. Just like with the scepter bleeds. What’s the purpose of having traits like Hemophilia and Lingering curses if the duration is already producing optimal results? But I digress, back to Terror…

The instant cast nature of Doom and the nuke it becomes by speccing for Terror is the major stumbling block for balancing Terror in PvP. Doom was implemented as an instant cast CC available while stunned, the same way DS is available as instant cast and while stunned, in order to compensate for Necro’s lack of access to stability via utility skills/stun breaks. It was designed and balanced as a defensive mechanic but no longer functions as one once Terror is slotted.

The way I see it, if Necros keep Terror they’re going to lose Doom as an instant cast. Which in itself will incite a whole host of necessary balance changes as Doom was originally intended as a Necro’s primary defensive mechanism along with DS, which would no longer be the case. Or…. they could simply remove Terror and then everything else starts to look pretty balanced and OK and we can go on being kitten kicking machines but people will have far less reason to spec for things like Berserker Stance, Automated Response, 6pc Lyssa Runes, etc.

Don’t get me wrong I love Terror just as much as the rest of you, just not as much as I love PvP when it’s meta is healthy and rewarding skillful play. I’m simply trying to present the idea of taking a quick hit (like pulling off a bandaid) by giving up Terror rather than go through the enduring pain of months of rebalancing just for the sake of keeping a diminished version of Terror. There’s no getting around it, IMO. Terror will definitely be nerfed again. How much it’s nerfed could determine how much of the rest of the class we get to keep.

Dredlord.8076:

and then we never saw hackks again….

Was I supposed to defend myself or something just because some dude looked me up on those farcical leader boards? What is there to defend against when he posts stuff like this?

Nemesis.8593:

I just did some more TPvP tonight… and i am literally disgusted but what i have seen.
Game after game i was faced with impossible odds, especially in Spirit Watch and Skyhammer…

Entire groups of players running up and down the mountains with blink while in stealth… occasionally coming out of stealth to one shot then they were gone before i could even see them.

The thing that disgusted me the most was an elementalist that 1v4ed my entire team… i was going towards him, and i saw his HP go down to nothing and back to full, and down to nothing… and back to full… and down to nothing, and back to full. He one shoted + some pew pew… one by one…
I fought him for almost 2 minutes… he literally healed back to full HP about 10 times at least… each time he did i was CCed or he blinked away only to return a few seconds after. (spoke with him after, he said he can go from 20% to 100% every few seconds)

Next game…

I had 2 OP necromancers with me… got to a place where they were fighting this low HP engineer… then i joined it for a quick finish
Automated Response: Condition duration is reduced by 100% when health is below 25%.
He was immune to all our damage for 2 minutes, until i finally decided just to leave… i have… no… WE had no chance of EVEN DOING DAMAGE AT ALL.

I might just quit this game for a while, i’ve seen enough.
Necromancer OP good luck byebye.

So you and your team got 1v4’d by an Ele – a class that is considered underpowered and inviable in this current meta. GG

Then you discovered that Engi’s are building to hard counter condis and more specifically Necros. I’m sure you saw more than a couple Warriors rocking Mace/Shield and Berserkers Stance since that’s virtually a 100% hard counter to Necros as well.

Thank you though for doing everyone a favor of playing some PvP and reporting back that Necro’s OPness is in fact not an L2P issue on the community’s part because as you clearly discovered people are in fact building deliberately to counter conditions and Necros and not simply holding on to their old builds. If multiple classes are deliberately building to counter a particular class and a particular form of damage, I don’t know what else there is to convince people that Necros are in fact OP… that is, until they run into one of the various hard counters.

The PvP meta is just borked right now. It’s not all Necros fault, but they were an instigating factor in it’s development, and as such some toning down on some aspects of its builds are in order. And just to be clear, I’m not looking to nerf Necros in to the ground, in fact it’s really nice to play him on the regular again. What I’m really looking for is PvP to be balanced and enjoyable. Currently it is the furthest thing from both.

P.S. it’s rather flattering you went so far as to look up the leader board rankings of not only me but other posters in this thread. Kind of scary, stalker-ish but still somewhat flattering. Next time just ask politely and I’ll tell you that my highest rank was top 200 when queuing regularly with a team, lowest rank was 50% after an epic losing streak yolo-queing for a weekend. Nobody cares about the leader boards though while balance is so fubar’d.

Bhawb.7408:

Just to play Devil’s Advocate on that one, its a .5 cast time (oh kitten ANet, I can’t put 5s because it might spell a “naughty” word?), 900 range 4s bleed->bleed->poison (the poison is really the strong part). That makes it unique, and much harder to compare, to high damage melee bleeds (melee will always outdamage per hit because it will hit less), or ranged attacks that only bleed, or the mesmer one that bounces and is random.

