Guild Wars 2

If you take Shrouded Removal, a 10-point trait in Death Magic, you can cleanse the fear off just by entering DS without using a stun break.

OP’s story is fishy, partly because there is no way the thief could have killed him with just 1 steal and 3 HS. They must have been fighting for some time beforehand, in which case the Skull Fear + 3 HS is likely not the problem. The thief smartly saved the Skull Fear for when OP was low instead of blowing it right away (like most thieves do). Apparently he also waited until OP used all his Life Force because OP could have entered DS while feared to absorb the damage. So apparently OP, even after encountering this several times, didn’t save his life force for the Skull Fear.

I don’t know. Skull Fear is a strong skill, but if you don’t slot a stun break or at least take Reaper’s Protection in w3 you don’t have the right to complain about getting CC’d imo.

Gryph.8237:

also, with regard to the previous reference to trait specific removals:

Traits:
Spite: III – Spiteful Removal - When you kill a foe you lose three conditions – you gimp yourself if you have this traited in my opinion. Great for pve, crap for pvp.

Death Magic: VI – Shrouded Removal – Lose a condition when you enter death shroud. Ok, fine, but much better things to pick, with regard to staff mastery and undodgeable marks, or reapers protection.

Blood Magic: XI – Fetid Consumption – Minions draw conditions. Each minion can draw one condition every 10 seconds. Yeah, ok, you run with this in blood magic, and your using minions? Wow, must be good for pve, and again, crap for pvp.

Most classes would kill you more effectively if you have chosen HALF of those options.

I use Shrouded Removal in my staff-less, perma-fury power build. I figured that if I am toggling DS for fury I may as well remove conditions too. It’s saved my life dozens of times.

Spiteful Removal could be good in zerg vs. zerg situations… :P

Bhawb.7408:

Turbo Whale.1738:

We don’t have instant condi removal that can save our lives.

Consume conditions.

Shrouded Removal, too. That trait has gotten me out of so many cripples and immobilizes…

Donedusted.9846:

Flumek.9043:

it has a cone-shapped field, similar to warhorn #4. this means, that when u strafe, ur camera looks forward but ur body is actualy facing sideways. if the angle is too big, u miss.
Medium range, face directly towards target, stand still if u can afford it. then it works.

Do you have a source for this?

If this is true, it’s really stupid. Why would a single target ability require a cone-shaped field? Essentially this means it is an aoe that only affects one person…?

His source is probably me, I’ve said the same thing on these forums a few times. That description matches my experience with the ability.

I’d like to see the skill made more forgiving, but if it was made completely LOS-free I would feel like some element of skill in the game had been lost. As it is now I don’t really have a problem with it. Lots of spells behave differently from one another in terms of targeting and facing. For example, our Trident #1 skill doesn’t require line of sight. Another example, after starting the dagger 2 channel you can turn away from your target and it will keep going (but you can’t do this with axe 2 channel). Knowing all these small differences between skills is one thing that separates the good players from the great ones.

sorrow, I notice that while you’ve made your point that GW2 should be more well balanced, you haven’t offered any suggestions as to how this could be achieved. I don’t bring this up to belittle you, I am bringing it up to make a point. Let’s take a look at the example already given in this thread – eles vs. warriors. Let’s say you tweak things so that a signet warrior has an equal chance vs. a D/D ele at all levels of play. But then the warrior switches to rifle and shouts. Does that balance still hold? Now you have to tweak the rifle vs. D/D balance while somehow not messing with the signet vs. D/D balance. But then the ele goes S/D. And even if you get every single build between eles and warriors balanced now you have probably screwed with all their matchups against all the other professions.

Here is the point: balance on the level you describe it is simply not possible in complicated asymmetric games like GW2.

sorrow.2364:

you can get equal performance without have complete equality and this what we should aim to get balance.

The problem with this statement is that there is no historical precedent for it. There is no asymmetric competitive game that is balanced for all levels of skill. Video game gameplay systems are often so complicated and have so many things going on that balance to the degree you want it is simply not possible. And so some strategies work better at low levels of skill than at higher ones, some strategies take less effort to pull of than others, etc. It is simply the nature of asymmetric, complicated games such as GW2. Take a look at other such games – Starcraft, Warcraft, WoW arena, CS, LoL DotA and HoN, BLC, Tribes, etc etc etc – none of them are well balanced at every skill level of play.

Since the designers can’t balance for all levels of skill, they have to focus on just one to balance for. And the only choice that makes sense is the high level of play. The differences between the lines in your graphs is representative of the game, I’m not disputing that, but it is a tradeoff the designers have to make to get the game balanced for skilled players. That’s simply the way things are.

sorrow, thanks for the picture. It really helped me understand your point. Here’s a question for you: given a game as complicated as GW2, do you think that such balance is possible?

