Guild Wars 2

edjahman.9104:

I’m sure they are working hard and have also worked hard to deliver to us a fantastic game but it doe’s not seem to live up to the promises that were made long ago.

Its not really about working harder, its about working better. If all their hardwork falls to pieces like it does now, theres no point to it. They really need to start getting things right on the first go.

OnyX.9027:

Ezeriel.9574:

Necros, for the most part, don’t do enough damage to earn a loot bag.

/snip

I would say to all necro’s read this line, read it again then re-read it and then completely disregard it!!!!

As a necro I get a regular 15-30 badges in W3 and I only play for around 2 hours max (due to work, family etc… I have limited time to enjoy the game atm )

lets start by waking people up to 1 fact…

Necro is NOT a burst class… in fact lets repeat this to make it completely clear…

Necro is NOT a burst class

We are an attrition class that can put out crazy mass AoE conditions assuming you play smart, you can actually pretty much insta-gib ppl with a well placed Corrupt Boon and then followed up with Epidemic you will see groups melt, it doesn’t happen often but when it does… at that point… you will see the joy of playing a Necro xD

We don’t have warrior’s kill shot, elementalist style escape from everything, thief’s cloak and burst and then run when something doesn’t die, guardians incredibly bunker playstyle but we are and remain a solid mid/backline class that excels at pressure when played right.

If you want silly OP 1 shot skills or crazy burst then you shouldn’t be playing a necro plain and simple.

Their are loads of different builds out there I use http://en.gw2codex.com/build/21326-wvw-aoe-condition-necro at present as it is a solid all-rounder for WvW but remember your job is to put pressure on groups you are not Rambo/Leeroooooooy or <insert fictional OP char here> (or Chuck Norris)

Accept that you are a back/midline class, accept that your job is pressure pressure PRESSURE, accept you have great survivability but you are not godlike but most of all Accept 1 fact above all others…

Necro is NOT a burst class

Once you come to terms with that you may adapt your playstyle and actually enjoy the beauty of the necro (and remember we are underpowered still, there are a good number of changes needed so what will we become when/if Anet get their act together and resolve all the issues with necro and make all our weapons viable, lower our stupidly long cast times and rebalance our traits a bit better)

Necro’s have a way to go but they are still deadly when played right and are definitely a royal pain in the butt in most WvW situations as we love zergs to play against

Disagree. I burst down my monthly 50 completely easily using wells and some daggerwork.

Mosthated.9304:

Lol you people will believe anything/everything someone post on these forums.

Well the reddit post does have convincing screenshots. But heck! Lets all wear tinfoil hats.

Colbear.6425:

I mean, personally I think it’s because there’s a pressure (real or imaginary) there that’s driving them to put out new content (lost shores, fractals, all the temporary event activities from Halloween and Wintersday), comparatively worthless content (PvP balance stuff, but then, who am I to say that my wants are more important than a PvPers), or reactionary content (“you guys complained about dungeons so we’re gonna spend a month reworking them”, “you guys complained about drop rates so we’re gonna spend a month making a new way to get the item you want”, fractals + fractal fixes).

And that pressure might be “players are leaving because there’s no endgame” or “we’re not making enough money compared to how much we’re spending on X and someone thinks this bad idea is really a good idea” or even “well the people who spend thousands of dollars on this game are asking for this feature”. Or it might be something else, who knows.

I really do think ANet needs to fix up existing content instead of trying to throw in new, flawed content, over and over again. But they seem set on adding new content instead (the event page has a thing on the top that implies monthly content updates), which, well.

I think it’s a bad call.

I’m a big supporter of ‘fix it before new content releases’ but the last time one of those topics came up on the forums, opinions were quite divided. To each their own.

Personally I think the bug fix team in Arenanet are either really bad at their jobs or just lazy. I’m not trying to insult them but get this:

Signet of the Locust on the necromancer got buffed from +10% movespeed to +25%. The tooltip however, did not change. Should the tooltip have changed? Yes. Does this look like an elementary mistake? Very much yes. Should it be difficult to change? No.

And answer this? How long does Virtue of Justice last for when activated? It says 5 seconds, it lasts for 4 seconds. Which one is correct? I’m not sure. I can imagine some people saying ‘tooltip changes aren’t as relevant with actual bug fixes’ but at the same time, tooltip changes SHOULDN’T be difficult to do. If they are, then perhaps the method of scripting this stuff is just way too complex for a simple task. Tooltip inaccuracies just makes the game REEK of lack of polish.

One of the better world bosses in the game IMO. At least I remember her for what she can do.