Blood Curse doesn’t need nerfing, in any way, but it is a very strong AA.

I have to disagree. At one time it made sense to have a strong AA on Scepter because bleeding and poison were the primary damage dealing conditions available to a Necro. Hence why it applies bleeds on nearly everything. Since the additions of Dhuumfire and Torment though, this logic of balance has changed entirely. For instance, take the Engi’s Pistol AA “explosive shot” which only applies a 2sec bleed per hit. The one class that competes with Necros for the condi-pressure role in a group and it only has a single 2sec bleed on it’s AA. Of course! Why? Because the Engi has access to Burning, Poison, and Confusion as well as better sources of Bleed in other weapons/skills. Since the infamous “patch” that gave Necros access to more than just Bleeding and Poison nothing has been done to tone down the previous sources of bleed damage to make room for the Burning and Torment. While Necros did in fact need access to more damage conditions to be able to compete with Engis, they did not however need an overall boost in condition output – which is what happened. So Necros retained a boat load of long duration conditions to go along with their new Burns and Torments. Hence why their damage output is rightfully considered OP.

When I point to the Scepter AA as a problem I’m not saying it’s the problem, but that’s it’s a great example of what’s currently wrong with the Necro’s condition output. Honestly, how much would a Necro lose by reducing the duration to 2sec? There are traits to accommodate the lost duration in the Curses tree alone – remember Hemophilia and Lingering Curses? Those are choices a Necro is currently not required to make in order to make that AA perform at an optimal level.

Why condi Necros are OP:

1.) Indistinct animations on powerful skills
2.) Condi application rate is too high (read: insanely high)
3.) Terror damage is insanely high, and being a control and damage source it benefits two fold from condition duration. It is the only CC of it’s kind.
4.) High Sustainability. While I don’t feel that our new found sustainability is unwarranted, I do feel that it is too high when combined with the high damage output.

The one fix that would be a huge step in the right direction IMO would be to address Terror. As much as I love destroying someone with a Doom-snipe, Terror just does not belong in the game IMO. It is counterintuitive to the intended design and use of Necro Fear abilities – specially in the case of Doom at close range. Its damage needs to be nerfed by 50% or better or simply removed (I vote for the latter). As fun as it may be to destroy people with, it simply does not promote fun and healthy game play. Removing it wouldn’t be a one-stop fix per se but it would take care of the bulk of the problem. The other being more involved as the condi application rate is simply too high with the minimal investment required. Bleed durations in particular should be toned down substantially. They could start by taking a good look at the Scepter Auto Attack.

Lopez.7369:

hackks.3687:

Huh, it never occurred to me when reading the trait’s tool tip that the “100%” was referring to the base duration of the conditions, and that any duration investment would be regarded as “over 100%”. Kind of seems like wishful thinking honestly.

Like Zone said, all it needs is an internal CD and it will be fine.

That’s how the developers explicitly said it should work in patch notes and various posts. It’s not wishful thinking.

Here’s how the mechanic was explained in patch notes: “Berserker’s Stance: Increased the recharge to 60 seconds. Reduced the duration to 4 seconds. This stance now reduces incoming condition duration by 100%, so only modified conditions can get through.”

Interesting. And the same was said of Automated Response? Or was this only in reference to Berserker’s Stance? AR’s tool tip doesn’t say anything about “only modified conditions get though” but I could see how that might have been ‘accidentally’ omitted.

I haven’t seen any of the comments from the devs regarding either of these skills. would you possibly be able to link your source(s)?

If what you say is true, then yeah it’s bugged.

Thinking on it some more I might also argue that in addition to an ICD a skill duration should probably be implemented as well to AR. It should really be used for the purpose of securing a heal while under condi pressure, not endlessly face tanking condis while soaking up direct damage with protection, regen, and blast heals. And while we’re on the subject, Berserker’s Stance 8sec immunity feels too long as well. 5sec seems more appropriate, but should also come with a CD reduction to 45sec or so. It would be a slight improvement to the overall immunity up time while also shrinking the window in which a Warrior can deal near unstoppable damage.

Huh, it never occurred to me when reading the trait’s tool tip that the “100%” was referring to the base duration of the conditions, and that any duration investment would be regarded as “over 100%”. Kind of seems like wishful thinking honestly.

Like Zone said, all it needs is an internal CD and it will be fine.

The way I see it, condis simply offer a safer, far more reliable, and far less defendable way to dish out damage for the purpose of controlling the map i.e. killing bunkers, pressuring opponents out of an area.