Budchgon.2108:

Would runes of Vampire work for powermancer? – for the heals on crit
(I am currently using knights with ruby orbs)

They don’t heal on crit. They add 1k to your heal (effectively) and give a chance on being hit that you will steal 1k health on next attack. I use them on my powermancer and they are really nice. The mist form activation has saved my butt many times.

Spectral Attunement already increases the length of Grasp’s chill and Wall’s protection. Pretty sure it doesn’t increase the length of Walk’s swiftness. Not sure about Armor.

Softspoken.2410:

lettucemode.3789:

Just tested in the Mists with a guildie – Aegis does block Grim Specter, the Lich Form #5 ability. Since the tooltip says it “rips boons off of allies” I think we can call it a bug.

You mean ‘foes’, not ‘allies’, right?

In any case, thanks for confirming this. It probably got missed in the pass that made most boon ripping skills remove Aegis properly, since it’s buried inside an elite form.

Also, I was looking into Signet of the Locust & Bloodthirst… As far as I can tell, they interact in very odd ways that change from PvP to PvE. I’ll look into it a bit more tomorrow, try and find before and after formulas.

Oh, yea, I meant foes. It was kinda late when I posted :P haha

So I just came out of a rough fight in WvW that lasted a full minute against a thief and signet warrior. During this fight, my Omnomberry Pie proc’d 18 times, stealing me a total of 6260 health. I have 19.5k health like I said before, so during this fight I technically had 25.7k health. That’s more than your base HP.

I’ve been thinking about this for a while. I think that your higher HP and toughness are more beneficial against burst builds or shorter fights. However, my build, which has more crit chance and makes use of Omnomberry Pie and Sigils of Blood, will fare better in the longer fights because I will eventually steal lots of life.

I’m still planning on swapping some of my stuff out for more vitality and toughness, just not to the extent that you are.

Just tested in the Mists with a guildie – Aegis does block Grim Specter, the Lich Form #5 ability. Since the tooltip says it “rips boons off of allies” I think we can call it a bug.

Adding on to what Bas said, my necro build has 6 slows in it. Nothing gets away from me except for thieves and eles, but even then I still have a good chance.

CHIPS.6018:

Bhawb.7408:

Our entire argument is that your perception that the class is underpowered is 100% related to the fact that necromancers have a much harsher learning curve, and one that many people have not scaled yet. If you are bad at a class, then you cannot reasonably expect to perform well at it, regardless of time spent. Other classes might be easier, or you might just understand their playstyle better, but if YOU are not as good with necros as YOU are with mesmers, guess what the common factor is?

Aka, the class is fine, its just difficult to learn. That isn’t underpowered, its just a learning curve.

For survivability, I disagree with the learning curve argument. Once again it goes back to the fact that you cannot “learn” to use your health “better”.

You can learn to stealth better on a thief. You can learn to clone better on a mesmer. You can learn to Ride the Lightning better on an elementalist.

You cannot use your health better on a necromancer, which is all it got. When there is nothing to learn, there is no learning curve. A necro just have to try to kill the enemy before the necro’s large hp pool + DS runs out. This is no easy task when combined with necro’s mostly underwhelming damage.

You can certainly learn to use DS better. The more I play, the more I learn when to absorb damage with DS, when to use it for long periods of time to spam Life Blast, when to just dip into it for buffs, and when to leave it alone. I’m learning the optimal times to use Spectral skills to regenerate life force so I can have 2 or 3 full bars of it per fight. If you just view DS as extra health that runs out and that’s it, well, you’re gonna have a rough time * insert South Park picture here *

Taken from Rennoko in this post: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/necromancer/Epic-conditionmancer-TPvP-with-commentary/first#post1402573

Rennoko.5731:

So it works basically like this.

There is a check whenever a damaging condition is applied (burn bleed or poison), for if any of those conditions are already on the target.

If none of those conditions are on the target, it will start a 1 second timer, and that will tick down to zero, then deal damage equal to all the conditions on the target at that exact moment in time. Then the timer resets to 1 and goes back down again.

While this timer is running, any conditions that get added (addition bleeds, or poison/bleed if they were not already on the target), will deal their damage only on that zero timer situation. So if you could applie 10 stacks of bleeding (or fear) RIGHT before the zero second mark (like say at .1 seconds) all of that damage would be dealt at zero seconds.

So what happens with fear, if you get the fear condition on the target right before that timer counts down to zero, and say your fear lasts for 1.5 seconds. After .2 seconds the ALL CONDITIONS damage tick takes place. Then 1 second later it happens agian. Since you fear was present at BOTH ticks, it deals damage both times.

Hope that makes sense. Most people find that 70% is enough to have terror tick twice most times, while I personally still like the added benifit of the extra .2 or .3 seconds of people running away.