Colbear.6425:

Yes, something should be done, and yes, their QA process seems to be shoddy, which in my experience tends to be a combination of a) lazy QA and b) too much pressure from Product to MAKE DEADLINES THIS IS SUPER IMPORTANT WE HAVE TO GET IT OUT RIGHT NOW. And, of course, c) developers not being perfect.

But exactly what you say – they need to reassess how they approach adding new content, and they need to slow down on “WE’RE GONNA GET SOMETHING OUT EVERY MONTH” if they can’t make it somethiing unbuggy. ANet seems to be running on a “the wintersday event has to happen a week before christmas” and “monthly new content” and “add new stuff new stuff new stuff we need it” kind of mentality when they should be cleaning up existing content instead.

But if that’s a problem, you don’t punish the guy at the end of the chain who happens to be the one who presses the wrong buttons. You have to restructure the entire system, because there’s supposed to be multiple checks in place that make sure gamebreaking bugs don’t end up in the live product, and if those checks aren’t happening, then you have to ask why and address that underlying issue.

Also I think they’re understaffed.

http://www.arena.net/jobs/

Looks like they’re hiring for quite a few slots. Hilariously, including a “Head of PR”, which means there probably wasn’t one before. Welp.

^^^ The company as a whole and the staff as a unit should be held accountable. Individuals should not, unless you’re talking about executives, because individuals don’t hold the kind of power you’re thinking.

What you said reminds me of why Arenanet wanted to make GW2 in the first place. They weren’t exactly having troubles meeting the 6months per expansion deadline but they did say that it wasn’t working out, and that there were too many features they could not add in the framework of GW1. See, look at that, acknowledgement and acceptance, the first step to recovery!

Colbear.6425:

You guys are seriously out for blood.

What about the people who QA’d it, and let it slip through testing? What about the person who designed it in the first place (for cases like Lyssa runes coming in Karma armor)? What about the person who made a comment on the forums that got misinterpreted in a way that turned out to be false?

How do you think they should be held accountable, exactly?

EDIT: ^^^ Did it actually bug or did you guys stop attacking it and it reset because it went out of combat? I’ve never seen the former, but I’ve seen the latter quite often, which is usually when most of the party is dead and one guy’s running around ressing people and no one’s keeping aggro on the boss.

I’m not saying I can run a dev team better than they can but I’m also not the only person to see that the kitten has hit the fan. Perhaps they should assess the way they approach the introduction of content, and its correlation to bugs it introduces? Perhaps they should acknowledge the issues been presented? Honestly, every bug topic on the bug support subforum here should have a red reply. Whether it’s just saying that the topic creator is bonkers and there are no problems, or to simply tell the person that that bug is accounted for. If Arenanet can’t even do this they are either seriously understaffed or they really don’t give a crap.

TsukasaHiiragi.9730:

I honestly have to agree, earlier today wasted around 2 hours in fractal 20 and couldn’t pass the volcano level because the boss fight is stupidly hard, the time we was going to down it – it bugged and fully healed back to 100%

There has been a morass of problems since launch, alot have been fixed ~ but at the cost of breaking other components.

I’ve put up with a lot of bugs like that for a while but the Giver’s items feel like a final gigantic slap to the face. It’s not that I want to use these items badly but for that issue to have entered the game, it could only mean there was ZERO testing done on it in the first place. And when the problem has surfaced they make an equally similar ZERO effort to acknowledge it. This is not professional integrity.

…for the actions they commit that ruin the ‘service’ their customers have paid for. Yes, I am aware the walls of text that Arenanet waves at us entitle them to do anything to their game, but as a paying customer is a bit of integrity that much to ask for? We paid for a service and as such we expect it to run smoothly as advertised. You’d expect that of your telephone service, your electricity service, etc.

What I’m talking about is the constant blunders each and every patch introduces. More often than not, every player is affected by it in some way. The most recent one that comes to mind is the issue of Giver’s items having exactly no effect at all in the area of boon/condition duration increase. How many people have bought/crafted one of these items now? Not only does Arenanet not issue formal statements about these things, they refuse to even acknowledge the bug exists. Or is having broken items circulate the trading post also part of the grand scheme of keeping the economy alive? If that’s the case, then well played.

On the issue of no statements; lets look at the controversial issue of players banned for mistakes made by the devs, the most recent being the snowflake accessories. Some of these instances live completely in the grey area. Remember when that Kripp guy found a way to convert karma into gold? Who made that possible in the first place. Arenanet. Guess what guys: Superior Rune of Lyssa sells for 3 gold a pop and the only way you can get it is by salvaging a piece of 42k Karma armor. Brave enough to try it?

