Guild Wars 2

Nice necro thread. Pun intended.

Sooo, who mastered their Death Shroud yet, boys?

djooceboxblast.9876:

Death Shroud Improvements

Pretty much every above suggestion is widely agreed on to be desirable.

Regarding healing in Death Shroud… I’m not sure. I think that if they allowed us to use our utilities in Death Shroud, opening the possibility to use Wurm port or a condi cleanse from inside DS, it would be enough to increase our survivability to an acceptable level at the same time making DS more appealing and not overbuffing the sustainability.

I can guarantee that with both utilities and healing inside DS, there is a possibility of making an unkillable DS necro that enters DS at 10k hp, then gets cleave-healed by shoutbows/eles/guards while generating excessive amounts of life force (Locust Swarm, Spectrals) that leads the necro to healing himself back up immediatelly after leaving the DS.

Falcon.8713:

I have played 5k hours on necro & I agree, we aren’t that bad, people just keep on complaining about everything that goes, asking for stuff to change, bla bla..
The only thing I’d like is regen in deathshroud, but with the 3 trait line changes I will have that anyway so I’m happy. This forum is overly depressing, complain when there’s no need to

Read my post above to understand why there IS a reason and a need to complain about the current state.

Would play and support the ideas except for reflects/projectile destruction that in my opinion are never coming to necro, because they don’t fit the theme. Would much prefer Slow condition added to CPC for example and would use without a second thought.

A little Gedankenexperiment: these things are in no way stronger than what other professions have, but looking at them, at least for me, there is this feeling of ‘not gonna happen’.

I think it speaks a lot about the way the necro community was made to believe that they are never getting nice things.

Balekai.6083:

leman.7682:

MAN.9046:

<snip>
An issue of L2P? Maybe, maybe not. Food for thought though.

Tread carefully, you’re talking to people much more experienced and with a much greater understanding of GW2, necro and other professions than you from what I gather from your post.

By much I mean a few orders of magnitude.

Ohh… wait, Jon Peters, is that you?

Why does he need to tread carefully? This is an MMO forum for everyone.

He may be wrong or not know as much (300 hours is a very short time), but pulling the “I/We know more than you cause time” card is intellectually lazy via ad hominems.

I did never pull the ‘time’ argument. I did however understand from his post that he’s a casual player whose perspective on the game just isn’t full. What I mean by that? Well, I never do this, but I feel called out.

I have 4000 hours played on my necro, over 5000 PvP games and over 4000 ranked games on this profession only. I’m telling him, that his thinking, the way he explains his point of view is grossly disjointed from the real picture of the profession.
My ranked MMR places me in matches with and against top players on EU. I’ve never really stopped playing. I know the meta. I know how it changed over time. And I’m telling you that currently, the state of necro is just horrible in top PvP (PvE just as much). One argument I like to make is that when I rarely go WvW and roam, I can kill pretty much everyone that attacks me without using my utilities and heal and with them wasting all stun-breaks, utilities and elite. I know these are WvW players, so not exactly the top level of skill, but this shows how different of an experience people may have. I understand this difference.

As a necro on the only viable spec in PvP which is power, you get hard-countered by:
shoutbows, thieves, shatter mesmers, medi guards, power rangers, cele rifle, condi eng, staff ele, and a few more based on average circumstances.

These specs are the current meta. It is rare to see something else. If there is one build from outside of this pool in a ranked match, consider yourself lucky. In a standard teamfight, necro gets focused by a blinking party of thieves, guardians and mesmers. You can’t really duel anything of the above without taking a huge risk of dying and/or wasting time.
There are naturally a plethora of other problems like the Life Force pool sustainability in difficult matches, being perma cc’d by in teamfights (eng/ranger/warrior/thief immobs, fear me, wolf fear, rifle knockbacks, PBS – you are literally an obligatory target for all of those), poor mobility/evasion, and more.

The perception of balance may be okay on the low-to-medium level. On the high level, necro is a laughing stock, a free target, a ‘downed necro best necro’.

MAN.9046:

<snip>
An issue of L2P? Maybe, maybe not. Food for thought though.

Tread carefully, you’re talking to people much more experienced and with a much greater understanding of GW2, necro and other professions than you from what I gather from your post.

By much I mean a few orders of magnitude.

Ohh… wait, Jon Peters, is that you?

Even 1% of these proposed changes would be an improvement over what we have now.
+1

Congrats to Jonathan Sharp for designing necro. wink wink.