You can get double fears in sPvP with Master of Terror, 30 points in Spite, and any combination of runes that gives +20% condition duration (I prefer 6/6 Runes of the Nightmare for the extra fear on being hit).

Hey duckcheeps, thanks for posting. I am really liking your stat spread, especially using the Master Maintenance Oil for additional crit chance. Do you know how much extra crit chance it gives you?

I ask because my armor setup is Knight’s weapons and armor, and then some Knight’s trinkets with Berserker jewels. In the end I have 50% crit, 65% crit damage (30 in SR), 2450 defense and 19.5k health. After seeing your build, I am thinking I can trade out my sharpening stones for the oil, then make up the loss of power with PTV gear. I would lose some toughness in the end, but maybe it would work out…

Follow up to Bhawb’s post.

2. Yes, they stack in duration. It’s granted to your allies in the well also.

4. Transfusion heals allies, not foes. You are damaging and healing in an AoE at the same time. It is per target, but the healing value isn’t the same as the damage value.

5. Correct, no speed buffs stack, it will always use your highest speed buff. This is true for every class. To my knowledge there’s no bug with Quickening Thirst.

6. See #5.

7. The short answer is what Bhawb said, though it’s not quite accurate in terms of the damage. For the long answer, see this post: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/necromancer/Epic-conditionmancer-TPvP-with-commentary/first#post1402573

13. It is the remainder of the conditions’ duration.

14. I believe it transfers 1 condition per ally in range every 3 seconds. It will work on non-party members. Daze and Stun are not considered conditions so no, you can’t transfer them.

17. Close to Death affects your direct damage only.

Malignar.6905:

I can’t even get putrid mark’s combo blast finisher to work if I’m standing on top of spectral wall. So I’m not entirely sure that the spectral wall combo field work’s with putrid mark at all. Some have said that it works at the caster’s feet, not the case with me.

The blast finisher doesn’t activate until someone triggers the mark (I think). Perhaps that is another reason you’re not seeing it.

Softspoken.2410:

Oh, thank you! That is the post I was looking for. Has anyone heard tell of Warriors Vengeance rallying off of minions or the like recently?

In the last patch notes, they disabled/fixed rallying off of things that give you 0 experience for killing them. This includes Necro minions, Ranger pets, and other summons. I haven’t noticed anything rallying off minions since this change. I even saw a Warrior use Vengeance and kill a minion of a fellow necromancer, then die.

Softspoken.2410:

Was just playing with this some more: Lich 5 can be blocked when a foe uses a ‘blocking’ effect, (I tested it on ornery crabs: the Regen was not ripped and I got the Blocked! text) which seems fine, but I still don’t know if Aegis does it or not, because I can’t think of a single controllable / repeatable situation where an enemy has Aegis.

I will try to test this with some guildies in sPvP when I get home from work.

kKagari.6804:

I’ve run into the following bug with Spectral Walk a few times in the last week.

Say you have utility 1 on CD. Then you switch utility 2 to spectral walk. the newly slotted spectral walk will be on CD, sharing exactly the same CD as utility 1.

I have noticed this as well, except with Spectral Wall and Spectral Grasp. So the problem doesn’t seem to be localized to any particular ability. I haven’t been able to reproduce it consistently, though

Hey dude, not to burst your bubble or anything, but there isn’t a bug with the amount of life force you get anymore. There used to be, but it got fixed in the December patch IIRC. It will still say 100% life force, but you will have 30% more life force than before. People did lots of tests with taking damage and math and figured it all out. As a test you can reset your traits, then go down to 50% life force or so, then put 30 points into Soul Reaping. You will see your life force percentage go down, this is because you still have the same amount of life force but the cap has increased.

All known necro bugs are in this thread, stickied at the top of this forum: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/necromancer/Necromancer-Bug-Compilation-Mk-II/ If you find any bugs not already on that list, please post in that thread so everything is in one place.

Transfer with all those gems you’ve been winning from paids. Hang out a week then transfer back.

I get the sense you’re not really looking for an answer, though.

Rennoko.5731:

Lettuce there is definately not a universal timer for conditions. If I do one sceptor attack at any time, the damage will not tick until one second later, no earlier. If there was a universal timer, it could potentially tick immediately or soon after that, which I have never seen (and I have been doing conditions for a long time).

Assuming you timed it perfectly, you could get two damage ticks from any fear that is over 1 second long. This has been proven and tested by myself an others, but it really doesn’t have anything to do with a universal timer. If you wait right before their health bar ticks down with the bleed, then cast fear, you only need +30% or so to get two ticks.

Most people see two ticks fairly frequently with 50%-80%.

That’s what I meant, but not what I said :X Thanks very much for the information.