Let’s remember, the demand for condis stemmed from the uber unkillable bunkers that couldn’t be downed via direct damage without 5 minutes and a coordinated 5-man spike. Uber Protection and Healing Power made condis a must have, and once Quickness was nerfed without any adjustments to physical defenses (protection, retal, etc.) the option to run power became less and less practical. Now we’ve gotten so condition heavy that we’re beginning to outstrip the available condition removal. Clearly the meta was not intended to swing this far in one direction, but the demand was made and reinforced early on by letting bunkers stay as strong as they are, as well as defenses against direct damage.

I think ANet needs to take a long look at melee skills and their cast times, damage coefficients, and hit radius as well as common defenses such as Protection, Retal, available healing to certain classes (Guadians, Ele’s) and reevaluate the “opportunity costs” that go along with each as compared to condi/aoe/ground targeted skills.

I’d also point out that this meta is ideal for Necros. Masters of conditions, massive HP pool, boon corruption, and hardly any stun+burst power builds running around to counter them. Even without Burning this meta is made for Necros to thrive in. As soon as power becomes viable though, that will change immensely. At this point I think ANet needs to stop balancing the items deemed “too strong”, and start looking at what was intended to counter it and why it isn’t viable within the meta do so.

jmatb.6307:

Andele sorry dude you’re clueless.

Necros are very strong against burst with even a Rabid ammy with the DS direct damage fix. If they can do that on Rabid, what are they going to do in Shaman with sustain?

Having 1200 range with those tools is completely ridiculous.

what is a Necro going to do with Shaman amulet? All they have is regen and life siphons? The two heals that benefit the least from Healing Power…

Honestly, what is everyone referring to when they say “sustain”? Necro has basically zero ability to recover HP beyond their one viable heal on a 25 sec CD. Think of their HP like an hour glass. It can potentially trickle down slowly, but it definitely has a finite limit.

reedju.5786:

hackks.3687:

Serdoc.7261:

If you read some of the threads on the Necromancer forums, a lot of necromancers feel that dhuumfire was a mistake, as necros should not get burning as it is out pf place.

If you look through a lot of threads or even posts on this thread, changing dhuumfire seems o be a popular idea as well.

IMO, make dhuumfire give Torment instead of burning, aka change to this ->100% chance to inflict 2 stacks of torment for 3 seconds on critical hits. This effect can only trigger once every 10 seconds.

Also, please be careful about changing things for the sake of tPvP without looking into the effects it will have on PvE (I think you already do this, but just in case), as nerfing Necromancers in the wrong way could effectively wipe them out in the PvE arena. Which IMO re-enforces the whole ‘just nerf dhuumfire’ solution, as it will not have too harsh an affect on PvE.

Not for nothing, but those same Necros can’t tell you or anybody else why exactly Dhuumfire is so strong or over the top. All they know is that all the QQ started at the same time that Dhuumfire was added. And to be honest it’s 4 sec of burning on a single target every 10 sec. At it’s best it goes up to 6 sec of burning, and still only on a single target. I can’t emphasize enough how little benefit this is in a team fight situation, other than getting a lucky proc on a Doom snipe when focusing down a called target.

Any half decent necro can tell you exactly why it is OP. It is in a tree with condi duration and it takes 0 skill to use. With epi, no single target condi application exists for necro. With the addition of new weakness and torment, there are more cover condi’s than there are removals to counter it vs a single class (fear, weakness, torment, poison, chill, cripple) . Necro has the best and fastest bleed stacking (I know some will argue, but we can sustain stacks higher than 10 bleeds with a good rotation and knowledge of how to cover them) and along with the strongest base dmg condition our very unique and situational terror/corrupts/transfers we fill the role of every single condi class. It takes no skill and it needs to go. /answered

I won’t argue the merits of RNG, since there are none. I’ll simply agree that there’s far too much of it in the game.

I think you did answer the question, but not quite as you intended. As you mentioned, Necros got a whole host of condition buffs in the previous patch, not just the addition of Dhuumfire and Torment, but also the buffs to Weakness and Blind. What they didn’t get with it was a comparable toning down of their previous sources of condition damage to make room for the new ones.

For an analogy:

previous Necro = 5 lbs bag with 5 lbs of condis in it
current Necro = 5 lbs bag with 10 lbs of condis in it

does that make sense? I’m kinda in a rush, sorry

Andele.1306:

hackks.3687:

I’d also ask that when you consider the Necro and it’s role you do so through the lens of its intended design. A low mobility, low defense, high damage class designed to be a walking area denial machine who’s primary mode of defense is essentially face-tanking and not avoidance.

edit: Tl;DR – A good deal of Necro’s recent success has a lot to do with the meta and it’s development over that last few months. Attrition builds have steadily grown in prominence and Necro’s were designed to excel at attrition fighting. i.e. there’s more going on here than just Necros.