Cogbyrn.7283:

And if it does, everyone will just complain about how the Elite Spec is mandatory.
Because complaining poor design.

Players will have every right to complain for two reasons:

1. Revenant gameplay in all specialzations being both better designed and stronger
2. Having to buy HoT to stay effective.

In the end, what absolutely needs to happen is every specialization needs to be viable (=playable, desirable, balanced) in a significant portion of the game, regardless of whether you play as vanilla necro or HoT chronomancer. Otherwise we will continue to have 3-spec metas, that rend anything else useless and forgotten tratlines like Blood Magic, using which is considered trolling or being a total noob.

spoj.9672:

I dont really understand why they felt the need to rework so much on Engi. Engi was fine in all three gametypes. And its just a slap in the face to necros. I get that its cool and great for engi players. But if one class that doesnt really need such overhalls is getting one. Surely the class that needs it the most should get some extra resources devoted to it.

I think it’s the matter of a person doing these reworks. I mean, if you were working on engi balance and had no passion about engis whatsoever, it would be unlikely that you’d come up with significant changes. You’d just look at the traits, say that most of them work, combine some others, add two or three new ones and feel the job is finished.
The engi lead dev was above that, while it would seem the necro lead dev was very much in line with that approach.
I said it long time ago – what necro really needs is a good necro player behind its balance. So far it hasn’t been the case.

JonPeters.5630:

<snip>

Jon

Hey, Jon! I’m a big fan of your unquestionable eloquence, sharp wit and the legendary sense of humour and I don’t want to derail this thread, but there is this profession in Guild Wars 2, it’s called necromancer and it’s been in a dire need for your attention for a long time. It needs your help.

Feel yourself invited to the necromancer subforum where a red post would be like the Second Coming.

Sorry for your problems, but this is not how it works in real life.

Your argument could be compared to a poor person coming and saying that he or she also deserves a business class seat because otherwise it is unfair. This is basically what you’re advocating – maintaining unfair system/build to make up for some deficiencies you or someone else may have. While it is important to not forget about people like you, it is largely more important to create a balanced and skillful game that caters to the ‘healthy’ majority. I’m sorry if this sounds harsh, merciless or indifferent, but that’s just the reality both in and outside of the game.

I’m sure there will be builds or roles that will be more fitted to your capabilities.
Leaving builds with very high payoff-to-difficulty ratio is not the way to go, because they destroy the community and are abused, paradoxically mostly by people that don’t have any health problems.

Good luck, man.

WvW encounters should never be a measure of balance, because the playing field on average is uneven.

I always cringe when someone brings balance on the basis of WvW. Ohh, and Blood Magic is horrible. It truly is.

Thank you, Lewis, for doing that. It was a nice read, as always.

There is also a great write-up from TLC: Part 1, Part

I really like the discussion that has been sparked by the traits stream. I think it should be a final wake up call for the Devs. Thanks to everyone engaged in the process and the constructive discussions we’ve had over the past 2 weeks. It’s good to see the whole community finally involved in theorycrafting.

Hey, Abi.

Some really nice suggestions up there and I support the direction. While I have some ideas, I’m rather time-constrained lately, so I will have to limit myself to just that.

Keep up the good work, guys.

I agree, Zapdos.

Power meta and its faults are being perpetuated by Anet’s sluggichness with balancing.

The problem is that there is no alternative whatsoever; I tried playing condi necro, spectral necro, even a cleric necro in the past week, and the only thing that gives me a marginal chance at doing something of value is the power spec.

I think that balance may improve after the expansion lands and Anet stops reworking things globally and starts tuning them more frequently. That’s the hope.

EremiteAngel.9765:

hahahahahahahahha

I just wish there were someone at ArenaNet truly excited about the necro as a profession. Someone like Jon is for warriors or Grouch for engies. Someone who plays only the necro in both pve and pvp. Someone who understands the problems the class has and has ideas to improve that.
Robert Gee, while surely intelligent and talented, doesn’t seem to be even slightly excited for necros and with that it will be difficult to get meaningful changes.

Bhawb.7408:

Rym.1469:

Say hello to Liadri exploiters.

Only time when playerbase noticed that we have some Life Stealing.
But quickly returned to Thief, because it was easier and life stealing was better.

Say hello to myself? :P The only reason I beat Liadri was because of it.

Did it the day she was first introduced with a condi spec #pro. What life stealing are we talking about?

Welcome to necro. Enjoy your bugs.