Teldo.1473:

lettucemode.3789:

Teldo.1473:

lettucemode.3789:

Good solo players will still rise to the top, or at least up to a certain level in this system.

But the majority of players want to queue solo, because their friends aren’t around all the time or they just don’t want/have a team.
A system like this would kill all motivation for most players, who just want to soloqueue, because at a certain level it will be next to impossible to get up in the ladder (and the competition is all motivation for most people).

But this level in the ladder will eventually become known. Let’s say that everyone starts out at 1000 rating for this new system, and over time we learn that it’s very difficult as a solo player to get over 1500, and pretty much impossible to get over 1700. So then, in this hypothetical example, 1700 would be come the “top” of the ladder for solo players. Once a solo player reaches this level, they can consider themselves among the very best of solo players. Any teams looking for new players can start at this level on the ladder and work their way down.

Sure, I understand what you mean, but for me personally a lot of motivation would be gone.

You also have to consider that a combined system like that requires a lot more work to polish than a pure team and solo queue.
And to be honest: This game needs something like that rather sooner than later.

Hokay, fair enough.

I believe it only changes the description to say Vulnerability if you take the Spiteful Talisman trait. It still chills the target and removes 3 boons, though.

Teldo.1473:

lettucemode.3789:

Good solo players will still rise to the top, or at least up to a certain level in this system.

But the majority of players want to queue solo, because their friends aren’t around all the time or they just don’t want/have a team.
A system like this would kill all motivation for most players, who just want to soloqueue, because at a certain level it will be next to impossible to get up in the ladder (and the competition is all motivation for most people).

But this level in the ladder will eventually become known. Let’s say that everyone starts out at 1000 rating for this new system, and over time we learn that it’s very difficult as a solo player to get over 1500, and pretty much impossible to get over 1700. So then, in this hypothetical example, 1700 would be come the “top” of the ladder for solo players. Once a solo player reaches this level, they can consider themselves among the very best of solo players. Any teams looking for new players can start at this level on the ladder and work their way down.

It’s not as ideal as an exclusively solo ladder, but it can still serve the same purpose.

+1 to whoever mentioned Bloodline Champions. That game has the best tournament/ranking system I’ve ever seen.

On topic: hmmm, I don’t know. Having an exclusively solo queue can cause problems too, like outright hostility among teams. I’ve been in a similar situation in other games – I only need a few more points to go up a ranking, but keep getting matched with idiots! It’s very frustrating.

With the queue system that’s going into place, players will eventually reach a point where they are like “hmm, in order to progress any further in this system, I need a stable group of friends or team” and they will go seek one out. So the very nature of the queue system encourages players to make teams, which is exactly what the competitive scene needs! Whereas in the solo queue only it can seem like getting through the middle tier of players is mostly luck.

Overall I think this system is fine. It will bring in new players and encourage them to team up to progress. It will encourage team play rather than honing individual skills and getting frustrated when the rest of the randoms you’ve been paired with aren’t doing what you want and there is no way to bring like-minded people along with you.

Good solo players will still rise to the top, or at least up to a certain level in this system. All recruiters would need to do is scan around that level of rating for a player they like. Really no different from scanning the top of a solo queue.

Braxxus.2904:

Get rid of stealth stomping. The other ones are fine imo because they actually require the use of a CD/Utility. Mistform is a long cd just to get that stomp, stability (on wars, guards) is a decent sized utility cd.

Mesmer distortion stomps I’m not sure about considering it’s a baseline ability like thieves cnd.

Stealth stomping is the least problematic of the stomp enhancements (is that the term?).

VOLKON.1290:

oldephartte.4369:

Decklan.7540:

To anyone who wants to know, a canard is a synonym for a lie.

It’s generally used by people to mask their lack of an argument behind the pages of a thesaurus.

A canard is a belief in something that is not true — my intended meaning. If I had wanted to use the word lie or liar, I would have used it. Get a better thesaurus.

Hoist on your own canard? :P

I was going to correct you, but I’m pretty sure you’re just making a joke. A decent one too

Animi.4617:

lettucemode.3789:

boneduste.4023:

Corrupt Boon has the same issue. I believe if a target has an Aegis, the Corrupt Boon (and/or) Lich 5, get blocked. as the Aegis states it blocks the next incoming attack. Looks like a bug.

Fixed ages ago, it was in the patch notes

Yeah it was fixed ages ago but I got this bug today… Guardian had about 6 boon on him with aegis and Corrupt Boon didn’t do anythin but aegis blocked it.

Huh. Odd. Do you have a video? I was corrupting guardians with Aegis just fine last night. Did you see the “blocked” notification or did it just miss? Corrupt Boon has a narrower “cone” than most other moves, if he was too far to the left or right of the direction your character was facing then it would have just missed.