I’d also ask that when you consider the Necro and it’s role you do so through the lens of its intended design. A low mobility, low damage avoidance, medium defense, medium damage, high utility, high sustain, high area control class designed to FACETANK LIKE A MAN!

the sustain and defense are new developments, and only so far as to keep the Necro from being nearly defenseless. as it’s been said before, the Necro can’t disengage, so they’re obliged to stay and fight anyone who chooses to do so. If you don’t give them damage potential then they’re defenseless, and if they can’t take a punch or two, then they’re equally defenseless.

I’m not saying the numbers are right, but a Necro needs something to be competitive when they’re perpetually locked into win-or-die situation.

Serdoc.7261:

If you read some of the threads on the Necromancer forums, a lot of necromancers feel that dhuumfire was a mistake, as necros should not get burning as it is out pf place.

If you look through a lot of threads or even posts on this thread, changing dhuumfire seems o be a popular idea as well.

IMO, make dhuumfire give Torment instead of burning, aka change to this ->100% chance to inflict 2 stacks of torment for 3 seconds on critical hits. This effect can only trigger once every 10 seconds.

Also, please be careful about changing things for the sake of tPvP without looking into the effects it will have on PvE (I think you already do this, but just in case), as nerfing Necromancers in the wrong way could effectively wipe them out in the PvE arena. Which IMO re-enforces the whole ‘just nerf dhuumfire’ solution, as it will not have too harsh an affect on PvE.

Not for nothing, but those same Necros can’t tell you or anybody else why exactly Dhuumfire is so strong or over the top. All they know is that all the QQ started at the same time that Dhuumfire was added. And to be honest it’s 4 sec of burning on a single target every 10 sec. At it’s best it goes up to 6 sec of burning, and still only on a single target. I can’t emphasize enough how little benefit this is in a team fight situation, other than getting a lucky proc on a Doom snipe when focusing down a called target.

Just a couple thoughts regarding the game play as a whole with indirect reference to current Necros:

1 – how about making Fear function similarly to Immobilize by not allowing it to stack with multiple applications? This would eliminate a good deal of the Fear chains and require Necros to actively time the skills rather than simply reapplying with the ease of overlap. I’d like to see the same done for Daze, to be honest.

2. Conditions v Power – the preference of condi and attrition builds over power builds has been trending for months now, specially since the nerf to Quickness. One of the main advantages being that it’s the easiest way around high Toughness, Healing Power, and, possibly most importantly, high Protection up time. The preference, in my opinion, is two fold and stems from the need for some classes to hedge their stats against prominent glass cannon builds – essentially Thieves and shatter Mesmers – as well as offering a solid means of employing area denial (quick side note: for those who are opposed to all the AOE, while it may be overly prominent at the moment, lets not forget that this is a Conquest game mode where map control is the key to winning, and being capable of denying areas of the map is a critical part of the strategic game play). Where I’m driving at with this is perhaps we need to take a look at what is preventing Power builds from being successful, rather than what is simply outshining the Power builds, in this case conditions. That’s not to say that conditions aren’t potentially overly strong at the moment, but I don’t think it’s the sole reason why Power is currently less prevalent.

Lastly, I want to say that I’m opposed to moving Terror to GM trait status simply because with this last round of changes the Necro now has a build with actual synergy. Looking over the traits and skills of a 30/20/0/0/20 build you can now see how everything works together rather than the usual mixed bag of traits that simply bolster wholly different aspects of the class/build but have no relevance to one another. To me it seems as though the goal of these last two patches was to give Necro this one build that isn’t clunky or gimmicky but designed to work for a distinct purpose. So while it might be overly effective at the moment – I won’t argue as to whether that is true or not – I’d ask that proposed changes be geared towards maintaining the build but tweaking for balance.

I’d also ask that when you consider the Necro and it’s role you do so through the lens of its intended design. A low mobility, low defense, high damage class designed to be a walking area denial machine who’s primary mode of defense is essentially face-tanking and not avoidance.

edit: Tl;DR – A good deal of Necro’s recent success has a lot to do with the meta and it’s development over that last few months. Attrition builds have steadily grown in prominence and Necro’s were designed to excel at attrition fighting and since the previous patch have been set up to dominate such play styles i.e. I believe there’s more going on here than just Necros being OP.