There’s simply very little feedback and even less acknowledgement for things that have gone awry. You wasted 2 hours getting to Bjarl on COE1 and he was bugged? Too bad! You wasted gold buying certain items that don’t work? Too bad!

raenen.5807:

I think they should ban the guy that created the recipe in the first place.

Can we also ban the guy/girl/people who made a bunch of Giver’s items that don’t do anything?

Cempa.5619:

It seems the community believes that a level 30 in AC will do significantly less damage than a level 80, not saying groups are not taking a level 30, just indicating a perception and asking is the perception accurate?

Suppose you are level 39 and you do not have access to master traits; a trait such as -20% Well cooldown for necromancers. You’re technically doing less damage than a guy who does have that trait, because he can use that skill that benefit from that trait much more frequently.

Ace of Spades.6325:

I apologize for my bad english

Java is from the US, they are 1 month behind in the meta, all the US teams got stomped when they came in EU.

Xeph is a cool guy, but i haven’t seen TP in paid for more than 1 month, and the meta changed a lot meanwhile.

And who is ‘’Vain?’’

It’s just my 2 cents, but i think that doing this kind of thing is pretty arrogant, at least win a lan event and prove that you’ve a deep knowledge of the meta before talking.

Maybe it’s just me thinking that it’s arrogant, it’s a subjective opinion, and i might be wrong. The main problem i have with this kind of things is that it might end up like the other time, where that guy Meteor said a bunch of stuffs that weren’t true.

I don’t think i need to explain why having a bunch of people, (that may or may not have the knowledge) talking to a big crowd, could mislead the community into believe in something that is wrong.

Dude, you don’t know Vain? He is really really good. I’ve seen him in action before.

XiL.4318:

I train with a sammich in my hand for competitive RTS. Just as effective, much less indentured servitude. Crazy good sammiches.

Thief Wars 2 needs to have PvP that doesn’t suck for 75% of the player population from R 1 – R 30.

Top Level Meta is imaginary until there is a large enough population to care about it. That can’t happen until Thief Wars 2 starts being fun for new players.

This. Also, ESport also needs to take into account of the audience. Your game can be completely balanced and full of depth but will still not draw in large crowds if the visuals aren’t suitable for general viewing. GW2 is full of superfluous spell animations and effects, none of which are particularly pleasing or aid in the understanding of the game for new players.

I can guarantee you, if someone who does not play GW2, watched a pvp encounter involving a norn and an asura, they’d ask what the gameplay differences of those 2 races are. In which an experienced player would reply; nothing. The new player will scratch his head wondering why anyone would pick a character that looks like a bigger target, and question why this was even a feature in the first place.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=ol9Fp3v5boE#t=312s

Cloak and Pistol?

Silver.8023:

Identical sigil effects don’t stack as far as I know. I’m pretty sure durations stack additively, somebody had posted about this a while ago and had come to the same conclusion.

blahhhhhhhh….

But even so, if you take away one of the 7% from the burn sigil, i’m still 2% over 100% =(. Does giver’s prefix not work now?

Writetyper.1985:

kKagari.6804:

Writetyper.1985:

This just in from OP: Pubs are bad at co-ordination. More at 11.

Whilst this is certainly the case its not even the crux of the problem. They have no NEED to be well coordinated for the purposes of CC alone, simply because Defiant doesn’t integrate well in the success of boss fights. That’s why pubs are bad at coordination, they have no cause for improving it.

So what if bosses had attacks that must be CC’ed? Some pubs will fail, others will start to coordinate to get rid of defiant; we’d run into the issue somewhere down the line that Defiant is clunky and not intuitive.

I believe there are a lot of bosses/objects that were designed with a need to be CC’d – anet did say their trinity was “DPS/Support with a little Control” instead of the standard – but pubs have just found workarounds to it which have become the norm and so nobody wants to experiment with defiant removal.

Take alpha or kholer for example: Big, orchestrated attack with potential to screw everyone over quite briskly. Perfect for being interrupted, but people have gotten mass dodging/aegis use/quickly saving their allies down to an artform that there is no real point complicating things via messing around with CC – it’s just everyone DPS and then save yourselves.

I did like that in the tixx dungeon toxx would heal after she did the spin, so we had to have people either interrupt that or use poison to negate it’s effect or just have 5 warriors

Yeah, unfortunately I think that heal mechanic is the same as Ice Elemental and Powersuit from the dredge fractal; it negates defiant so anyone interrupting can stop the boss from healing.

Writetyper.1985:

This just in from OP: Pubs are bad at co-ordination. More at 11.

Whilst this is certainly the case its not even the crux of the problem. They have no NEED to be well coordinated for the purposes of CC alone, simply because Defiant doesn’t integrate well in the success of boss fights. That’s why pubs are bad at coordination, they have no cause for improving it.