@Obsidian.1328

Well said. But I don’t think issues of what bugs or design issues should be banned is as gray as you do. There are three very clear, very good criteria for what should be banned.

Bugs or design issues that crash the game. Obviously these should be forbidden from use, otherwise people would crash the game whenever they’re losing and force a draw.

Bugs or design issues that are not accessible to all players. I don’t mean like Ele’s using a certain bug that Thieves can’t. I mean like a consumable that is only available if the email on your account starts with a 3. Or in some fighting games there are bugs that only 2nd player can use that 1st player can’t, even if they choose the same character.

Bugs or design issues that reduce gameplay down to that thing exclusively. Neither of the examples you gave (thief burst and pulling lords out) fulfill this criteria.

In the case of thieves, while there are lots of them, neither wuvwuv nor sPvP have been reduced to teams or zergs of thieves. Thief burst actually helped me to improve my play. I used to run around in glass cannon gear, until thieves destroyed me in seconds. Now my build has a healthy amount of toughness and defensive traits, and thieves aren’t much of a problem anymore. Being forced to find a way to survive against them caused me to take my play to the next level. That’s not reducing gameplay at all. Even with thieves around GW2 is still a pretty good game.

I would say that pulling a lord out of a tower is less clear than the thief burst, actually. This is the first time I’ve heard of this, by the way. It seems to me that pulling the lord out of the tower doesn’t really remove any gameplay. The attacking team still has to break into the tower and stand in the circle while fighting the defenders. The only difference is they found a way to kill the Lord more safely. Kind of like how in a fighting game, canceling one move into another can allow you to perform it more safely. And lord-pulling might not even be more safe since if I was defending that tower and saw that happen, I’d wait for them to break in then go revive the Lord while they were fighting the rest of the defenders inside. Which means that they’d need to leave a few people to guard the corpse. Interesting strategic situation! It seems to me that this situation actually creates some gameplay. I expect that it will be patched in time, but for now I don’t think it’s worthy of banning.

Andele.1306:

@lettucemode.3789
WoBs regeneration is the point that scales nice, the actual starting heal is just like every other, overall the Healing power stat is pretty much useless since scailing of Power (life siphons) and Vitality (general heals) or Boon Duration for ticks (Regeneration already does) would be better without the need of a stat that doesnt actually give you the amount of + healing it says it does.

You are right, my number of 4.4x includes the ticks and assumes you stand in the well the whole time. Thanks for the clarification.

Thanks for the video, Nemesis. After watching it I went and played the build myself. It’s really fun and very effective. Keeping a guardian locked down in fear for 4s while they take 6k damage is amazing.

I made some tweaks to the build though and I found it worked a little better (for me, anyway). I went 30/10/10/0/20, and used 6/6 Runes of Nightmare. I lost the fear on being disabled but trade that for the 5% chance to fear on being hit. I also lost 200 condition damage and precision but with 30 in spite, 6/6 Nightmare Runes (they give 20% condition duration, not 10% as stated in the tooltip), and Master of Terror, I have double fear durations. I guess I trade some bleed duration for that as well. I was able to chain into a 6-second fear against some 100b warrior and he got really mad :P haha. The fear ticks still do over 1k even without any stacks on the sigil, and bleed ticks are over 100 as well.

Are those good trades to make or do you think I sacrificed too much for the double fears?

I’ve heard a rumor that condition damage ticks according to a universal game timer, NOT the individual condition timers. Do you know if this is true? If it is true, then it’s possible to get fear damage to tick twice even with less than 200% fear duration. That might be worth removing some points from Spite, even with 80% or 90% extra condition duration the chances of getting a second tick are pretty good.

Pretty much everything in the game scales poorly with healing power, and there’s a pretty good reason for it.

To understand the reason, you need to understand a problem that WoW arena PvP had for many years. Arms warriors could get an ability called Mortal Strike which placed an uncleanseable debuff on a target which decreased healing on that target by 50%. Moreover the cooldown and duration was such that you could keep this debuff up forever. So arms warriors were everywhere in arena PvP, and this created a very delicate balance situation. Getting hit with Mortal Strike then getting focused couldn’t be a guaranteed kill or else it would be the only strategy people used, so heals had to be strong enough to power through Mortal Strike and give the defending team a chance. But that meant that heals were incredibly strong in every other situation, so you basically needed an arms warrior to keep them in check. It created a sort of self-fulfilling prophecy (is that the correct term?) because these effects were so strong. Rift had a problem with this for a while as well.

