Either lightning reflexes or protect me are our best stun breaks, watch out for shouts, especially short cd ones with natures voice, and sick em is useful for stealthed enemies. Some of the others are perhaps a bit lack luster but the signets are incredibly underwhelming in PvP, most of the time they’re used in BM builds that use pure passive play, or its just signet of the hunt on a glass cannon. You have to really go for signet traits to make them viable. 16 seconds of signet of the wild uptime next patch is interesting though
How it is that search and rescue is on such a long cd is beyond me, when Elementalists have a shorter cooldown res that allows them to res up to 3 allies, potentially res themselves, res a teammate at full health or res them and teleport them to them. I know its got a long cast time but come on, 180 seconds to get a guy to be ressed, perhaps it was overpowered at 85, but we had to sacrifice a utility slot for it, and thats literally all it did, and unless you had a tanky pet they could go down easily to aoe pressure.
(edited by jonnis.2946)
Kromium, they have changed it to apply 4 seconds of swiftness regardless of whether or not you already have swiftness. Each pulse now applies 4 seconds of swiftness. Its far better support for the start of a tPvP match, but its probably a pretty lackluster change for WvW. Then again, troops of people could run over them in WvW I imagine
I looked at other traits that remove conditions passively, the only real comparable one to Empathic Bond is Purity, which removes 1 condition every 10 seconds as an Adept trait. Empathic Bond being a grandmaster removes 3. I think a huge number of builds would open up by moving Empathic Bond down the tiers in the Survival line, and improving active condition removal elsewhere.
But I’ve looked for other conditional removal options that are active and I’m struggling a bit for ideas. Try not to be too critical as these are just a few of the very rudimentary ideas I have, I’d be keen to see other peoples suggestions. Bear in mind these go in line with reducing the passive removal from Empathic Bond
1. A new pet bar skill that transfers condis, potentially a measley amount before traiting it to prevent it being OP
2. Certain weapon skills removing a condition (Serpent strike? Winters bite? Crippling Talon?)
3. Heal as One removes 2-3 Conditions, just a flat buff, this heal is pretty ineffective in SPvP unless theres loads of stuff proccing off your heal, but there are shorter heal cds on other classes for that
4. Sun Spirit active – if its the blinding light from the sun it would be nice if at least cleared chill on people in the area, I’d like to see it remove condis in general but probably a bit OP given that its already in the meta, perhaps with the burning reduction coming up?
The only way to have active condition removal is if its one of the 10 things on your bar, part of a dodge (even this is dodgy…), or as part of a pet skill, so its hard to see where else they might put it in. Does any have any suggestions for revamping our condition removal?
Skip to the second post if you’re aware of the 7 ways we can remove conditions at the moment and the general arguments against passive play.
Its no secret that we’re a very passive class in SPvP, if you disagree with me pick up an Engi/Elementalist/Mesmer, frankly pretty much anything else, no one gets as much done without having to do anything as the Ranger can.
Now if Anet want to have some builds that get a bit done without any skill thats fine, all well and good to get the beginners involved, but this shouldnt be limited to one profession, nor should it limit any particular profession to be more effective with more active builds, I hope this is a philosophy that they already share.
Specifically, I’m going to talk about Condition Removal. We don’t have many options as it is in this area, I’ll list everything we could possibly use ignoring Runes and Sigils:
Active
Healing Spring – 1 Condition every pulse
By far our most effective active condition cleanse, removes 6 conditions every 30 seconds, provided you can stay in the tiny field and aren’t being hit by the dangerous aoes that most condi classes put out (think engis/necros/trap rangers)
Signet of Renewal – Full Condition Cleanse
Also a stun breaker, hence this becomes very situational, removes some of our passive condition removal if used for the 60 (48) second cd. Can kill the pet if needed and pet swap on cd which removes even more of our passive condi removal, largely not a viable choice
Shake it Off – 2 conditions removed in AoE
AoE clearing on a 25 second cooldown, would be useful if you didnt have to take a terrible damage pet as a result. Simple fact is we’re so reliant on our pet damage we can’t take such a low damage pet, and they get a full health bar every 20 seconds so you’re very rarely worried about them dying. Also effectively at least a 30 second cooldown due to pet swapping.