So what if bosses had attacks that must be CC’ed? Some pubs will fail, others will start to coordinate to get rid of defiant; we’d run into the issue somewhere down the line that Defiant is clunky and not intuitive.

Khristophoros.7194:

kKagari.6804:

Khristophoros.7194:

kKagari.6804:

Khristophoros.7194:

I also posted this suggestion in the necro forums but this may be a better place.

The fear nerf left a lot to be desired for necro gameplay in dungeons. It’s not an issue of power or balance. It’s just that necro is less fun now. There are less decision points in the gameplay.

There are a lot of potential benefits to allowing defiant to be ripped with boon removal…

- Stacking Warriors and Guardians would be less OP relative to diverse groups, since Warriors and Guardians do not remove boons, but they carry pretty much everything else you could want for dungeons.

- Necromancers would have an extremely valuable utility to make them feel unique, since they specialize in boon removal more than other professions.

- Boon removal in general, be it skills or the weapon sigil, would see more usage, giving players of all professions more build diversity.

I made this suggestion in my topic earlier, but the problem with this is not all classes can remove boons. You certainly can’t make necromancers and mesmers a ‘must-have’ class for dungeons nor do Arenanet think Warriors and Guardians are OP, nor should you confine certain classes to certain weapon upgrades.

I suggested making defiant a duration buff where any CC will recharge defiant up to a maximum duration. However, the main problem is that defiant is completely pointless in the grand scheme of things since CC isn’t even necessary for most of the bosses in the game.

It’s not a problem that some professions can’t remove boons. They bring other things to the table that are extremely valuable, things that the necromancer and mesmer lack.

It wouldn’t make stacking necros and mesmers the best strategy. You’d lack other important things like high damage output, healing, and CC.

Removing defiant stacks is pointless if your team has no CC and low damage output.

Every class has an easy source of CC. The only thing that makes removing defiant pointless is that there are no instance where you must remove it, then CC. The inherent problem lies in the way the bosses are designed, and they are designed around a clunky mechanic; defiant. CC is nowhere on the list of ‘important’ since most bosses can be easily defeated without defiant.

When you start making some classes able to do things that other classes can’t, and the sheer necessity of it, you’re going back to predefined roles and all that LF1M – Necromancer only scenario.

I mean tbh look at some of the comments here;
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/dungeons/DEFIANT-is-not-intuitive/first#post1018503

Defiant is rarely even noticed on many players, experienced or inexperienced.

Then it’s not a problem. It just gives us more options for approaching how we play dungeons. You could still just stack 5 warriors and ignore every mechanic in the dungeon. Nothing would be stopping you from doing that.

Or, if you feel like playing a mesmer or necro, you could bring a boon removal and one CC, and actually have fun because you’re doing something special.

Dungeons are easymode. That’s not a problem. Adding more ways to beat them is also not a problem.

…So there is no point in polishing a broken mechanic.

This is the problem Arenanet faces:

They cannot integrate a devastating mechanic into a boss fight simply because they know that proper CC is too difficult to manage, thanks to defiant. I know this how? Look at Ice Elemental and Powersuit in the dredge fractal. They have stupid high HP and have an ability that can allow them to heal it. During this heal, all CC will work regardless of Defiant. Why? It’ll be stupidly hard to deal with it otherwise. Even the devs know that this mechanic isn’t working.

They cannot remove defiant either simply because bosses will be stunlocked into oblivion.

So suppose defiant was fixed into a mechanic that did work; it would mean the devs have more room to put in more devastating mechanics that require CC, and would not ignore defiant; which would mean EVERYONE will need to pay attention it, which means NO class can be without ways of combating it. So your suggestion will mean; people must roll with necro or mesmer.

My suggestion is to make defiant a boon with a duration, and it will recharge if anyone CC’s the boss during this time. If it has a 30 second duration, and the boss has a devastating attack with 40second cd, if anyone CC’s the boss and defiant lasts more than 40 seconds, then they are in for trouble. Nice simple solution and can be respected by all classes.

Khristophoros.7194:

kKagari.6804:

Khristophoros.7194:

I also posted this suggestion in the necro forums but this may be a better place.

The fear nerf left a lot to be desired for necro gameplay in dungeons. It’s not an issue of power or balance. It’s just that necro is less fun now. There are less decision points in the gameplay.

There are a lot of potential benefits to allowing defiant to be ripped with boon removal…

- Stacking Warriors and Guardians would be less OP relative to diverse groups, since Warriors and Guardians do not remove boons, but they carry pretty much everything else you could want for dungeons.

- Necromancers would have an extremely valuable utility to make them feel unique, since they specialize in boon removal more than other professions.