The only solution to this issue is to tone down or remove the reduced-healing-debuff while also toning down the amount that heals do so that things can stabilize, which Blizzard and whoever makes Rift eventually did. And so GW2 is designed like this. Poison only reduces healing by 33%, cannot be kept up on a target permanently (except for us necros if you spam scepter 1), and is removable. At the same time most things in the game have healing power ratios less than 1. You can think of it as a pre-emptive design measure to keep things in check.

Well of Blood actually scales the best with healing power of any spell in the game. It’s 4.4x your healing stat IIRC.

Signet of the Locust buff now correctly shows 25% bonus movement speed.

EDIT: Guess that wasn’t on the list….but now you all know.

If plague form gets any of these buffs then they also need to reduce the extra HP and armor to keep it balanced.

Magiofdeath.2745:

Lol lettuce, looks like you got served by proof.

I didn’t “get served” by proof, I politely asked for proof and he provided it. I’m sick of people complaining about thieves with nothing to back it up.

Opynn.2936:

You welcome.

Thanks for being one of the few people around who can back up what you say. I have about that much toughness on my Necro too but I haven’t died to a solo thief in a very long time. Death Shroud helps with that I guess. Do engineers have any instant-cast protection or healing?

Dee Jay.2460:

Ensign.2189:

First glance thoughts:

-Heartseeker cost increased to 4 Initiative (up from 3)

I really dislike this proposal. It represents a monstrous nerf to D/P, and represents a bigger hit to game play than actual power. Gap closers need to be cheap to encourage interesting combat once joined, and the power level of the skill is such that its use is sub-optimal once you’ve closed the gap, up until your target is below 25% health (at which point you’re not going to be spamming it much since it should be dropping them in 1-2 shots anyway).

I agree that impressively bad players over-use the skill as a crutch against their inability to move; and that not quite as bad but still bad players lose to heartseeker spam because they do not know how to defend themselves in a reasonable manner. Unless we’re going to start balancing the game around what bad players are doing, this doesn’t make any sense.

-Dancing Dagger cost reduced to 3 Initiative (down from 4)

You’re kidding right? You want to make what is already a 100% uptime projectile snare even more spammable?

I agree that the damage on the skill was overnerfed and that some bounce back is warranted on that, but the utility part of the skill is already very strong and is not due a buff.

-Mug damage reduced by approximately 50%. Mug now also applies 4 Bleeds for 4 seconds.

Interesting. I think the power level you’re proposing is roughly in the right place, but why do you prefer bleeds here? I don’t get the flavor and I don’t see how they enhance gameplay.

I think a simple ratio reduction does the job here just fine. The big packet is where the play is, and I don’t see what we gain here by shifting power into something else. Find the biggest number you can put on it without breaking things and run with that.

-Infiltrator’s Singet now also steals a boon from the target when used.

I like this, it’s a good idea for an active that lacks oomph. I’m going to steal this one.

-Body Shot now also applies 4 seconds of Weakness to the target.

Eeeeh.

I think this is an ok buff, but it doesn’t make me want to spend initiative on the skill over the other options available. Not that weakness is bad, but I don’t want to actually pay for it.

Wow, some honest feedback….wouldn’t have expect that at this point.

However I don’t see how you can make that argument about Heartseeker and Dancing Dagger.

Heartseeker is an incredibly powerful ability. It’s a high damage ability, a leap-finisher allowing you to utilize all kinds of combo fields as well as a gap closer. It also happens to be targeted which makes it incredibly easy to use effectively.

It is simply far too efficient an ability to have it cost less than almost all our other abilities. The cost/effect ratio is simply off with this ability. It’s too good and too cheap to use.

That’s why I think it deserves to cost a little more.

Dancing Dagger is in a similar situation, just on the other end. It too is essentially a gap closer, but by snaring the target rather than leaping. It kind of pales when compared to Heartseeker due to its cost and multi-target niche.

I honestly can’t remember when I last used Dancing Dagger simply because it’s so expensive. The smaller the niche an ability fills, the cheaper it should be.

The niche Heartseeker fills is far larger than the niche Dancing Dagger fills.

I don’t think HS needs a nerf. When fighting a thief, you know exactly how Heartseeker works and that the enemy thief is going to use it multiple times in a row, and information is the best kind of advantage in a competitive environment. After all, if you know what your opponent is going to do, you can counter it. If a thief starts HSing me I know exactly when to block, dodge, or drop an AoE, and after that’s done with he has no initiative left. He trades relentless offense for the fact that he’s boned and standing directly next to me if it doesn’t work. Kind of like 6 pooling in starcraft.

I don’t have a high-level thief, but having been on the receiving end of HS for many a month I think it’s fine as is.