Nature’s Renewal – 5 Conditions removed in AoE
An excellent active condi cleanse, people often don’t actually realise this is on the active of the elite spirit, but the active is too useful for resses and has far far too long a cooldown counting the spirits cd itself to be used for this purpose. Perhaps giving another spirit an active that clears condis would be a potential solution?
Evasive Purity – Blind and Poison removed on dodge
I’ve put these last two in basically to avoid complaints. With the amount rangers can dodge and the lack of ability to track the 10 second cooldown this is basically a passive.
Passive:
Empathic Bond – 3 conditions transferred to pet every 10 seconds
Fantastic condition removal, pretty much a must for any high level builds as we don’t have many other viable options
Signet of Renewal – 1 condition transferred to pet every 10 seconds
Problems with the active as previously described, other than with heavy traiting this effect is removed when signet is used
I might have listed all these, but basically the only active viable condi clear is healing spring. Its the main reason we take healing spring over other heals at the moment, we dont get that vigor/regen combo anymore which was so good, and the water field is reduced, but we need some form of active condi cleanse to be at all effective in the high level meta. Even that one isn’t great as you often have to sacrifice being hit by things that give you condis to stay in it, hopefully ANet sees this problem.
We also suffer from having 3 long elite cooldowns, meaning Lyssa runes, a major source of condi cleanse for many classes, are not really an option.
I believe this is the major flaw that leads to a severe lack of build diversity in Rangers. Either you are Glass Cannon and going for broke, or you have to take Empathic Bond, at which point you are pigeon holed into a bunkery supporty spec, or simply a pretty ineffective damage dealer.
Figured I’d post this here as well, I think there have been some potentially very powerful changes to support rangers, and this post discusses them
Note: Skip to bold section for the potential of this ranger build
I had an idea for the Ranger not long ago, this patch will (I think) make it pretty much OP, and I’m going to be honest and come out with it.
For example, by swapping Nature’s Vengeance and Spirits Unbound so that rangers can have spirits follow you in tier 2, players can now opt out of the higher damage output from spirits and still have options elsewhere
I like the idea behind this change of giving viable support/damage options, its a great direction to be heading in, but its opened up a whole new kind of support ranger (I’m doing that I expect this change to accomplish A, but I think it will actually accomplish B thing, you’re welcome!)
Before I list this builds qualities, I’d like to note that, to achieve all of this, I have only spent 40 trait points, picked utility skills and chosen 2 runes! I could go very bunkery with my other 30 points against conditions or physical damage, take some more damage, could be using warhorn for blast finishers, lots of possibilities for more support/damage/bunkering from the rest of this build.
You’ve talked about wanting to improve support lately, rangers were already top dog, this build would have:
1. Perma Regen/Swiftness uptime for allies in a 600 radius (regen based off likely settlers amulet healing power too!)
2. One of the best sources of AoE protection there is
3. Perma Burning on the target in most team fight situations (even with the reduction, you only need 3 more individuals or any off the “petting zoo” specs to get very high burn duration)
4. Longest water field in the game (still)
5. An AoE res, albeit a small one
It might seem that all thats been added is perma regen, but Spirit Rangers are already pretty firmly implanted in the meta, though Warriors took us out of it somewhat. With the changes to other traits, and the potential mobility (think perma Swiftness + Sword 2, and you could take a Greatsword) of this very supporty class, which has the potential for more damage or bunkering as well. I think this could be dangerously OP, to the point that it becomes essential to have one. The one weakness is a lack of a stun breaker, but the current spirit ranger is doing alright without one at the moment even in this ridiculous stun meta.
I hope you appreciate the honesty, and look forward to hearing anything you have to say on this build.
To improve our build diversity, the trait that needs moving is empathic bond. Frankly I’d like you to get rid of it, give us some other ways of actively clearing Condis rather than making us the passive class that we are, or bring it down a tier but reduce its effectiveness a bit (we get 3 in the top tier per 10, guards get 1 in the adept tier, why not 2 for the master tier?) while ever so slightly increasing our ability to remove condis. Healing spring is our only good heal for high level play, not even because of the water field or the regen/vigor combo it used to give us but for the condi removal. Not counting signet of renewal, or the bear shake it off ability this is our only active condi cleanse, and the other two really arent powerful enough to be taken.