Follidus.8027:

I think this just goes to show you need to actually play game before you start making arguments about balance. This is the #1 reason why it’s so frustrating discussing balance on this forum.

could you maybe not use so many pronouns and be a little more descriptive? I can’t tell what/who you’re referring to

Shar.3402:

hackks.3687:

Shar.3402:

Avead.5760:

Its true though..the only conclusion i get from this video is eles burst is in dire need of nerf.
I mean god.. 9 button presses in less than a second for instant melee single target damage damage is definately a priority compared to lets say 1200 range undistinguishable massive huge aoe cond pressure of necro.
And its certainly more importtant than the fact that necro autoattakcs a mesm once and eats half his hp pool

I know, right? you should be punished for pressing keys fast and rewarded for autoattacking enemies to death.

lol sure just glance over the fact that you Ele’s have been yammering on about dealing 12-20k damage with instant cast, zero flight time abilities.

Oh ho, but it takes 9 buttons to do it you say! So let me ask you, do you prefer the full face plant on the keyboard, the face-plant-and-roll, the wax-on/wax-off full keyboard wipe, or the simple kitten -plant and fart on the keyboard (my personal fav)?

I prefer to throw a double punch on the left side of my keyboard, to make sure I don’t miss anything.
That’s why I need a new keyboard every other week.

oooo that’s a nice one, I’d add it to my repertoire but I don’t think it’s going to work with my budget… maybe one day, though!

Benji.9203:

Helseths channel gives a more in depth test

http://www.twitch.tv/helsethgw2/b/434824077

I don’t get it… why didn’t the Ele just run away and reset? Like the Necro would have a say in the matter…

Shar.3402:

Avead.5760:

Its true though..the only conclusion i get from this video is eles burst is in dire need of nerf.
I mean god.. 9 button presses in less than a second for instant melee single target damage damage is definately a priority compared to lets say 1200 range undistinguishable massive huge aoe cond pressure of necro.
And its certainly more importtant than the fact that necro autoattakcs a mesm once and eats half his hp pool

I know, right? you should be punished for pressing keys fast and rewarded for autoattacking enemies to death.

lol sure just glance over the fact that you Ele’s have been yammering on about dealing 12-20k damage with instant cast, zero flight time abilities.

Oh ho, but it takes 9 buttons to do it you say! So let me ask you, do you prefer the full face plant on the keyboard, the face-plant-and-roll, the wax-on/wax-off full keyboard wipe, or the simple kitten -plant and fart on the keyboard (my personal fav)?

Avead.5760:

Its true though..the only conclusion i get from this video is eles burst is in dire need of nerf.
I mean god.. 9 button presses in less than a second for instant melee single target damage damage is definately a priority compared to lets say 1200 range undistinguishable massive huge aoe cond pressure of necro.
And its certainly more importtant than the fact that necro autoattakcs a mesm once and eats half his hp pool

oh my, I think smell a hint of sarcasm underneath that thick layer of hyperbole… savory!

Two things:

1 – thanks for the video proof that Ele’s instant cast burst is indeed in much need of a nerf, a la added cast/flight times (though I wouldn’t rule out deletion; see 100nades)

2 – that poor Necro had to use two skills to accomplish what every other class can do with a single skill

also, I’m not sure how telling your friend to hold up their shield so you can run into it face first as fast as you can constitutes as a “test”…

I understand mobility is not likely to ever be a big feature on Necros and that’s OK because it’s not really the heart of the issue. As it stands in either WvW or PvP, should anyone decide to engage a Necro, the Necro has no choice but to oblige, whether it suits them or not. Even if that’s the intended case, where the Necro truly suffers is it’s ability to recover from an opening onslaught, or the 2nd attempt should they pop all their CDs and use all their DS to survive the first. The Spectral Wall change allowed Necros to gain a “self-peel” of sorts but what good is a peel if you have no means to recover from the damage already taken? Recovery, not necessarily mobility is where Necros differ from most other classes. Some classes use evades/blocks/invulns, others use escapes, some use a combination of both with an extraordinary amount of healing. The Necro lacks all of these. So while mobility might be a no go, there are other options to give Necros the means to sustain themselves.

I also think you guys should consider dropping the notion of Death Shroud as a survivability mechanic. As I mentioned before if you simply increase the gains and costs then DS can become a more fluid, utility based mechanic to allow the Necro to fulfill it’s role without giving it a million lives, as well as create an opportunity to move those much needed self-sustaining attributes into skills/traits outside of DS making Necro’s less dependent on DS, and thusly not defenseless when without Life Force.

FirstBlood.7359:

Let’s not forget that Necros have the highest base HP in the game.

shared by warriors, both of which are regarded as the easiest kills in PvP. kinda ironic, huh?