Fixes coming after:
1) ArenaNet notices the feedback.
2) Investigates for 2 months.
3) Jon Peters comes and says there’s no bug and leaves for 2 months.
4) Jon Peters comes again and says there is a bug after all.
5) ArenaNet manages to fix the bug after 3 months.
:)

Guys, some of you should really read a post by some guy on reddit:

http://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/33tm66/new_necro_changes_are_underwhelming_any/cqojf4b

He gave some interesting suggestions and I think that’s the way that traits should be designed. Really, who likes passive additives with an ICD? There is no control over those things and they are usually boring, the player just can’t feel the difference in gameplay, so what’s the point?
See, if I make a trait that gives the necro a 100% uptime of weakness after landing a crit, that may be good, but makes no difference in gameplay whatsoever. What if they gave us a trait that makes necro weakness steal some endurance from an enemy? Would that be better? Maybe, maybe not. Would that be more interesting? Definitely! Would that provide more options for the necro? Sure. That’s the direction in which the thinking should be going. Thinking out of the box, suggesting things that are actually interersting and will make the profession more fun.

Sometimes I feel that by not giving the necro anything special, Anet created a necro playerbase that has extremelly low standards…

(talking from a competitive pvp and pve standpoint)

MonkeyButtFace.4862:

Here’s an idea.

Death Nova
What: In addition to current effects, casts Epidemic, using the caster as the initial target, when the caster is downed.

While I really like the idea, some things are holding it back in general and for me personally. Firstly, and this is a make-or-break – players get cleansed and invulnerable for a split second after getting downed and since you cannot predict if the player is going to get downed before he or she actually gets downed the trait isn’t really possible. Second problem I have is my personal spite towards passive procs and traits that don’t change the gameplay in any way.

But the idea is definitely a way of thinking that I hold in high regard. Keep it up.

Burjis.3087:

Here are some possible new ways to make some traits more interesting and more powerful (this assumes that the traits stay where they are)

Terror:
In addition to its current functionality,
When you cast doom, you give a Terror buff to yourself and allies around you (maximum 5 targets) that lasts for 5 seconds (60 seconds ICD), if an enemy hits any of these allies, it will be feared for 1 second and the buff ends on all of these allies.

Reaper’s Precision:
When you deliver a critical hit to a foe that has a boon, you remove one boon from that foe and gain 10% life force. (20 sec ICD)

Unholy Martyr:
In addition to its current functionality,
Tainted shackles transfers 2 of your conditions to the enemies that are caught in the final blast.

Deathly Invigoration:
Draw Poison from your allies when you enter death shroud.
Heal in an area when you exit death shroud. The amount of poison damage you took while in death shroud is added to the area heal.

Vampiric Precision: Renamed to Order of the Vampire
You and allies around you (maximum 5) Siphon health on critical hits.

Transfusion:
Life Transfer heals nearby allies and steals 1% more life force with each pulse.

My aim here has been mainly to improve the blood magic line specially toward providing party support that falls within necromancer themes. And also to improve some traits to be able to compete better with their sibling traits.

I really like those, maybe except for the Terror proposal. Firstly, it won’t work in PvE (you don’t want to fear away enemies randomly) and secondly, it’s the same old same old lazy design that Anet pumped into necro with PBAoE effects over which the necro has no control whatsoever.

All the rest are very nice proposals indeed.

Ahh, Axe Mastery… yes!

For me it’s pretty sure the trait in the proposed form will not see the light of day, because it’s so bad that the whole forums would explode.

Ohh yes, it definitely does!

I actually think that Epidemic is the most unique and well designed skill that necro has (tied with Corrupt Boon) out of all the ‘unique’ mechanic mishaps, e.g. siphons, 2 health bars, condition manipulation and minions.
The problem is, there is no place for it in the current meta. Just that. Has the potential to make necro a powerhouse both in PvP and PvE though.

I wish there were more skills and traits of the same level of quality in necro’s kitten nal.

I think the whole idea of life siphoning should be gutted and replaced with some engaging gameplay design. I don’t want to be healing 50 with every damage I deal.
I want to be able to make use of necro active mechanics used timely to grant substantial heals to myself and allies. Same with the condition manipulation, no more passive transfers and all this uninspired design…

I’ve read through most of the posts here and I agree with the general vibe that things need to change.

If there is one thing that should be emphasised in your report, I think it should be improving the gameplay.