(edited by jonnis.2946)
Bunker Guard build is out of date imho. This is closer to the build that has been used in recent tournaments (with sigil of life swapped for accuracy quite a bit) by most guardian bunkers. I appreciate the build listed has been used by Lord Nag Nag I think?
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fUAQNApdWlUgqCnFyvDfIFRuAbBYPwIH741DH+QGC-TsAgzCtIySllLLTWyssZNaY9x8DA
Most spirit rangers in the meta use a Carrion amulet and take Sharpened Stone trait in Marksmanship over the vigor when crit.
(edited by jonnis.2946)
Note: Skip to bold section for the potential of this ranger build
I had an idea for the Ranger not long ago, this patch will (I think) make it pretty much OP, and I’m going to be very honest and come out with it.
For example, by swapping Nature’s Vengeance and Spirits Unbound so that rangers can have spirits follow you in tier 2, players can now opt out of the higher damage output from spirits and still have options elsewhere
I like the idea behind this change of giving viable support/damage options, its a great direction to be heading in, but its opened up a whole new kind of support ranger (I’m doing that I expect this change to accomplish A, but I think it will actually accomplish B thing, you’re welcome!)
Before I list this builds qualities, I’d like to note that, to achieve all of this, I have only spent 40 trait points, picked utility skills and chosen 2 runes! I could go very bunkery with my other 30 points against conditions or physical damage, take some more damage, could be using warhorn for blast finishers, lots of possibilities for more support/damage/bunkering from the rest of this build.
You’ve talked about wanting to improve support lately, rangers were already top dog, this build would have:
1. Perma Regen/Swiftness uptime for allies in a 600 radius (regen based off likely settlers amulet healing power too!)
2. One of the best sources of AoE protection there is
3. Perma Burning on the target in most team fight situations (even with the reduction, you only need 3 more individuals or any off the “petting zoo” specs to get very high burn duration)
4. Longest water field in the game (still)
5. An AoE res, albeit a small one
It might seem that all thats been added is perma regen, but Spirit Rangers are already pretty firmly implanted in the meta, though Warriors took us out of it somewhat. With the changes to other traits, and the potential mobility (think Greatsword + Swiftness + Sword 2) of this very supporty class, which has the potential for good damage or bunkering as well I think this could be dangerously OP, to the point that it becomes essential to have one.
I hope you appreciate the honesty, and look forward to hearing anything you have to say on this build
(edited by jonnis.2946)
I really like the idea of a team arena, but feel that the damage coefficient currently in the game is quite high for such a game mode. Personally, I feel 5v5 is too hectic for such a game mode, that 2v2 would lead to gimmicky builds and that 3v3 would be ideal. However, I think to implement any of the three, you need to have a debuff that reduces damage done at the start of the game which wears off over time. It doesnt need to massively reduce it, if it just started out as everyone doing 2/3 damage (effectively a free constant protection buff) and slowly increased over time, then different set ups would have different advantages.
A very survivable set up would be trying to last until damage increased to full before finally just getting someone down, where a zergy set up might look to take one person down quite early, but would suffer in the late game. It might need tweaking, I’d suggest it would probably lead to more bunkery builds than otherwise, but its just a thought on team arenas. This could also be achieved by healing being more powerful initially.
It may be that the best way to rule out bunkery builds is to have the damage coefficient continue to increase after normal damage is resumed. In the 3v3 that I suggested though, there are not many classes that can currently deal with three people hitting on them, even if one of those three is a more supporty/bunkery character.
I think this gamemode would really enrich the meta though, I think build diversity would be significantly improved and it would really help to balance the supportive builds in the game, which are difficult to analyse in terms of effectiveness in conquest.
Id like to think compositions involving rangers/engis water field blasting would become popular, I really think finishers would at this stage dictate the top level players, and at the moment I think combo effects are for the large part only done by individuals or good players that spot fields, rather than coordinated. I appreciate that some are coordinated but in a 5v5 fight there are so many fields going down that its very difficult to do.
Personally, I think irrespective of the attempts to improve HJ, private servers should have been made non progression, as a general rule. When does progression really matter in a private server? It doesnt really matter in duelling servers, nor skirmish servers, nor practice servers, thats not what theyre designed for. If anyone can give us a reason why we need progression in a custom server, one that outways the negatives of it being used as a farming route, then so be it, but for me, that’s simply not what they’re intended for.