- Boon removal in general, be it skills or the weapon sigil, would see more usage, giving players of all professions more build diversity.

I made this suggestion in my topic earlier, but the problem with this is not all classes can remove boons. You certainly can’t make necromancers and mesmers a ‘must-have’ class for dungeons nor do Arenanet think Warriors and Guardians are OP, nor should you confine certain classes to certain weapon upgrades.

I suggested making defiant a duration buff where any CC will recharge defiant up to a maximum duration. However, the main problem is that defiant is completely pointless in the grand scheme of things since CC isn’t even necessary for most of the bosses in the game.

It’s not a problem that some professions can’t remove boons. They bring other things to the table that are extremely valuable, things that the necromancer and mesmer lack.

It wouldn’t make stacking necros and mesmers the best strategy. You’d lack other important things like high damage output, healing, and CC.

Removing defiant stacks is pointless if your team has no CC and low damage output.

Every class has an easy source of CC. The only thing that makes removing defiant pointless is that there are no instance where you must remove it, then CC. The inherent problem lies in the way the bosses are designed, and they are designed around a clunky mechanic; defiant. CC is nowhere on the list of ‘important’ since most bosses can be easily defeated without defiant.

When you start making some classes able to do things that other classes can’t, and the sheer necessity of it, you’re going back to predefined roles and all that LF1M – Necromancer only scenario.

I mean tbh look at some of the comments here;
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/dungeons/DEFIANT-is-not-intuitive/first#post1018503

Defiant is rarely even noticed on many players, experienced or inexperienced.

Khristophoros.7194:

I also posted this suggestion in the necro forums but this may be a better place.

The fear nerf left a lot to be desired for necro gameplay in dungeons. It’s not an issue of power or balance. It’s just that necro is less fun now. There are less decision points in the gameplay.

There are a lot of potential benefits to allowing defiant to be ripped with boon removal…

- Stacking Warriors and Guardians would be less OP relative to diverse groups, since Warriors and Guardians do not remove boons, but they carry pretty much everything else you could want for dungeons.

- Necromancers would have an extremely valuable utility to make them feel unique, since they specialize in boon removal more than other professions.

- Boon removal in general, be it skills or the weapon sigil, would see more usage, giving players of all professions more build diversity.

I made this suggestion in my topic earlier, but the problem with this is not all classes can remove boons. You certainly can’t make necromancers and mesmers a ‘must-have’ class for dungeons nor do Arenanet think Warriors and Guardians are OP, nor should you confine certain classes to certain weapon upgrades.

I suggested making defiant a duration buff where any CC will recharge defiant up to a maximum duration. However, the main problem is that defiant is completely pointless in the grand scheme of things since CC isn’t even necessary for most of the bosses in the game.

Sethorus.9231:

They could reduce the base stack number of defiance from 5 to 3 maybe.

5 was ‘intended’ to be the intuitive feature of defiance since it corresponded to the number of players doing a dungeon. I think the devs intended for every player to use their CC skills once each so that everyone removes one stack of defiant, and we’re back down to zero stacks.

Its a novel concept at best, because the moment you are even 1 CC short, leaving the boss with 1 or 2 stacks of defiant, there will be confusion within the team as to who still needs to CC the boss. Its just near impossible without voice communication.

Here are some problems;
What if a player doesn’t have CC?
Some CC removes more than 1 stack; such as flesh golem charge.
A thief using headshot twice accidentally will instantly screw up any defiant removal setup.
If a player blows their only CC on removing defiant, they won’t have the time to CC the boss even if it doesn’t have defiant.

Lastly, on the devs side; the biggest problem is that CC isn’t crucial enough in boss fights. And it really should be a crucial element!

khefka.2804:

The fear duration is probably only 1.9 seconds then. Burning does damage at the beginning of each second, so you’d have to hit the full 100% +duration to get the second tick. The easiest way to test if you can get the 2 second burn since you already have all the gear is to eat the food that gives +40% condition duration. That should take you over 100%. If that does it, then it is probably the 2 giver’s weapons not stacking fully like Destac says.

Nope, the fear is 2 seconds because of the trait that adds damage/tick to fear, we get 2 ticks from the fear. I’ll give your method a test, though with reference to other similar stacking situations that do work, I’m more inclined to think one of the runes are bugged.

Anka.3675:

Rewriting Caladbolg would require rewriting the sylvari storyline. Your suggestion also doesn’t account for the fact that Sylvari are immune to dragon corruption. They wilt and die, rather then turn.

Good point! Easily fixed though, perhaps he just becomes evil. Sylvari are capable of that and Caladbolg has no specific reason it NEEDs to be a weapon from the tree and all that.