Most complaints seem to be coming from people not being able to enjoy the gameplay, to use certain builds and playstyles. What struck me watching the stream is that the devs always treat necro with lower standards (there’s always been a visible bias among the devs towards certain classes – Jon is a warrior guy, same Hugh, Grouch and Colin play engie, you know where it’s going…).

What I mean by that is the difference in design effor put into necro traits and skills compared to other classes. Most classes get game-changing traits that add effects to your actions, synergise and ultimately make the profession better and more fun. Most of necros traits are just passive buffs that in no way affect the way the profession is palyed… just numbers and numbers.

What is the better gameplay – to place a healing skill that makes a water field and then use your trait-modified dodge to blast it, healing you and your allies or having passive life siphon causing small discrete heals that cannot even be balanced because of the scale effect, making it much more limited. Is it more fun to be passively transferring conditions from allies every 3 seconds like some condi-bot, with no choice of which ally you’re helping, or cleansing those conditions with timed and aimed skills.

I’ve been saying this since the release – until ArenaNet decides to do some quality job with regards to necros, we won’t see improvement strong enough to make necros viable.

Another thing… I don’t know what others think, but I believe it is our job as customers to hold the devs accountable for what they say. For instance, they said they would incorporate the new tech into existing skills and we’ve seen some of it in changes to traits here and there (resistance/slow/taunt) but not for the necro.
Also, they’ve said they want to include some heals and elites in utility lines, did that for warrior, ranger and thief for example, but conveniently skipped the topic during the necro presentation.

Necro needs to have it’s own gameplay and things it uniquely is capable of doing. If the thief stealths, engie blasts and the mesmer interrupts and so on, then give necro its own niche that is actually fun. If your design was to make condition manipulation that thing, then it failed and needs to be reimagined. If things don’t work, then come up with something better. And please, stop with the ‘2 health bars by Jon Peters’ nonsense – it stopped working.This really needs to reach the devs and I hope people will keep pushing.

PS. this is golden -> http://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/33tm66/new_necro_changes_are_underwhelming_any/cqojf4b

this also speaks my mind ->
http://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/33tm66/new_necro_changes_are_underwhelming_any/cqod3kv

Attached. Took me 1 hour.

If ArenaNet has resources to rework how bundles on engie are represented and to add another toolbelt skill, then I’m sure they can work with some of the changes proposed here.
If Rampage as One, Troll Unguent, Heal as One, Mending and other skills are being added to utility lines, I see no reason not to do it with necro heals/elites.

I agree. Same old same old.
It’s evident they dislike necros. It’s evident that they don’t know what they’re talking about. It’s evident that they have no idea how to make necros exciting and finally it’s evident that nothing will change for necros.

Don’t worry, it’s good as long as the thief and his buddy engie are having fun.

Now, quoting Peters, just skip the necromancer discussion, because everyone hates them.

Gryph.8237:

Anet = bias. It is so clear which classes receive attention and what classes they laugh at. Gw2 has become a placeholder for me until another mmo comes out that lacks this juvenile bias. Terrible and unprofessional devs.

Unfortunately, I have to agree. Seeing Davis and Peters joke about necros and rangers on every possibility kind of show their professionalism or lack thereof.

Not only that, but it’s more than evident that they are more excited about certain classes. The way they presented engies, guards and thieves was vividly different from the usual ‘no changes here/that’s fine’ treatment that necro got.

Engie is already the strongest PvP class, so what does Anet do? Improves the Crate, changes Elixir S so that it can counter a whole team, gives them a fifth toolbelt skill…

I want engie to be fun, but they could maybe first give some additional flavour to classes that need it more (fixing some ranger mechanics – sword for instance, adding flavour to mostly uninspired warriors, fixing minions and necros’ redundant state).

It’s much easier to focus on the cool classes and again just ignore the rest.

That build so secret. Kappa.

Also – won’t work against good players.

I’m salty, I know, but also honest.

But… the fun is the ultimate reward, right?

Enjoy your esports.

Also… you can make more by flipping burgers at BK so why bother.

Anchoku.8142:

I have never understood exactly why Necromancer had to have poor combat mobility as a design rule. It is not as if the profession’s design has followed that mandate to the letter and I do not see the connection to the DS mechanic that makes the handicap necessary.

Because Sharp, but he left Anet, so there’s our chance for leaving garbage design behind.

Foot in the Grave: This trait will now allow the necromancer to break stuns when entering death shroud.

Yo

Another example of how thoughtful Arena’s design is. Needs a change.

Blackjack.5621:

There are actually many people with worse stats and even less wins that are ahead of me.