Despite being someone who plays a fair bit of soloq, and spends time waiting for them in hotjoins, I’m not overly bothered by this change. I think the rewards for HJ and Soloq/Teamq are completely disproportionate to the skill level required, but thats a separate issue. Frankly, as it is, I’ve already reached rank 40, and my next set of gear won’t be coming for a long time anyway, so I’m hoping a new reward system comes out.
There are two issues here, glory farming, which would be limited majorly by blocking progression in private servers, and beginners going into team queue. I think this side of things could be tackled in other ways. While I accept that you dont want to put a minimum rank on solo queues, I would much rather see a very low rank requirement, that also came with a message/tutorial regarding solo queue and team queue. Perhaps rank 5 being required for solo queue and rank 10 being required for team queue.
I actually think the likelihood is that Toxin is going to be a condi or debuff applied purely by the krait in the living story portion of the next patch. I imagine it will function in a similar way to Agony damage in fractals being the extra debuff that you need to be aware of. I highly doubt the spell will have any use outside of this environment, and am almost 100% that no toxin will be implemented to profession skills, nor will this heal be usable in pvp
1. Balance Philosophy
2. Reward Systems
3. Tournament and Leaderboard Systems
For me, these are the main things that make the pvp popular, rewards (from achievements to aesthetic gear, finishers and the potential for more skins in the future) will have a huge impact, as will a properly balanced game. I think once it becomes popular, you can start to move more into the esports scene, so tournaments and leader boards become more important
Just to add, personally I think some of the maps are pretty epic. Just go have a look at the keep at Forest, actually look up. I’m happy with it not being so detailed to improve performance, but that thing is huge, and actually looks pretty epic
I believe this question specifically refers to items such as The Crossing, which were available in PvE as a crafted item and PvP as an item from chests last year.
This made perfect sense.
These items have come back as PvE items but as they were implemented before the idea of a skin that could be used in either PvP or PvE, it is my belief that the newly crafted versions of these items are PvE weapons only, as they were last year. The recipe itself didn’t actually go inactive until this September when the magic find patch came in and has now reactivated.
While this makes sense to me, I take issue with the following scenario:
These weapons have been brought back (and importantly, the mats that are needed are reobtainable) in PvE, but are not obtainable in PvP
I myself wouldnt be too irritated if the items that you craft have been changed, and are now skins, so they are transferable to PvP given considerable effort in PvE. I understand that its not the fairest way to do it and some people might be miffed by that, but at the same time Paid Tournament chests were a lot harder to obtain this time last year, and there needs to be some effort going into getting these skins.
Id be relatively pleased if they were just in the chests now, though I think its a tad unfair for the reasons I just mentioned. When you said right now you can get the skins and bring them over, I presume youre talking about the Bloody Prince Staff Skin and the like (I’m into staffs if you didnt already realise), but we’ve had no confirmation on the others availability. It would just be nice to know where you stand on those weapons
Bump, Updated post
The trait Vigorous Training has not been providing any vigor (even when tested with bird pets) in the HotM. I have tried on pet swap itself and on pet skill use to no avail.
The sylvari hounds heal is showing a tooltip based on the ranger healing power for both the insta heal and the regeneration, both of which I believe are incorrect
Recruitment closed for now as we have found a few players we are trying out
Hi there,
We are team Eternal Invictus and we’re looking for members to join our ranks. We’re a fairly skilled team made up of rank 40+ characters with lots of tournament experience.
In terms of qualities of a pvp player we value:
Communication, above all else, this goes in line with having a good attitude!
Movement & Clutch Decisions (Ressing and stomping amongst other things)
Class Knowledge & Experience
We’re not overly bothered about which class you play, but obviously it needs to fit with our team. We currently have a Mesmer, Bunker Guardian (who can also play warrior) and a Necromancer/Spirit Ranger. We have use for skillful warriors and thieves above all else, followed by engineers (looks like they may be coming fully into the meta) and Rangers. Like I say though all classes will be considered as two of our members are versatile in what they can play.
We play between 7:30 and 11:30 pm GMT on most days, but would set up a more regular schedule once the team was fully in place.
You can contact me on jonnis.2946 either by pm or by ingame mail if I’m not online and I’ll get back to you! Thanks
(edited by jonnis.2946)
Hi there,
I’ve been playing Guild Wars 2 since the betas, and am looking for a very active team. My best experience came when pugging with a few guys from deso, and I reached around top 600 on the old style leaderboards. I’ve been out of the game for a month or so, but am getting back into it now.