Burjis.3087:

And just because Anet said they are going to look into AoE skills, does it mean they will nerf Epidemic?!!
Seriously? That bad a reputation does Anet have with balance?

wait, where did they say this? link please?

NightyNight.1823:

kKagari.6804:

gamefreak.5673:

I miss being able to fear him during that attack already.

This. I used to teach every new necromancer to fear his collapsing roof attack.

uhmm why?Its the best phase to DPS him.Even the scream atack.I find him way more scary when he’s down chasing and jumping people.

It’s not like he takes extra damage in that phase. I’d say the best phase to DPS is him is in between his special attacks. To each their own. If you get hit by the collapsing roof you’re almost guaranteed to die if you can’t move in your downed state, and its quite hard for people to help you.

Lopez.7369:

kKagari.6804:

They do have CC NOW mechanics. Fractal boss Ice Elemental, Dredge Powersuit, and that Dragon Shaman Svanir guy (not sure about this last one) have heals that need to be interrupted. These heals also disable Defiant.

Interesting. As a Necromancer, I never had to pay attention to Defiant until this patch, so I wasn’t aware it worked like that.

I don’t really see the problem with them. I think the mechanic is fine.

Well, that’s the issue. The whole mechanic is negligible =(

gamefreak.5673:

I miss being able to fear him during that attack already.

This. I used to teach every new necromancer to fear his collapsing roof attack.

gamefreak.5673:

kKagari, nice write up. You might want to include a list of things that cause defiant to stack on a boss besides just saying someone used an CC on the bboss, some players really might not even really understand what causes it to be applied. I loved my necros fear because of how they worked along with daze to interrupt boss animations

edit: below is the wiki page with control effects listed. It is outdated now since fear no longer bypass’s defiant.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Crowd_control

You’re right! Can’t believe I forgot that lol, essay writing fail. Added it now.

The Dec 14th patch isn’t that bad IMO.

True, our fear isn’t as awesome as it used to be in dungeons, but it is still one of the best CC’s in the game (DS3), good range, almost always useable, nice cd. The issue is that defiant is just a badly designed mechanic. Shameless plug to my topic explaining why this is so: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/dungeons/DEFIANT-is-not-intuitive/first#post1018670

Reanimator IS actually better. It doesn’t solve the issue of the minion becoming a detriment to your team when you don’t want it summoned (jade maw, lupi, etc) but the thing can crank out about 350 damage per hit (with the minion +30% damage trait) It can do about 3-4 hits before it dies, and with minimal efforts in healing you can get two of them up at once.

Destac.2064:

For one thing i think the 2 runes that add 17% dont work that way. I remember some were they said it would be .17 + .085 (half the other value for duplicate sigil) Giving you a chance of 25.5% which is not the 100% needed to get double duration.

Hm now thats the first I’ve heard of that. Sigh, I dont know if i should fork out the cash to test this on 2 rare giver’s weapons so that I can use the superior sigils. Some people report it to work additively, but:

4x Rune of nightmare, 2x Rune of Lyssa, 20% trait duration and the trait that gives +50% fear duration for necromancers, can cause a 1 second fear to extend to 2 seconds, and additively, thats only 90%.

Lopez.7369:

I am kind of worried that the Defiant mechanic will make a “CC now!” mechanic too difficult to implement, but, then again, they could just make any “CC now!” mechanics temporarily disable Defiant.

They do have CC NOW mechanics. Fractal boss Ice Elemental, Dredge Powersuit, and that Dragon Shaman Svanir guy (not sure about this last one) have heals that need to be interrupted. These heals also disable Defiant.

Which is why I said, it feels like the devs slapped their own mechanics in the face. They know that defiant is unreasonable for people to get around in an intuitive way, so they need to disable it for CC NOW mechanics.

Which shouldn’t happen. These effects should go hand in hand. People should be required to learn what defiant does, and how it affects them during CC NOW situations.

Ok, as silly as it may seem, I thought getting 2 second procs from Virtue of Justice passive would be cool. To do this I needed +100% burn duration.

Now, to my understanding condition durations stack multiplicatively.

I have +30% from my traits.
I have 3 different runes – Balefire, Balthazar, and Flame Legion. all give +15%
I have two green Giver’s weapons with major rune of smoldering, 17% each.

Now, multiplicatively I should have: ~270%
If I simply add the durations I still should have over 100%.

Yet, I only get 1 tick of burn from virtue of justice.
WHAT AM I UNDERSTANDING WRONG?