Obsidian.1328:

EasymodeX.4062:

lettucemode.3789:

Obsidian.1328:

Lulz, what was up with that article?? It pretty much condones winning at all costs, even by cheating. By that logic we should get rid of all referee’s in all sports and just have it be a free-for-all. :/ If you were being sarcastic then I’ll ‘lol,’ but I couldn’t tell :P

You missed an important detail. The article says that you should use any tournament-legal move to win. Cheating in the form of hacks or kicking other players in the shins is obviously not legal in tournaments, nor is ignoring the referees/rules and having a free for all.

That’s one of the most important articles (if not the most important article) ever written about competing in games, please don’t dismiss it so lightly.

^

This. Most players that have been gaming a while would recognize the article in a heartbeat.

The bottom line is that you use what tools are available — if you are playing to win. If you’re not, don’t cry about losing.

Abusing culling is cheap? Use it.
Hiding Mesmers in a keep? Use it.
Turtle/stacking/zergballing? Use it.
Placing Trebs in unassailable positions? Use it.
Catapult AOE’ing through gates? Player AOE through walls? Use it.
Food buffs? Consumables? Use them.
Ninja golems? Of course.
Porting golems between zones (is this still possible)? Sounds like a plan*.

ANet will change whatever ANet feels like changing. If they “fix” or otherwise change those strategies … well, there will be new ones.

The article also mentions “real” cheating — breaking the game and community agreed-upon rules. In the context of GW2 and MMORPGs in general, this basically centers on hacking, jumping up walls, through geometry, spam bombing voice comms on other servers, etc. Those are ‘cheating’.

*Critically vulnerable to the kittenING QUEUE MONSTER, however.

Maybe I’m just old-fashioned, but I don’t only go by what ANet sets as rules for fairplay, or any other game-producer for that matter. There is such a thing as unspoken rules of conduct and sportsmanship that are above any written letter. This idea that you should do whatever they let you get away with is juvenile and corrupting.

As for your above examples, almost all of them seem ok because they either have counters, or are designed that way. I’m not saying I’m not guilty of abusing design flaws either, I’ve done my share. But I do feel guilty for doing it. Trying to use sound judgement and having a sliver of a sense of fairplay should never be considered weak or stupid. Heck, I’ll even start by stopping to use that ridiculous underwater pet-glitch that lets it rez you even if it’s supposed to be dead. I think we can all agree it’s not supposed to work that way.

Any takers?

Sportsmanship is a wonderful quality for players to have, but we weren’t talking about sportsmanship. We are talking about using all the tools available to you within the rules of the game (GW2 game engine) and the overarching tournament body (WvWvW community) to win. I take some offense that you would insinuate that some actions that operate entirely within these rules are “juvenile and corrupting”. Sportsmanship and playing to win are not mutually exclusive.

At the same time, we are not calling you “weak or stupid” for trying to divine the will of the designers and accounting for that in your play. You are simply playing the game with a different goal than EasymodeX and I. Both are equally valid (depending on the context).

Electro.4173:

Necro is the only profession in the game which doesn’t have at least two 2H weapons (not counting Ele / Engi because they have attune / kits to make up for it, and not counting Thieves because they seem to be based around the concept of dual-wielding).

Hahaha. Why would you say that necro is the only class that has X when half the classes have X? You silly.

Obsidian.1328:

EasymodeX.4062:

me im not.9357:

My sole complaints—- culling AOE is being used by all 3 servers. I don’t know that Id call it a clever use of mechanics since we all know culling is busted, but I struggle calling it an exploit either since its being used so much by everyone these days. In any chase, it does feel a little cheap.

http://www.sirlin.net/articles/playing-to-win-part-1.html

Shrug.

Edit:

Insert random sidenote: “zergballing” is generally countered by uncapped AOE effects, whether the classic arrow cart spam (which doesn’t work in the open field), or via specialized WvW builds like Glamour Mesmers or other uncapped AOE effects.

Lulz, what was up with that article?? It pretty much condones winning at all costs, even by cheating. By that logic we should get rid of all referee’s in all sports and just have it be a free-for-all. :/ If you were being sarcastic then I’ll ‘lol,’ but I couldn’t tell :P

You missed an important detail. The article says that you should use any tournament-legal move to win. Cheating in the form of hacks or kicking other players in the shins is obviously not legal in tournaments, nor is ignoring the referees/rules and having a free for all.

That’s one of the most important articles (if not the most important article) ever written about competing in games, please don’t dismiss it so lightly.

Opynn.2936:

Enginier in knight gear, every piece of armor and trinkets gives toughness. Tougness traits maxed. “Steal” hits for 7k -there goes half of my healt bar in one shot. I did not know im plaing an FPS where it takes 2 shots to kill you. Waiting for balance or other mmo.

Screenshot of your exotic gear/traits and the combat log, please. Thanks.

No balance changes, but culling will get fixed a bit more and as a result thieves will be perceived as weaker than before.