I’m rank 40 on EU servers, can fit into most practice time schedules and am an english 21 year old.
I focused on node defence for my ranger for a very long time, classic BM spec, now looking at the shout healing spec since the last patch as a viable option for close point. Getting used to spirits, but having just picked the game back up Ive barely used them since the betas.
My necro is pure condis, I’ve tried wells occasionally, and had a look at minion builds of course, but mostly I focus on pretty standard condi builds applying plenty of pressure. I’d probably consider it my main, but I’m happy to play any of these three classes.
My guard has never been anything but a bunker, currently trying an altruistic healing build that incorporates a lot of might for the party but happy to play all the weps and any bunkery spec.
I’m looking for a team that wants to win. The focus for me needs to be communication > movement and strategy > clutch decision making > player skill. Im very happy to take constructive criticism and to give it out, I think thats really important in a team, provided people arent being a total arse!
If you feel youve got a spot that fits, drop me a pm or mail in game, or reply on here,
Cheers!
(edited by jonnis.2946)
One thing I think you could add, possibly to the original post, is a list of contacts for all officers in the EU and NA guilds respectively, so that communication with the guilds for invites becomes easier.
My understanding is that you take most people in and fit them to teams, rather than turning anyone down, so I think that it would help to speed up the process once people have replied on the forums.
On a separate note, I think its fantastic what youre trying to do here! Look forward to joining soon
IGN: Eldarron (Ranger) Get Off My Plane (Guardian) Eldari Aluma (Necromancer)
Main Profession: Ranger
Alternate Professions: Equally comfortable on Necro as Ranger, Guardian I’m nearly there, but the skill ceiling feels much higher. Would also like to learn Engineer if required
Account name: jonnis.2946
Practice Availablity: GMT, I play most days in the early evening until late into the night, though comms gets harder past midnight as I dont want to keep people up. Often not available on Thursdays or Saturdays, and couldnt guarantee the others of course
Current PvP rank (Not Leaderboard): 40
Level of Desire: Active tournament play is what I’m looking for. Scrimming sounds like an excellent way to improve, and I’m very keen for that, but I’d love to see myself going up leaderboards too. I’m very active though, and just keen to get properly involved with a team that really wants to work to improve and has excellent communication.
NA or EU: EU
(edited by jonnis.2946)
What I’m looking at here is balancing the current Meta builds. 30 30 10 0 0 is too strong and powerful, for the reasons I posted above, and I did try to take into account Condition builds, without removing the glassy Necro builds.
I agree completely that most pure condi builds will take master of terror. It makes perfect sense to take it. Should a pure condition spec do more damage with terror? Thats one question, but I think pure condition specs should be able to use the fear as a gap maker interrupt and a damage source.
Power based builds, (specifically the 30 30 10 build, but also in general) shouldnt be able to produce the same kind of control from terror as they are inherently doing more damage. Even a power build that does not take the terror trait itself with still use fears, and they are still powerful. However, I appreciate your point that I would be making the fears less effective in this role for this spec. If you leave fear durations as they are though, the 30 30 10 spec still has too much damage and too much control, there has to be a way to change that without affecting all Necro builds.
I think I’d rest on my laurels, and my feeling would be that power builds have enough fear duration. Bear in my that you actually get 30% condi duration from the spite tree (disregarding your suggestion for the moment). So what you currently consider to be base duration is actually 1.3 times what fears should be, assuming thats your view. Thats already a long fear to have, youve almost got the master of terror trait just through speccing into the power line, and runes can make up that difference. To me that is too strong. If fear duration was reduced to 66%, runes and the spite tree would make fears up to the current base duration now, which to me is more than enough for a gap creator, especially given the insta cast doom fear would be 1.5 seconds below 600 range, which is I assume where you’ll be using it to create gaps. I personally think that wouldnt affect your specs too harshly.
The fact is though that balancing at the moment revolves around the meta specs, especially when one is too powerful. Unique specs are good in that people do not know what to expect so much, but they do not counteract the fact that some builds in the game are simply stronger than others
Having fear not affected by condition duration is an interesting idea, but not one I’m sure ANet would take up. Fear is for all intensive purposes a condition at the moment, and unless that were to change it does not make any sense for it not to be affected by condition duration.