Now that Defiant is apparently properly working by resisting fear, allow me, as a necromancer do an obligatory golf clap for nerfing one of the aspects that made dungeons very enjoyable as a necromancer. Only a week ago I was saying how the best dungeon team would probably be 1 mesmer, 2 guardians and 2 necromancers, with fear being one of the major factors. But ok, this isn’t a QQ topic about a nerf. I am less concerned about the efficiency of the necromancer and more concerned about the random oddity that is Defiant.

What is Defiant?
Defiant is a stacked boon exclusive to enemy Champion and Legendary bosses that have the Unshakable boon. When a mob without Defiant is hit with a crowd control (CC) effect; knockdown, blowout, fear, pull, daze, stun, the mob will be interrupted and gain 3-X stacks of defiant. where X is the amount of players in the area. Defiant will cause the mob to be immune to all forms of CC. Every attack that has a CC effect will remove 1 stack of defiant, .’. the boss cannot be interrupted again until all stacks of defiant are removed.

Problem:
I understand why Defiant is there. You don’t want bosses getting stun-locked into oblivion, but you do want people to be able to CC the boss at the correct times. However, Defiant is simply not very intuitive. The problem is that the very things that remove stacks of Defiant; CC attacks, are the things that create it.

As an inexperienced PUG group, people likely won’t ever be able to CC correctly. All it takes is for one member of the group to use a skill that involves CC as part of their damage rotation for the rest of the team to be locked out of CC until defiant is removed. Which brings me to my next problem.

Suppose you are in a PUG group of moderate experience, and no one will randomly use CC when it is unnecessary. When Defiant does get triggered though, the coordination required to remove exactly 5 stacks of Defiant becomes tricky. Suppose 1 player does not have CC, you’re left with 1 stack of Defiant with 4 players all gung-ho about removing it. Oops, you just CC’ed twice, now the boss got interrupted and you’re back with 5 stacks of Defiant.

So is the purpose of Defiant supposed to punish PUG groups? I don’t think so. To be honest I think even seasoned will have problems with this, simply because of the problem I listed above, to the point where:

CC vs bosses is completely unnecessary and almost all bosses (non fractal ones) can be completed without it.

You know that’s true. On the flipside, dodge is integrated into boss fights very well, and any player adept at dodging will find boss fights very easy. However, ‘must-CC-attacks’ can be a very fun mechanic in boss fights, and in the framework of dungeon bosses in GW2, this concept is completely lacking.

Solution
I think Defiant should be reworked. Just slightly. Originally I thought boon removal should affect Defiant by removing 1 stack per removal, but not all classes can remove boons. Boon removal in PvE IMO is borderline useless since bosses seem to be able to buff themselves perpetually, and I think its about time boon removal is integrated into the mechanics better.

Defiant should be a duration buff: it will be triggered the same way it is now; when the boss is CC’ed the boss gains 30 seconds of Defiant, making it impervious to all other CC. While this buff is activated, any CC will cause Defiant to recharge up to a maximum duration of 30 seconds.

So what happens?
To an inexperienced PUG team, learning to overcome defiant is much easier; if you see Defiant don’t CC. Suppose the boss has no defiant and is ramping up to do a massive attack, and everyone CC’s the boss; the extra hits of CC will only maintain Defiant at its maximum duration; the likelihood of not being able to CC the boss later is reduced.

To an experienced team, they can be fully rewarded for having good reflex and can integrate CC into their play more effectively rather than having to coordinate ‘defiant stack removal duty’

Now, most importantly, to the Devs, will this not give you more flexibility on what mechanics you can adopt in a boss fight? If defiant became a more intuitive concept you can better design bosses that have epic attacks that a team MUST CC. This is a bit like those fractal bosses that can heal, and can be interrupted even with Defiant. These heals feel like you are slapping your own mechanics in the face. You acknowledge that Defiant will be a problem so you give everyone a free pass during the heal. Could be better IMO.

Crap, Epi is getting nerfed? Where can I find this information? Thanks in advance

hahaha Kevin Van Ord said “incredible execution” hahahaha.

Sheobix.8796:

the reason why i run PVT vs. Berserkers is because if you’re going 1v1 w/ berserkers.. you can land maybe three chains until you down. that’s not intelligent play for me, nor is it challenging.. its autoattack win like a glass cannon thief.

other than that, that means you could deal maybe.. oh.. 15-25k damage until your hp is a wisp of smoke. with ptv gear, you can outlast and outdmg that pool by far just by time alone… and tank 1v2 or 1v3 (if they are weaker) on top of that. To me, that makes PTV exo > Berserker Exo

WvW is about knowing what fights to pick regardless of what gear you are wearing. I run berserker dagger builds all the time in WvW and I am deadly efficient in taking down stragglers or people that only slightly overextend from the safety of their group. Much more efficiently than a build with only sustained damage can. I supposed I’d say Berserker > Soldier for that reason alone, but I won’t, because there were be situations where Soldier will outshine Berserker. Its just needless to say, if you don’t have the hp, don’t tank? There’s no guarantee that you’ll be downed after 1 or 2 chains using berserker gear, or once you’ve dealt 15-25k damage, like you’ve stated, thats simply not true.