Kilger.5490:

Fix reanimator and its a non-issue imo. Shrouded removal is excellent, but that pesky rat keeps me from considering anything in that line.

It depresses me when I see people saying things like this. Reanimator may be annoying but it does not negatively contribute to your performance. It is beneficial, however small the benefit may be. I use shrouded removal and basically don’t pay attention to the minion, it hasn’t affected me negatively for months. If you get hung up on its annoying-ness or buy into the Reanimator hate on this forum then you are limiting your necro’s potential by restricting yourself from taking the Death Magic traits.

On topic: The only condition removal in my power build is Consume Conditions and Shrouded Removal + Near to Death, and that is still more removal than like 90% of builds out there. Our condition removal doesn’t need to be buffed IMO.

4 Runes of the nightmare actually give 20% bonus condition duration. The second condition duration bonus says 6% but actually gives 16%. In both PvE/WvWvW and sPvP to boot. Tested, confirmed, and discussed in this thread: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/necromancer/Superior-rune-of-the-Nightmare-4-rune-bonus/

EasymodeX.4062:

I didn’t say it was OP. I just said it was much faster than other kill combos for no apparent reason, with less telegraph as a random and unnecessary bonus.

Probably because a thief using this kill combo is far squishier than a rifle or greatsword warrior.

They didn’t nerf it because they hated farming. They nerfed it because of guesting. Since you can now guest onto other servers the bots would just camp the node and guest around to different servers to get all the orichalcum. Players could do this too. I guess that falls under farming, kind of, but it’s more like abuse.

I disagree Necros are beastly in WvW (that’s what I do the most), mine is anyway and there are several videos and threads around this forum showing the same. It is difficult to get a grasp of what works and what doesn’t but once you get there the class becomes very fun. Spend some more time tinkering with builds and practicing your player fighting skills and eventually you will find a build you like that works well.

Ojimaru.8970:

Quickness speeds up everything. The “cast time” for the first 2 strikes is the animation and quickness speeds up the animation. It really increases DPS on the #1 attack for those 3s.

I can’t agree with that, especially after going through subcrazy’s video. There are scant few moments when Sigil of Rage triggers and most often he only gets one chain in, but there is no difference between Chain hits #1 and #2 with or without Quickness.

Sorry, I’ve used Sigil of Rage myself before and it speeds up the #1 and #2. It speeds up all attacking and casting animations, it doesn’t matter if they have a cast bar or not.

It happens rather blatently in subcrazy’s video at the time he linked it (2m 52s), watch how quickly the dagger 1 icon on the action bar switches through the pictures just before the quickness stomp.

Ruufio.1496:

Can anyone elaborate as to why ground-target wells are considered powerful enough to need 20 trait points to use?

Well, since I’m the one who said that it should cost 20 points, I can :P

If nothing really changes with the trait, as you say, then why didn’t you just delete it and come up with something new? Clearly it has some value. This trait has great value in WvW when defending a keep, holding a choke point, or other pitched zergy battles. Otherwise you’d have to run right up close to do any damage with them, right? It has value in sPvP since you can stand safely out of the fight over a point and supplement your marks with strong support or damage. I see it taken often in PvP and PvE builds even though it costs 20 points to get there, so it’s worth 20 points to a lot of players already. Being able to cast such strong AoEs at range is a great advantage, and it’s enough of an advantage that I think it’s worth 20 points.

Shadow fiend’s active is already an AoE blind. And the Bone Fiend already cripples on autoattack.

As for the traits…I don’t know. Some of them seem useful but I don’t like how you moved Spectral Attunement down to the Soul Reaping line. It screws with my build a bit and I like it up in Curses because it hints at what trait lines the designers wanted you to take when using Spectral things. You also nerfed Spectral Wall which I don’t like. I know it grants life force now but that’s a bad change. Also Focused Rituals is too strong to be Adept level, it should be Master level.

Agree with striker, the new minion abilities are cool but sacrificing the Bone Fiend, for example, when you can’t even control where it runs is weird, and it just stands around mostly anyway, meaning you have to rely on your opponent to run near it. He’s right about Minion Master too, now we sacrifice all our minions but we lost the ability to bring them back sooner.

Good potential and a good conversation starter though, thanks for the post.

EDIT: And I think you mean 1200 range for spiteful talisman…they already have 900 range.

I think this idea runs counter to the “theme” of a few of the classes. Take the warrior for example. The idea of the warrior is that he is relatively weak in the boon/condition aspect, but makes up for it with brute force and power and strength and what have you. The devs said as much in their little spiels on each class in the December patch notes. Necromancers are on the other end of the scale – little direct strength to speak of, but amazing at condition and boon manipulation.

If boon removing skills are given to some other classes, I’d like to see them accessible via traits only rather than being built into weapon or utility skills.