“This way you would force the necromancer to go into a terror based build with longer fear durations or a terror based build with shorter fear duration but has access to burning”
Thats exactly what I’m trying to create, and I think thats the right approach. Its how you do it thats the problem
Moving Terror to grandmaster only ensures that it requires total commitment to a Glassy spec to get Terror, Dhuumfire and Greater marks as I said in my original post.
Like you, I do not believe terror to be the problem, but if you do not move Terror to the grandmaster tier but stick with my other suggestions (read above), what then comes out is the glass cannon build has a 30 20 0 0 20 spec, while that doesnt include greater marks, its still really dangerous and has too long fears with too much damage – that in my opinion is the main problem with the current spec, too much damage combined with too much control, and the only way to prevent that happening is by moving traits around.
There’s no doubting that the damage is high, but so it should be when youre committing 30 points in each of the most damaging trees. However, the control means that we’re a very glassy class that it becomes very difficult to damage. I genuinely feel that the 30 30 10 spec would be balanced in a system where we were being hit at much as the next glassy character, because we’d have to start playing more defensively and using our skills more effectively. That is why I’d suggest nerfing the base duration of fear skills.
Like I said my numbers arent exact, and perhaps Dhuumfire would need to be slightly reduced in duration as well regardless. As I say I was focusing more on the terror side, but it does seem slightly absurd that we can have 60% uptime of burning just by adding 20% condi duration runes.
I’m not trying to get rid of the build everyone is complaining about, I’m simply trying to make it more balanced. I believe that manipulating the way the fear traits are spread is the best way to do that, without destroying a viable Glass cannon necromancer spec, which by all rights should exist. Only Rangers and possibily Eles can’t go full Glass cannon at the moment with decent damage output, and thats because Eles already have great damage just going through Air.
So no, moving terror to the grandmaster tier alone would not change anything, of course. But combine that change with the other changes I posted and it takes a different look. I have also suggested that the 50% increased damage when a condi is applied be moved to the soul reaping tier and combined with the master of terror trait.
I was focusing purely on the Terror side of things from a standpoint of changing the glassy spec that has too much control at the moment. You’ve actually reduced the duration of one fear here, and our spectral wall duration, but if Reapers Mark still hits for a 1.5 second fear in AoE, thats too strong in this spec. A skill that was used in a skillful sense for res prevention and stomp prevention alike, becomes a damage burst skill.
I dont actually think spectral wall is overpowered, given that it can be stabilitied through, teleported passed, invlunad through, or just ran round. A necromancer requires a reasonable amount of skill to get any kind of chain of fears off using it.
I think Terrors damage currently feels too powerful because of the addition of dhuumfire. Sure, a condi that ticks for 1.2k ish is very good, but I dont think its overpowered especially with our limited ways to apply fear. Perhaps a more reasonable suggestion would be to change the master of terror trait to include the 50% additional damage when the target already has a condition, as well as the fear duration. That would cut the terror damage in the glass cannon spec to 2/3 of what it is now, without reducing the condimancers attempts at damage.
I have never thought Tainted Shackles immobilize has great synergy with the rest of it. I can see thakittens another condi to remove, but if you are immobilized you can’t move so torment hits for half as much. Theres no doubt that immobilize is very strong, but I think the shackles are relatively easily escaped at the moment, unless youre chilled or crippled. I personally don’t feel that needs changing.
I really like the idea of making DS2 a targetable teleport with a cast time. It could uin our chillblains -> fear into spectral wall -> DS2 -> run to the other side -> fear back into the wall combo, depending on how the teleport would work, but that combo does take a large amount of skill to set up properly.
ANet have also said that they planned for us not to be the most mobile of classes but rather that we should be able to sustain in a fight better than others. So perhaps they don’t want us to have disengages in that way? I’m not sure
i personally like the idea that one of the guests gave: show us a beta release note so we can comment and provide feedback on it before it goes live.