Hmm well, Reaper’s Mark is a bit too good to pass up on tbh.

More importantly, with this buff look how much more useless this: http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Quickening_Thirst, becomes.

baalblade.8465:

AcidicVision.5498:

Its a 3 hour warning if you are in a dungeon, story mission or instance. In the open world its only 1 hour or less. If you are in a dungeon and get the 3 hour warning and then finish and leave, then you are on the regular reset time.

I was doing COE, just picked up reward from last boss.

Boom! server reset… -_-

I don’t see how that counts as 3 hours or 1 hours or even 30 min

and this is not the first time they do this, sometime i just wandering around gathering, “…new build in 1 hour….” 5 minutes later, the server reset, i mean wtf.

kKagari.6804:

is there? a new build in 3 hrs? or is this a rant?

you tell me, but you get my point here.

I’m still at work, which is why I’m curious and am asking you. That said, additions to the gw2db excite me more than actual game updates these days, at least gw2db isn’t plagued with glitches and bugs.

is there? a new build in 3 hrs? or is this a rant?

Yeah dagger offhand is a bit lackluster for PvE. The blind and extra condition removal is kinda nice, and whilst enfeebling blood is a decent skill, its often much better used via the trait. Of course, you can use both to squeeze out a bit more bleed though.

Softspoken.2410:

manveruppd.7601:

This may sound like a strange question, but I’ve often had Chilled applied on me and noticed that I can cast through it and my skills will go into the normal recharge cycle rather than 160% their recharge… Is this actually working? Or is it only supposed to affect skills that are already recharging when it’s applied? (if so it seems a lot weaker)

Chilled doesn’t directly increase the recharge time of skills: it actually slows down the rate at which skills recharge. So the next time you get chilled, watch the movement of your recharge timer: it should slow down while you’re chilled, then speed back up to normal once the condition is cleared.

This, and its actually very noticeable.

Reports of people going to hospital due to exhaustion from lengthy gaming marathons are true btw.

I never found necromancers weak, maybe not as powerful as one of the BWE but definitely not weak either. I think the general problem is just the lack of polish the necromancer started with, way too many bugs and glitches.

I have solaria and doric’s and whilst I don’t mind been favored by the RNG gods I don’t seem to be all that excited about them either given that they don’t benefit me at all. Any chance we can have vendors that trade these in future? I haven’t even character bind my rings yet.

It would be kinda fun to collect them all though.

Well, that might go against developer intentions or something about Necromancers not supposed to be the class that can escape easily.

XiL.4318:

kKagari.6804:

XiL.4318:

kKagari.6804:

The best way to leech hp as a necromancer in gw2 actually involves a whole bunch of minions. That master major blood trait that lets minions leech, try it.

Minions can’t Siphon Life from boxes or mobs they never engage in combat. Also the Ranged Minions don’t Siphon Life on hit so… yeah. No.

It heals you, its good enough, it’ll get you more hp from attacking than whatever OP suggested.

No it doesn’t. You should probably play Necro and use the traits yourself before you tell people who play Necro all the time how Necro works. Reading tooltips is not “learning necro”.

Life Siphon heals are very very small. A single hit from a minion every 5 to 10 seconds (if they ever attack at all) will give you almost nothing for the points spent and the major trait used.

The only way to currently use Life Siphon effectively is to stack rapidly hitting abilities and never stop attacking.

I do use these traits. On a soldiers build. While I’m not saying its the premiere build to use in pvp you do get that nostalgic GW1 oh-hey-im-getting-life-while-im-attacking. Stop assuming. your ideas differ to mine, I accept that. move along now. But hey, whos to say we can’t have both minions and leech signet anyways.

XiL.4318:

kKagari.6804:

The best way to leech hp as a necromancer in gw2 actually involves a whole bunch of minions. That master major blood trait that lets minions leech, try it.

Minions can’t Siphon Life from boxes or mobs they never engage in combat. Also the Ranged Minions don’t Siphon Life on hit so… yeah. No.

It heals you, its good enough, it’ll get you more hp from attacking than whatever OP suggested.

The best way to leech hp as a necromancer in gw2 actually involves a whole bunch of minions. That master major blood trait that lets minions leech, try it.

Yeah on ground its called Blood Curse. You do realize everything underwater is super charged in effectiveness and faster right?