Enjoy your guildwars.

SirMadman.8429:

Arena want that: u have to play spvp to get some points not only win’s.
The top players was playing only 2 or 3 times in week for 5-8 games. Now they have to play more often. There is no points ,or glory when pre-made win against randoms.
It is not pervect, but better then first leatherboard.

It isn’t better – it’s absolutely worse. I have no idea how someone can consider this implementation anything short of terrible.

The OP is a person that doesn’t have a deep knowledge about the state of the necromancers, in my view.
The presented arguments showcase a lack of understanding and on average, the exact opposite happens in situations OP described.

I do not agree.

Anet is ‘innovating’ as they like to say.

Well, it makes no sense whatsoever. The current leaderboards are way below the soloQ leaderboards when it comes to actually describing the player skill.

Hope it doesn’t take you another half a year to understand that the current system is bad, scrap it, then wait another year before you can come up with something better.

Don’t test bad things, introduce something decent, for once, and stick with it for better or worse. SoloQ leaderboards were okay.

Anet just likes trying out terrible ideas.

Guys, this is the best-balanced game in the multiverse and the devs that balance it are dang prodigies of balance! Stop complaining and play this wonderfully balanced piece of gamecraft!

Well, I quit for sure. Won’t possibly waste 7 minutes waiting for a match that is likely to be awful for one of the teams.

And the new season with leaderboards? Don’t get me started on that…

As of today it provides 1 stack of 3-second Stability on entering Death Shroud.

Not even mentioned in the patch notes.

Justin ODell.9517:

uberkingkong.8041:

Where are all the good players at yo?

Define good? Your rating is average, so you should be getting matched with the average player.

Lux.7169:

He was being generous when he said average.

That 43% win ratio…

More like unterkingkong, eh?

I never took uberkingkong’s words seriously, having seen the manner in which he chooses to adress fellow posters and this just settles things up.

Thanks, Justin. You’re great.

Falcon.8713:

I think you have sand in your kitten, there’s nothing wrong with the necromancer profession, we are n1, we do kitten all victims and we have our lord and saviour Nos to prove it.

Nos is a great player, but he is no proof of anything other than maybe the NA meta being less hostile to necros or The Abjured being vastly superior to everyone else as a team. Same with PvE, where necro sucks like no other.

One guy and one team are not a proof in a game of hundreds of thousands.

Gaile Gray.6029:

leman, I feel sure you’ll find that the concern you’ve expressed has been and will continue to be a focus of the entire dev team during the process of development, testing, polish, beta testing, balance, more polish, and so forth. The last thing an expansion pack would be intended to do is to put one profession at the top of the pyramid, where all others are “inferior” in some sense.

I have every confidence that all the other professions will do just fine playing in with, and against, a Revenant.

Thank you for the response. It’s good to know that devs are aware of things, I guess.

I’m not sure if we understand each other correctly, but I think that our good friend Drarnor Kunoram put it perfectly and this is what the discussion is all supposed to be about. Some of the people don’t seem to have grasped it fully. Or was it a misleading title…

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

Basically, it’s bringing up the question of “when the specializations and Revenant are better designed and cooler, what reason is there to play a core profession?”

1. The video was weirdly enjoyable.
2. +1 for Mozart
3. His win ratio tells me more than I need to know.
4. Do you expect a medal?

Meanwhile necros have a Mark of Blood on dodge that is in the trait line that has never been used by a single necro and is useless if there are no enemies nearby to trigger it.

Balanced? Sure! Like the rest of this esports game.

Sagat.3285:

Yep the well designed skills are what’s attracting me to the revenant and his way of spec more than others and possibly specializations. The other ones disappoint and will continue to if no change is made , was hoping something similar for specializations to improve purpose and balance. We need a CDI on classes in general.

I agree. Well, we are still to see what specializations really mean, but I wouldn’t be too optimistic.

If designing one new profession takes so much time, considering initial ideas, animations, mechanics, balance, then redisigning all of the existing ones to be on par with the new one would not only be extremely time- and work-intensive, but also a huge risk considering esports.

Also, we had a ranger CDI and see where it got us… sure things improved for rangers, but I wouldn’t say they improved in a way that is healthy for the game, and surely doesn’t look fair after you’ve seen the revenant.

Time will tell, but no optimism is left in me.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Revenant-kills-existing-professions/

Inviting you to write there as well to hopefully get Anet response.

I agree, having been a sworn necro since the release, I feel… cheated.