Totally with you on that one. It would at least be a start to getting to know the opinions of the community better. It’ll take resources and time to set up the open Beta servers for stuff like this, but thats a quick option where they can just poll that sort of stuff. Even if they were just to send a message out about a change to Rangers say to everyone who has the Champion Hunter achievement, or something similar. It would limit the feedback to people who have hopefully got half decent knowledge of the profession and would allow them to look objectively at it. It still has the same problems that everyone is biased to wanting to make their class better, but it would be a great first step
I’d like to start out by saying that I have played a Necromancer in PvP as my main quite some time ago, and I was as delighted to return after the latest changes that came about. I do think though thakittens clear for most of us to see that they are a bit out of balance with other profs, the latest SOTG on GW2Guru seemed to confirm as much.
My understanding (and it may not be correct) of the way that ANet changed up the Necromancer is that they wanted to add in Dhuumfire so Necros could have a viable glass cannon condition build, which I think is great. Necros and Rangers were the only classes without specs that really did a lot of damage that were anything near viable, so I’m glad that was fixed.
However, they wanted to make sure that you could not have Terror (fears do damage), with Greater Marks, Dhuumfire and Master of Terror (increased fear duration). That to me makes perfect sense, as a spec with access to all these abilities is inherently too powerful, there is simply too much control and damage there, and by all rights in the current layout that shouldn’t be possible.
Going into Spite fully though already gets us 30% of the way there to our increased fear duration. That is not enough of a difference to make going for the trait worthwhile and add to that another 20% in runes, 2 Lyssa and 4 Nightmare, and you have the master of terror trait built in through other means. You have something that is pretty much the equivalent to the situation ANet was, in my opinion, attempting to avoid.
I dont actually have confirmation on the following theory and my understanding is that there has been a lot of speculation over how terror ticks work, so anyone offering some clarity on that score would be very helpful. The fear tick apparently starts the first time another condition ticks while the fear is applied. So imagine I have ten stacks of bleed on a target, one ticking every 0.1 seconds. The first tick of terror will be in the first 0.1 seconds of fear being applied, meaning I only need a 1.1 second fear for two ticks, and a 2.1 second fear for 3 ticks of terror. When they’re easily hitting for over 1000 a pop, and the person is controlled, that really hurts.
This is my proposal for a reasonable balance that would allow for glass cannon Necros to still be viable, while reducing the amount of control they provide, and also giving something back to the more traditional pure terrormancers that provide excellent support without over the top damage.:
1. Terror should be a Grandmaster trait. I like that it defines us as a class and that we have so much access to fear, and do feel that we should be able to do something more with it, but at the moment this trait defines a great number of our builds, and so should in my opinion require a full commitment in curses to take. Withering Precision is swapped with it directly.
2. Reduce base Fear length on all abilities to 66% of their current duration (Before you shout me down, hear me out!). So, with 30% in Spite + 20% in runes, you get back to the current standard duration of fears, slightly reducing the amount of control they provide for the glass cannon variant of the class.
3. Increase the additional fear duration from Master of Terror from 50% to 100%. This would mean that our current base of 66% would increase to 133%. With 20% extra in Runes, you could increase this to close to 146% of the current duration
4. Reinstate Sigil of Paralyzation as something that can increase fear duration. This allows necros to swap from applying more bleed stacks/poison on weapon swaps to providing more control. If a stun break can break a fear, why should a sigil that increases stun duration not increase it. While the maths is not totally right this would increase fear to 166% ish of its current duration. (66%*2.5, 2 for 100% master of terror, 0.2 for runes and 0.3 for dual weilded sigils).
I’m far from an elite or top player, and these are just suggestions, perhaps my numbers arent exactly right for the perfect balance, and I’ve got into a lot of detail with them, but try to take the ideas themselves at face value and please give your comments on them. I’d love to hear other peoples suggestions for how the new Necromancer spec could be balanced without detracting from the profession too much
BrunoBRS is absolutely right. In the latest SOTG (state of the game, a show on the GW2Guru youtube channel) the producer specifically said that they have the numbers of a cast of top players and are in regular communication with them. They also talk at length to people who come up with good suggestions on the forums from what he said.
He also said that they had spoken about a public beta, not directly related to your question but there’s a link. Half the community would welcome the chance to try out the next patch and give feedback, but the other half only wanted knew stuff. To my mind I would say that the people that want to try the new patch should be able to go ahead and do it in controlled testing areas and if you don’t want to you don’t have to, but that’s a possibility. So there’s another feedback route.
I suppose the answer is that they are already doing something similar to what you suggest. It is likely to come more to the forefront as tournaments start to become more regular